Things That Have Nothing To Do With My Girlfriend Being Pregnant And A Cooler Update

It didn’t take long during the month my girlfriend was in the Ottawa General Hospital before I found out the cheapest lunch available in the cafeteria is a small bowl of soup, a carton of milk, a large handful of cracker packages, and as many jam packets as you can stuff into your pocket.

Total cost was three dollars. After several weeks, and many lunches, I found out the jam packets actually cost a quarter each, so this only works if you’re willing to steal food.

So a week ago, on Monday, I was sitting in the cafeteria, reading the Ottawa Citizen while eating a very hot bowl of cream of vegetable soup, when I accidentally inhaled a piece of cauliflower off my spoon. I definitely felt it hit my lung.

For the rest of the day, and all of the next, I kept thinking of the man who inhaled an inch-long piece of a plastic spoon while eating at a Wendy’s. He went two years with it jammed in his lung, never knowing why he was constantly fatigued, and suffering through prolonged coughing fits and recurring pneumonia.

Eventually a pulmonary specialist sent a probe into his lungs and the technicians were able to read “Hamburger” stamped on the plastic, along with the Wendy’s logo. His doctor removed it a little while later, and the man is expected to make a complete recovery.

It felt like there was an empty spot in my chest where the chunk of cauliflower landed, and it freaked me out for the next two days. So much, in fact, I had one of the more bizarre sleepwalking incidents I’ve ever had.

I don’t normally do much when I sleepwalk, mostly I just end up at the fridge looking for something to drink. But occasionally I’ll wake up because no matter what I do I can’t open the fridge door, and it’s because I’m really facing a wall.

So, early Wednesday morning, I had a dream where I knew something foreign was inside me, and the only way to get it out was to cough it out. For some reason I had to dry heave 900 times, so I was counting. I do remember getting out of bed, but it was part of the dream that I had to kneel down at the end of my bed to make the coughing / dry heaving more effective.

I woke up when I hit ninety deep, dry coughs. Not all the way, just enough to stop myself from coughing. Then I just got back into bed and went back to sleep.

When I woke up on Wednesday my throat was butchered. I could only barely speak, and it hurt… like, a lot. It wasn’t until Friday when the pain went all the way away.

I can remember saying “oh no” after each cough.

Apparently accidentally inhaling chunks of anything deep into your body is a bad idea. As food decays in your lung(ish) area it can cause a mucus buildup and pneumonia.

I can still feel the chunk.

My mother lost her job yesterday. Which is really bad. They used the “it’s not you, it’s us” line. Mom was overqualified for the position, but she enjoyed the job.

She was part of an underfunded quasi-government agency in charge or coordinating the digitization of every piece of printed material, ever. She worked with Canadian and American universities, and companies like Google, so every book and government paper ever published could be made “Web ready”.

I think it was having someplace to go everyday, and people to be around, that made it something she wanted to do. Before this she was on contract with the National Library and Archives. I’m not sure if she’s going to apply for a new position. I think she’s at the age where people start thinking “maybe this should be enough”.

But there aren’t a whole lot of opportunities out there right now for sixty-year old women… or men, I guess.

I’m a little worried some of the decision to let her go might come from her needing so much time in the morning to drive me to the hospital.

At least she won’t have the three-hour daily commute anymore.

Cooler, my cat, is getting big. She picks fights with my feet. She’ll follow me around the apartment, walking sideways with her tail bent in half, then dart in and take a swipe at my foot.

It took me a few days, but I finally realized this was ‘cat play’. So now I wave my foot at her, and we have little war games.

When I’m getting ready for bed, she’ll wait just outside the room until the light goes off — she has this timed perfectly… she’ll run in and take a swipe at my foot as I’m lifting it to the mattress. Every night. It’s like she needs the last shot.

She lays with me while I’m watching TV, and when I’m at the computer she’ll climb my leg to get into my lap. Which was a lot cuter three months, and two pounds ago.

Her favourite chew toy is anything plastic — bottles, remotes, the printer, the tips of shoelaces. She also likes to climb into things… half the time I pick up a cloth grocery bag, she’ll be in it, just chilling. I left an empty Kleenex box out for her when she was a kitten, and she’d hide inside it with just her eyes poking out. When she got too big for it, I put out a larger box and filled it with plastic bags, so she hangs out there a lot… just watching stuff.

I also put out a cushion in the bedroom, and piled packing paper around it… which is a bad idea if you’re a light sleeper. She likes chewing on newspapers as well. And the phone book.

