Rose's Cantina

Over the years when I looked after Jennette, there were times I wanted to walk out of her life. It was hard watching her self-destruct, difficult to walk into an apartment that was full of paper and ashes and soot. Her friend Lu couldn't believe it when I told her about the hoarding years, the decades Jennette made neat pathways to the bathroom and the bedroom in-between the untouched moving boxes, and the couches overflowing with her dead mother's clothes. "The Jan I knew had an apartment that was neat as a pin," Lu told me. "I just can't believe she lived that way." I knew Jennette for 25 years, and every place she rented looked the same. They were always full of clutter, neat in places, especially the bathroom. The rest of her apartment looked like a bombed out place in Aleppo. The first time it was a problem was when the paramedics came to get Roger who had collapsed on the bed. It took them nearly an hour to get him out of the apartme...

Embed from Getty Images The old man was looking forward to his daily visit from his daughter and his lady friend. At 2 p.m., the orderlies bathed and catheterized him, then put him in his diaper. For the first hour or so, he zoomed in and out of consciousness, grateful for the morphine, but frustrated that it basically put him to sleep. His loved ones sat and chatted during these frequent episodes; it's what to be expected in end of days. Suddenly, he sat up. "Oh no, I went again," he cried. Something had gone wrong with his catheter, it sprang a leak. At the same time, he soiled himself unable to control his bowels thanks to the tumour that got him into this mess in the first place. His daughter rang for a nurse. Nobody came. She rang again, and finally went to the nursing station. "My dad needs to be changed," she said. The nurse just looked at her. "He'll have to wait until shift change," she said. "But that'...

On Wednesday, my little cancer-fighting warrior Jennette Levett got the news that she was being sprung from the Ottawa Hospital after a grueling two weeks which involved an eight-hour surgery to remove the cancer, seven teeth and part of her jaw. She also had to endure a complicated procedure in which doctors took skin grafts from her arm and leg. When it was all done, the surgery rocked her world. JLev looked like a fatigued Rocky Balboa, the prize-fighting wannabee before he started punching cows. There were tubes everywhere. She was a living breathing, beeping little machine with glassy eyes and a Howdy Doody grin, sewn shut. Here she is the day after her surgery. Man, she's gonna kill me for this one.  The smartphone has made us all into mad paparazzi. She spent two weeks breathing and trying to talk through a tracheotomy, with goo being suctioned out of her on a constant basis. Her arm looked like a skinned chicken thigh, and I can't even guess what h...

The observation room at the Ottawa Hospital is on the 6th floor. It's a big room with six or eight beds with a nursing station in the middle. Here, patients get one-on-one nursing care, with specialty staff helping with physio, speech, and whatever is needed. Over Christmas, it's quiet. There aren't many people getting operated on over the holidays. Only the urgent and very sick get to spend their Christmas and New Year's in this bright room with big windows and a cheerful Christmas tree. This is where my friend Jennette is spending her holiday, hooked up to a virtual Medusa of tubes that feed her, fill her little body with all kinds of good stuff, and help her breath. On December 23rd, she had life-saving oral cancer surgery to remove a tumor the size of a Hall's cough drop from under her tongue. It was eight hours of misery for her excellent surgical team. When I got the call from her primary surgeon, she sounded absolutely exhausted. I didn't know wh...

It was mild this morning, not unlike an early spring morning, as I crammed myself into Jennette's car. I say crammed because she had the seat set for a person nearly eighty pounds smaller than me and a foot shorter. Note to self:  It's time to get back on the diet and exercise hamster wheel. Nothing I can do about the height difference. I arrived at Jennette's place at about five a.m. to fetch her for her cancer operation which was scheduled for eight. She was up, showered, ready. The suitcase was packed to the brim for her stay which will likely be a fortnight given the fact she's having quite a surgery. For eight hours, two surgeons will be carving a cancerous tumour out of her jaw, and resecting her mouth, taking her bottom teeth with it. A graft will be taken from her left arm to replace the part of her jaw that will be taken out. She'll also have a tracheotomy to help her breathe. "Take a picture of my bottom teeth," she told me. "I w...