I named her “Cooler” after Steve McQueen’s character in ‘The Great Escape’, “The Cooler King” — McQueen’s character would escape the camp, only to be caught and tossed into ‘the cooler’, over and over again. When she was a kitten, my Cooler lived on my porch with her brothers and sister. And no matter what contraption I built to keep them from escaping, she was the one who figured out a way to get out.

So now I have to be careful when I close the fridge, because the light’s burnt out and she’ll climb in while I’m taking stuff out. I also have to leave the top drawers in my kitchen open, so she can’t climb to the counter. She’ll also climb the front of my bedroom bureau, using the latches for footholds, to get into an open drawer. Once in she’ll crawl into the closed drawers through the back — while she’s inside one drawer, she can open the next one by pushing from the back.

She also likes to hang out on the ledge of the bathtub while I’m taking a shower. Occasionally she’ll get pissed off at the shadows of the water on the wall, and attack it by jumping into the shower. But that’s over pretty quickly. Every once in a while I’ll turn around and she’ll be sitting at the dry end of the tub.

Just sitting, waiting. I’m pretty sure she thinks there’s an escape route in my bathroom somewhere. She knows about the front door now. When I put my shoes on she’ll dart under the kitchen table and wait for me to open the door. She’s got it pretty much timed perfectly now.

My girlfriend and I will be at the hospital again on Tuesday (today) for more tests. Glucose and an ultrasound. I doubt she’ll be staying, things seem to be going okay with her here. She’s breaking the rules, but not in large out-of-control ways like the last time.

She made up with her father, and her son has been relatively quiet. So the stress is not so great. I took my mom, step-dad and my girlfriend out for dinner on Saturday night… my step-dad paid. It was the first time we’ve all been together in a long time. It was good for my girlfriend to find out just how much support my parents are willing to give. I think it took some edges off my girlfriend’s concerns. Mine too. Theirs too.

We all ended up at my girlfriend’s apartment afterwards, making lists out loud of what she’ll need. We’ll need. So that was good.

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Home Again Home Again Jiggity Jig Part Two

My girlfriend is home. After four weeks of living on the high-risk pregnancy ward of the Ottawa General Hospital, including six days in quarantine with H1N1, she’s back downstairs in her apartment.

We came home Tuesday night. On Monday we were told she’d have to stay in quarantine until Thursday, then on Tuesday a doctor finally started asking questions… yes, she had taken Tamiflu for the full five days; no, she never had a cough, or sneezed; yes, she had a fever, but only for one day.

In order for me to be in the room with her I had to wear a mask, a plastic face visor, rubber gloves and a protective gown. As the doctor was asking his questions he stood two feet away from her, wearing his normal clothes, so it was obvious something was wrong. Or that he thought there was a mistake.

…like a nurse writing on the chart that my girlfriend had a cough, when she didn’t.

So my girlfriend was in quarantine when, it turned out, she could have stayed in her room, and I only needed to wear a mask as a precaution.

But she’s here now. No more two hour commutes so I could spend ten hours in a hospital with her. No more spending $20/day on hospital cafeteria food, diet pop and bottled water. No more acting like an assistant nurse for my girlfriend. No more taking twenty trips a day on the elevator past the fourth floor where, when I was eighteen, I spent a month under observation as a suicide risk.

As she was packing I kept reminding her that when she got home she had to use the lessons she learned in the hospital. And she kept making promises. No walking, no driving, no lifting, no stress. Tuesday’s ultrasound showed her cervix was now completely flat. The technician could only barely perform the pelvic ultrasound because the baby’s head was in the way.

The cerclage is now the only thing holding our son inside her body. But it’s been that way for almost two months now. So following the rules, she told me, was the priority. I reminded her the rules are also there to prevent any pain, bleeding or discomfort.

When we finally got home I helped her unpack, kissed her and welcomed her home, walked up the stairs to my apartment, greeted my cat, and played around on Facebook for twenty minutes. Then she called me, panicked, to say she needed to immediately drive to her parents home to rescue her son.

She had called her parents to let them know where she was, and found out they had been receiving babysitting help over the past two weeks from her ex-husband. Which is breaking the court decision regarding custody of their four-year old son in a big way.

My girlfriend and her father had gotten into a screaming fight over the phone, which ended with her father screaming “fuck you” at her, and hanging up. The night ended with my mother driving us to and from my girlfriend’s parents’ home; with her son laying on the couch with her, watching a SpongeBob DVD; and with me sitting in my apartment wondering what the fuck have I been doing for the past four months.

This baby will be born premature, we’ve known that for months. Back in July my girlfriend, who has lost two children to miscarriage in the past, volunteered for a procedure called a cervical cerclage. The cerclage would constrain her cervix, and give our kid the best chance for making it to full term. All she had to do was follow the rules.

Over the next three months she broke those rules regularly, the cerclage slipped little by little, she went through daily excruciating pain and discomforts because of it, but she still broke the rules. Finally she was admitted to the hospital for four days, and everyday she begged to get out of there, until she was released on condition she follow the rules.

And again she broke them repeatedly and often, including carrying her son in her arms for nearly a mile, and driving almost 200km in two days.

Finally the pain became too regular, and too much, and the cerclage was at the breaking point so she finally agreed admitting her into the high-risk ward was the best option for a prolonged pregnancy, and she stayed there for a month.

Including the ride home she was out of the hospital for an hour before screaming at her parents.

…I am very tired of having to deal with her family, her ex-husband and her. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to deal with any of them anymore.

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No Post Day | First Tune

When we escaped from my father, we moved into a small two-bedroom apartment over a gas station. My memory on this is a little sketchy, but one of the things we ended up with was a cabinet record player: it was about six-feet long, the top tilted upwards, and inside was the record player.

And we did have records. I never really give her credit for this, but my mom does have good taste in music. Back in 1980, in our little apartment, she had “Rumours” by Fleetwood Mac, a Joan Armatrading album, and a Steely Dan. And one of the albums she owned was “Band On The Run” by ‘Paul McCartney & Wings’.

Which I discovered when I was nine, and I’d play it when I got home from school. I can remember playing the title track over and over and over again. I don’t think, for the first year I listened to the album, I ever got past “Jet”, the second track.

There were a lot of reasons why I fell in love with the song. It’s a great song, first, but it feels like three songs in one… from that great opening riff to the muscular guitar starting the second stanza, then the chorus changes the song completely again with the orchestra and acoustic guitar.

After listening to it about fifty times, I can remember listening — hearing — the lyrics, and feeling how they, for the first time, applied to me. I was a few months and 400 miles removed from my extended family, in a weird new place where I knew no one, then hearing these words coming from the cabinet stereo:

Stuck inside these four walls
Sent inside forever
Never seeing no one nice again
Like you, mama, you, mama, you

If I ever get out of here
Thought of giving it all away
To a registered charity
All I’d need is a pint a day
If I ever get out of here
If we ever get out of here

I would turn the stereo up and sing along. And when I got to those lyrics:

If I ever get out of here
If we ever get out of here

I’d cry. I’d choke up, and keep singing along as best as I could. But every single time it was those two lines that just broke me.

I found a YouTube, purely by accident, of “Band On The Run” a few nights ago… and I played it back to back to back. And those two lines still choked me up.

…then the memory washed over me of Little Me standing in a dark room, using the lyric sheet on the album to sing along at the top of my lungs, not knowing about Paul McCartney, or anything, just knowing I wanted to get the fuck out of there.

Anyway… it occurred to me, since it was on YouTube it would make sense for it to be on btjunkie.org, and it was. So I downloaded it, and now I’ve got the whole album.

So my questions for this sacred No Post Day are:

1. What song makes you totally lose it… for various reasons “O Mary Don’t You Weep” and “Born To Run” by Bruce Springsteen, and “The Storm” by Big Country also do it for me. “Farewell to Nova Scotia”, a traditional folk song, also makes me pretty freaking emotional…

2. What albums do you remember your parents owning?

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H1N1 Policy On The Maternity Ward Of The Ottawa General Hospital Sucks

My very pregnant girlfriend has the flu. Late Tuesday night she had a fever of over 101F long enough the nurses, dressed in long, yellow, disposable plastic jackets and wearing face-shields, moved her from her “home care” room to a single room where they’ve quarantined her.

I wasn’t there Wednesday, because I couldn’t find a ride to Ottawa. When I was with her on Monday she complained of back pain and a general feeling of discomfort. Both of which are common problems but, after dinner as I was leaving, she did tell me it was bad enough she would ask for a shot of pain reliever. Which was new.

My girlfriend hates needles. I’d say it’s a borderline phobia. So for her to ask for one would take something out of the ordinary. She has also been exceptionally careful, for the sake of the pregnancy, to not take anything remotely or potentially harmful into her body. I found out in August she hadn’t even been taking Tylenol because she thought it might harm the kid. I had to get a doctor to explain to her about managing her pain with over the counter pain killers.

The shot she was asking for on Monday night is safe for pregnant women, they just don’t like giving it out for every ache and pain.