View image | gettyimages.com At the end of February, my beloved Scott will turn 59. He will tell you that he will be turning just short of 14, as he was born in Leap Year 1956 when his mother's doctor decided to induce her just so the doc could say he birthed a Leap baby. Scott only gets a birthday every four years, which is good for me since I have time to save up, but also bad for me because he keeps reminding me that he is, on the record at least, just past the wet dream stage. Fifty-nine is that magical year, the grey zone between having nothing and getting in on the Canada Pension Plan. You are also eligible for some discounts, not very good discounts, such as ten percent off at First Choice Hair Salons, but you don't get a senior's discount on the bus. The good news is that, after 50, you've already qualified for Grey Power insurance, but are not yet eligible for a reversed mortgage which involves the slow sucking of all your money out of your h...

#183580963 / gettyimages.com For the first time in my life, I've actually thought about NOT VOTING in an Ontario election. In my four decades of voting, it's always been pretty easy to separate the squirrels from the actual eggs. There were clear choices. In my youth, I veered to the left-ish, liking the NDP but voting Liberal because I believed there were too many wackjobs in the NDP. I could never stomach the Tories. Even the youngins reminded me of my crazy Uncle Ivan who would rail against the gov-ment while he was chain-smoking roll-your-owns. Like most women, the Liberal party seemed reasonable and progressive. So like a reasonably well-educated fembot, I've put the Liberal tramp stamp on my ballot each and every election. Hell, I voted for Dalton McGuinty three times, even though he looked like a psycho killer. Maybe it's because I'm tumbling into the geezerhood vortex, that awesome time in a person'slife when television tells us...

I was so damned excited that the Ottawa Farmer's Market was opening this weekend, I nearly wet myself. Going to the market has become one of the great rituals of each summer. Scott and I have a route. We start up the left side of Market (which is located if you don't know across from Carleton University, which does its part by trying to gouge visitors for parking even though there is free parking in the neighborhood). We like to compare prices and produce, chat up the farmers, ask them about their winters. Then we veer left talk to the Yak lady and Carleton the Jamaican sauce guy. Along the way, we buy eggs from John the egg guy and some wonderful Lanark cheese. On the right side, there is hot sauce and honey, baby booties and dog biscuits. By the time we're done, in past years, we've dropped $65 on a wonderful variety of colorful gnarly carrots and weird vegetables. The big treat is always, come June, when my homies from Niagara boot down the 401 to deliver lu...

I have just returned from the Rexall Drugstore where I waited ten minutes to get the flu shot. I didn't feel it, not even a prick. Gosh, I thought, the pharmacist is a lot better than the nurses at my doctor's office, which is next door and had a line up of about fifty people who presumably were there because they have the flu. I didn't see one person who was sick at the pharmacy. The line up at the Pharmaplus was exactly no one except a worried gentleman who never had the flu shot before, a man who grilled me about how many times I've had it, whether I had side effects. I thought, man up, dude, it's just a flu shot. I get the flu shot ever year and this is why. I got a job at the Bruyere Hospital after SARS hit Ontario. I worked for one week, then felt sick and my boss told me not to tell anybody. I ended up so sick I had to quit my job. My health crisis lasted six months, during which time I nearly coughed up both my lungs. I believe I'm lu...

We changed veterinarians after the last one put down Hannah, our golden retriever, for cancer (legitimate) then killed my pug Ming. When I say "killed," I mean one of the colleagues of our chief vet guilted us into getting dental surgery for Ming even though the chief had told us months before she wouldn't survive it. She didn't and died on the table. It was horrific. As a result, Gordie, who was also undergoing dental, became an only pug and we were out three grand. Another time, the chief vet nearly killed Gordie when she was operating on him for crystals in his bladder. She sewed him up wrong and had to pay another vet to re-operate on him. That should have been our first clue that we didn't hire the Vet of the Century. In response to killing Ming, Dr. Kevorkian told us how very sorry she was, then sent a donation to the Ottawa Humane Society on our behalf, then sent us a grief card. I'm always amazed at these "random acts of kindness...

The Canadian Mental Health Commission is releasing its long-awaited mental health strategy on Tuesday. Too bad somebody leaked it on Sunday. Whoopsy! The Commission spent six long years studying the state of mental health in Canada and is recommending governments spend $4 billion over the next decade to shore up our embarrassing efforts to keep people from harming themselves and others. It's funny that the Commission had to spent six years doing this, considering the Kirby Commission on mental health had previously studied it for four. Why did it take six years? Why are the recommendations pretty much the same? In other words, the Commission wasted the lifespan of a First Grader to tell us what we already know. Also, it's asking for $4 billion at a time when all governments are in austerity mode. Doctors are having their pay cut. Hospitals are being asked to do more with less. Not-for-profit organizations dedicated to helping the mentally ill are having their gran...

Scott and I are going to the vet tomorrow with a sock puppet full of twenties and two unsuspecting pugs. First, Gordie will be cathetered because the little bastard won't give us a pee sample. He pees all over the God damned house, but approach him with a bowl and he dries up like a Prairie slough in summertime. It's embarrassing. At 8 a.m it's lights out, doggie style, while Doctors Craig and Morgan get up on the operating tables and yank out their molars. Ming's expected to be under for 90 minutes while they pull her smelly black teeth. Nine of them. Moms Mabley, that's what I'm thinking. Moms Mabley. Gordie might do a bit better at an hour or so with four molars yanked, but Dr. Morgan says she'll probably pluck a few in the front. Which makes me wonder what will happen with Gordie's six foot tongue. Will we have to purchase a grill? Hopefully, all will go well and they will wake up. We have, however, decided to sign a do-not-rescusitat...

The thing about it is, they killed my mother. My grandfather. My friend Les. My uncle Vern. And they are killing many more people I know and love. Maybe even my own children. Cigarettes are public enemy number one in my book and there hasn't been much we could do about them. We can ban them from public places. We can put nasty adverts on their covers. But people will still smoke them. Still die from their toxic fumes. It's frustrating for people like me. I mean, you can't put on a pink tshirt and run around the Nation's Capital. There are no rallies, no battle cries, just death and internal destruction. My baby granddaughter's other granny has emphysema because of cigarettes. She has to go to work everyday as a cleaner in a retirement residence hooked up to an oxygen tank. She quit the smoke a year ago, but it doesn't matter. Cigarettes got her before she reached her 50th birthday. My kids, they all smoke. Despite my pleadings, despite me putting image...

I spent last night laying on a gurney in the hospital waiting for an evaluation. Nobody came to see me. Eventually, some people came by with buckets of KFC and the whole ward turned into a party. Never did see a nurse. Or a doctor. Just a whole lot of people like me laying on gurneys with sheets over them. With chicken juice dripping down their legs. Some health care dreams are better than others.

For the first time in my long life, I'm not sure I want to live in Canada anymore. The country I love is beginning to be unrecognizable. The values we have shared oh, these many years, are being questioned. Our government says we can't afford our health care system. It can't support our senior citizens. It's tossed off Canada's hard won reputation as a peace-maker. Canadians have a new image abroad. We are war-mongers, buttinskies in the politics of countries not our own. The even more stern daughter of God. Our ministers are standing up and telling Europeans -- my ancestors -- what to do, how to behave. Once proud of the legacy of Lester B. Pearson, I'm now embarrassed to be a Canadian. We're taking our  resources and selling them to the highest bidder. We're flogging seal meat to China so we can lock up precious Panda Bears at the Toronto Zoo. We're letting the Americans kill a Canadian on death row. And we're building prisons...