They also took blood and saliva samples from her on Wednesday, to see if she has H1N1, but the test result won’t be back until Friday. The nurses told her she wasn’t exhibiting any of the H1N1 symptoms, and her fever did start to drop around noon today. But the discomfort, stuffed nose and other problems are still there.

And they’ve started her back up on Tamiflu. They had her on it three weeks ago because her son had a prolonged flu experience. He tested negative for H1N1.

On Wednesday she mostly just slept. Which is good.

Here’s what’s not good… I’ve become very frustrated with how the Ottawa General Hospital has been treating my girlfriend.

The H1N1 shot, in Canada, has been available for almost three weeks for people who fit into the “high risk” category. At the top of the list is pregnant women. So you’d think a pregnant woman, with a high risk pregnancy and living on the maternity ward of a major hospital would be one of the first in line.

But not only has she not received a shot, until very recently neither had any of the maternity ward staff… because, individually, they weren’t considered “high risk”.

The hospital also, for the first two weeks my girlfriend was on the ward, did not seem to have a plan as to what to do with women staying on the maternity ward who had “flu-like symptoms”. Nor did there seem to be any plans on what to do with people who were obviously sick — sneezing, coughing, stuffy head — visiting women on the maternity ward.

There weren’t lines of flu soaked miscreants wandering the halls, wiping their snot on the doorknobs or coughing in the faces of newborns, but there were sick people walking around. There were groups of excited people filling rooms, people to whom Purell was not a priority.

And it wasn’t until this past weekend when the rules finally changed… or were created, so that only the “primary partner” could visit a woman on the maternity ward.

H1N1 shots have been available in public clinics for three weeks, maybe more. Pregnant women have been told it’s safe to receive the vaccine. In fact, they’ve been highly encourage to seek it out. But when I asked my girlfriend’s doctors — two of them — they told her the vaccine was unavailable because the hospital was waiting for a special vaccine, created specifically for pregnant women.

Even though both vaccines, according to both Health Canada and the World Health Organization, were proven to be safe for pregnant women.

That was last week, and two weeks ago. But on Halloween weekend, the Ottawa General Hospital opened an H1N1 vaccine clinic in their cafeteria, specifically for their employees. Except many employees brought their families, who were also inoculated.

Including pregnant women… using the same vaccine my girlfriend’s doctors claimed was unsafe for her to receive.

“We knew … that we were probably going to be confronted with situations of people showing up at the door of our clinic, not only with themselves but with their family members,” said Nicolas Ruszkowski, The Ottawa Hospital’s vice-president of communications and outreach.

“The ethical question you ask yourself is: Do we turn them away or do we take them? And the ethical decision that we made was we’re not going to turn anybody away as long as we know that we’re covering our staff.”

Ruszkowski said he doesn’t know how many of the 8,495 people who got their pandemic flu shot over the weekend were relatives of hospital staffers.

The story broke on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen on Monday morning. Which was when the Ottawa General Hospital changed its vaccine clinic policy, so that anyone wanting a shot had to produce an employee card.

Later that Monday, I asked another of my girlfriend’s doctors about the shot. My girlfriend had plans for a 24-hour pass at the time so she could be at her son’s birthday. We were told to take the opportunity to stand in line at a clinic near our hometown.

…the doctor’s recommendation was for my girlfriend to stand in line, outside a clinic for up to four hours to receive a shot which, eight floors down, was being given out at that very moment.

My girlfriend is under strict doctors orders — including that doctors orders — not to drive, stand for long periods of time, or be outside for more than fifteen minutes. But it’s okay to stand in line outside for four hours. For a shot being given away to employees of the Ottawa General Hospital, a wheelchair ride away.

Who’s in charge of these fucking things?

Because now, on Thursday, the “pregnant woman safe vaccine” will finally be available to women on the maternity ward. But my girlfriend won’t be able to take it, because one of the reasons people can be turned away from receiving the shot… drum roll please:

…is if they have the flu, or flu-like symptoms.

Which my girlfriend has. She probably has the flu. My girlfriend — who, for three weeks, has been living on a maternity ward which had no obvious policy preventing people with the flu from walking onto the ward — probably has the flu.

In fact, just over a week ago — and well into the H1N1 thing — a new mother on the maternity had flu-like symptoms, and so did the baby’s father, who kept walking up and down the hall past my girlfriends room. My girlfriend had to ask a nurse to make sure he, and the mother, wore surgical masks.

You know… to follow the fucking procedures.

Seriously… who the fuck is in charge of this shit?