The glass is usually half full in my life. I'm just that sort of person. Life has hit me with a few body slams. Of course, it has. You don't get to be 55 without losses and disappointments, and I try to take them in stride. But I have to say, being on Facebook makes me even more grateful for a relatively stable and uneventful life. Two years ago, one of the my university friends lost her mother and brother within days of each other. Mom died suddenly of a heart attack and brother died in a car crash. Last year, my friend lost her father. While many of us were opening presents and toasting the baby Jesus, Rose spent Christmas eve rattling around the old homestead, by herself, talking to ghosts. Another Facebook friend had to take her dog in for emergency surgery just before New Year's and had to cancel a planned and deserved holiday. Yet another Facebook friend had to put down her ailing retriever on New Year's Day. She was absolutely devastated. There is sad ne...

At last, a sensible suggestion from Canada's doctors. Do away with parking fees at hospitals. Level the playing field. Take away unnecessary stress from patients. Pity the downtrodden who are forced to come to the hospital every day. Stop taxing the poor and the sick. The hospitals will ignore this advice, of course. They depend on parking fees to pay for medical equipment. The same way the province depends on seniors to lose their Old Age Pensions at the government-run casinos. But the argument has some merit. A few weeks back, I was acting as a volunteer driver for my friends Bob and Doris when Doris was in the hospital and Bob was sick at home. It cost about $100 to a) stay with Doris during her emergency treatment b) visit Doris in the hospital c) shuffle Bob around to various doctors appointments. Usually, we can get around the parking fees because we live close to the hospital. If Scott or Marissa needed to go to emerg or an appointment, I'd simply drop th...

I got an anniversary card on Friday. It's been exactly one year since I joined the Ontario Government's Health Care Connect program which is designed to match orphaned patients with family doctors. About every quarter, I get a form letter saying the program is still looking for a doctor for me, and reminding me not to give up the search myself. Fortunately, I am in good health and I have the ability to seek out medical attention when necessary. For example, I needed cataract surgery and got it through a referral from my optometrist. Today, I will be on the phone to get a breast exam to the Ontario Breast Screening Program which I can access without a family doctor. But like thousands in this province, I have to rely on over-crowded, uncaring clinics for my medical needs. When I'm really sick, as I was three weeks ago, I can take myself down the street to the Ottawa Hospital's urgent care centre. This, to me, is not good enough. On at least two occasion...

We all know that our bodies aren't exactly symmetrical. Girls have one boob that's always bigger than the other; I suspect the men can claim the same in the bullocks department. But do we have one side that gets sicker than the other? My right side is the culprit. Everything that is wrong happens on my right side. Catract. Fallen arch. Pulled neck muscle. Ear eaten away by flesh-eating bacteria (true!). What's with that? Am I like a ship that is listing to starboard? I was thinking about this in bed last night, as I was nursing my wounded neck which I apparently hurt during an interview last Friday. As I've said before, I don't talk much, being a shut-in, so even a little excess gabbing puts a strain on my tender throat. Is there any way to prevent further injury to my right side? I've already gotten an orthotic for the right foot and the cataract has been exorcised. The liver, well, the liver is on the mend after years of drinking Canada Dry. Wh...

I was in severe pain yesterday from an unidentified throat injury, so I decided to pay a visit to my local clinic, where I was refused treatment. The dumbass on the front desk -- who admitted to being a nubie -- told me my health card had expired. Immediately, I thought I had destroyed the wrong card, so I left the clinic, more than a little mad and embarrassed. I renewed my card last July along with my driver's license, but I hadn't used it, being adverse to medical intervention of any sort. I knew I received a new card, so spent about two hours scouring the house. Alas, no health card in sight. So I sat on my Ekornes chair with a glass of red to dull the throbbing pain and felt sorry for myself. Then I thought, wait a nanosecond! The picture on the health card is exactly the same as the one on my driver's license, so THEREFORE... I picked up the card and sure enough, it was my new, non-expired health card with the date 2015 on it. Should I have noticed this ...