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The State Of My Mental Health

“They tried to make me go to rehab,
but I said ‘no, no, no.’
Yes, I been black,
but when I come back,
you’ll know, know know.”
Honestly, in retrospect, only Amy Winehouse will ever own that song.

Well, the good news is, after a two week change in lifestyle, I’m sober. The bad news is it’s probably because I couldn’t afford more alcohol.

I don’t think I was ever in serious danger of getting lost. I had my last drink around 10pm on Sunday, and it was definitely the hardest one I’ve had in the last two weeks, but it was still only 2oz of alcohol. That’s the problem with drinking after taking an eight year hiatus, and also being on prescription meds… any alcohol is too much alcohol.

If there was a serious problem I think I’d be into my girlfriend’s fridge where she stores her own little vodka stash. We’ll see what happens.

Beyond the slight, week long depression brought on by the booze, I don’t think the (nearly) two weeks of drinking pushed my recovery any further back, keeping in mind two things: my recovery has already been stalled and even substantially reversed for six months now, and; I wasn’t drinking that much. Well… 26oz of Kahlua and 13oz of vodka over two weeks, so almost 3oz/day.

Coping With The White Russians

White Russian: old fashioned glass, add ice, 2oz vodka, 1oz Kahlua, finish with chilled 1% milk… glass size and ice optional, adjust alcohol to taste.

Vodka is best stored in the freezer. Colder the better.

Healthy alternative to pop: fill a glass to within an inch of the brim with club soda, then add your favourite juice.

Some Rules To My Recovery:
1. Take the pills
2. Don’t drink, or use street drugs
3. Get decent sleep
4. See my doctor regularly

I’ve been drunk everyday for the past ten days. I’ve been drinking just enough to get a decently warm buzz, generally just enough to shut my brain down for an evening, or to keep it shut down for a day.

There are two basic reasons why I’ve broken one of my few recovery rules: I’ve been having cravings for a specific drink for a month, and; I lost the ability to use this blog as a means to my recovery — I couldn’t find the time to write, so drinking made sense.

When I first moved back here, six years ago, I promised myself I wouldn’t drink. I’ve been a binge drinker for most of my adult life. I grew up in the poorest (non-reservation) region of Canada (illiteracy rate of 30%, unemployment rate of 40%), so drinking was just something we did in high school. When I started college, using the government support program, alcohol was my second largest expenditure after rent.

When I moved to Toronto in 1998 I was drunk every weekend, after a year it had spread to most weekdays. Basically my weekend binges spread to Thursday, with alternating Monday and Wednesday sessions.

But He Made It Out… With A Bullet In His Back

Jailbreak, jailbreak
I got to break out
Out of here
Heartbeats they were racing
Freedom he was chasing
Spotlights, sirens, rifles firing
But he made it out…
With a bullet in his back.
“Jailbreak”; AC/DC, ‘74 Jailbreak’ (1984)

This past Sunday night I finally sat down with friends, for the first time in almost a year, and spoke out loud about what I’ve been going through since April.

I spoke about the pregnancy, about my relationship with my girlfriend, about how I’ve sacrificed friendships and how my recovery has stalled.

I cannot remember the last time I’ve been with my friends. Any of them. I’ve been in such a panic, I’ve been so focused on supporting my girlfriend because of her high-risk pregnancy, I’ve been paralysed.

For the first three months of her pregnancy the fear was miscarriage, she had two before having her son four years ago. So twice a week we were travelling to emergency rooms in the very early morning. I was convinced each week would bring the end of our child.

Victory Is Both A Name And A State Of Mind

Things didn’t get worse last week, which means they got better. According to the doctors at the Ottawa General Hospital, this was supposed to be the week my son should have been born. He would have been almost two months premature.

But after our appointment on Tuesday, after the doctor completed my girlfriend’s physical exam, and checked the ultrasound report, he told us the pregnancy should continue another three weeks. The cerclage is still doing its job, it’s still the only thing holding the baby in his mother’s womb. My girlfriend’s cervix is now shaped like a really shallow funnel, the baby’s… sack, for lack of a better term, has almost completely filled the space behind the cerclage.

But, the doctor said, he’s seen worse. We’re still on a day-to-day schedule, things can still go wrong — the cerclage could still fail, the contractions could get worse, the water could still break — but the chances things could go wrong are all within the margin of error. So the baby could be born sooner, but right now it looks like it’ll happen later.

Which is great, because in three weeks it’ll be Week Thirty… which is seven months and two weeks. And then it’s only two short weeks until Month Eight. And being borne one month premature is a lot better than the two or three months we were expecting not too long ago.