Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

I live on a corner lot, which means I have a hell of a lot of sidewalk to shovel so the kids can mount the school bus each winter morning. I hate shovelling and corner lots. I do it so I am not fined by the City of Waterloo. The City of Waterloo is psycho. I’ll shake the dust off my feet when I finally leave the pit. My neighbour Betty always made me leave a sprinkle of snow on the sidewalk so she wouldn’t fall. I always did that for her. Just for her.

For many years, I took Hilary to get on that bus. Each morning I was greeted by Betty who escorted her granddaughter Marisha to the bus stop. Betty & I would huddle with our thermal coffee mugs and chat. When I was on shift, Steve would huddle with her. Betty wasn’t just my daughter’s best friend’s grandmother or our neighbour, Betty became our friend. Actually, that’s a lie. She became our Gramma. We called her, “Gramma Betty”!

My daughter has an anaphylactic peanut allergy. We’ve almost lost her a few times. We are loaded with Epipens and we have had to use them. Halloween is always our nightmare before Christmas. Nuts are everywhere and Hilary finds them wherever she goes. Gramma Betty knew my darkest fears and no Halloween was complete until we went to her house. There she’d be with a specially prepared bag of nut free treats, just for Hilary. She would oh and ah over Hilary’s costume and it always ended with a hug and a kiss for each of us. Gramma Betty always took Hilary and Marisha home for lunch. They would enjoy her famous grilled cheese sandwiches and brownies. She always had Cap’n Crunch for the girls. Only Grammas’ stock Cap’n Crunch.

The bus days ended and we stayed connected to Gramma Betty through Marisha and our neighbourhood walks with our dog. She never changed, she was always out there to greet us. Last fall Gramma Betty was getting forgetful and was having difficulty keeping up with her home. Her daughters, Mary Jane and Judy decided it was time for Gramma Betty to make the transition to apartment living. Gramma Betty was not thrilled but she conceded, sold her home, and moved. The neighbourhood hasn’t been the same since she left, neither was she.

In April, Gramma Betty came to see Hilary and Marisha star in their school musical. I was so happy to see her. However, she didn’t remember me anymore. As I hugged her, she saw my Steve and screamed with excitement. Steve triggered her memory. Steve is worth remembering because as Betty always said “Steve is a gift from God.” And so he is Betty.

Last week we all gathered at the Centre in the Square to observe Hilary and Marisha’s graduation from grade 8. There was an empty seat. It was Gramma Betty’s. She died the night before. Nevertheless, she saw Marisha in her grad gown and with her true sense of humour; she wanted her daughters to push her over the Elora Gorge just to save her girls some money. Gotta love her.

On Saturday, we went to Gramma Betty’s funeral. I don’t like funerals, been to too many and they never do justice. I must say that Gramma Betty’s was the most beautiful I have ever been to. It was her; thoughtful, peaceful, unassuming and triumphant.

Humour me by allowing me to believe that I am a better person for having known her and that somehow and in someway Gramma Betty lives in me. Thanks Betty for adopting us. We love you and miss you and as I promised you last fall, I’ll keep an eye on your house and yes I’ll keep shovelling the snow for kids.

P.S. I'll take care of Steve too.

So Long Moxie George

Moxie--

“The ability to face difficulty with spirit and courage.”

When my Jedi called me last week with rumours that the Honourable George Smithermen was being shuffled, I shuddered. I love George Smitherman! He’s a “whirlwind get it done type of guy”. By Friday it was a done deal. http://www.premier.gov.on.ca/news/Product.asp?ProductID=2327&Lang=EN

Serving 5 years, he was the longest-serving Ontario Minister of Health in the last quarter century. As a health care professional in this province I can tell you that George was the most productive and determined Minister of Health I have witnessed.

George came in furiously with a transformation agenda. To name a few, he fearlessly abolished District Health Councils; ushered in 14 Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs), introduced hospital accountability agreements, and downsized 43 Community Care Access Centers (CCACs) to 14. He was passionate about patients, reducing wait times and enhancing access to nurses and doctors. He had a vision and I bought into it hook, line and sinker. His transformation is far from over; he left too early. His mandate unrealized.

George Smitherman is the new Minister of Energy and Infrastructure. David Caplan is replacing him as Minister of Health. I will reserve judgement on that call. David has big shoes to fill. And I don’t mean his mother Elinor’s black patent pumps.

Good Luck Caplan; Good Night Smithermen and thanks for the ride.

Some Bonds Last Forever

This blog will never be able to give my dad the justice that he is so deserving of. He was and is greatness. My dad is the person that I admired the most, loved the most and my forever best friend.

My father never wanted the grass to grow under his feet. He was life and everything therein.

He had a cardiac history from the age of 43; MI, CABG and the like. On that fateful day my mom called 911, by the time my dad reached the hospital unconscious, he was intubated, on triple inotropes and externally paced. He arrested 4 more times before my brothers arrived to bid farewell. He experienced all the things he made me promise would never happen to him. I’m sorry dad.

I can tell you the exact moment of his last breath on November 14, 1992. He finally declared himself at 0151 hrs. Since that moment my life has experienced a sense of vacuity. I have never been or will ever be the same again without him.

I can tell you outright what he taught me:
· Love
· Truth
· Integrity
· Tolerance
· Acceptance
· Patience
· Kindness
· Justice
· Positive Attitude
· Humour

Many “Father’s Day’s” have passed since his left and frankly I resent people who still have their fathers and don’t stop to appreciate and love them.

I can’t hear his voice, his laugh or see his smile or frown anymore. Worse than that the memory of those are waning and that scares the HELL out of me. I can’t remember the details of his “Falling Rock” story and that was my favourite car trip story. The story was all about him and me.

I celebrate my dad today, every gift and all the love he ever gave me. I wish I could have just one more day with him so I could feel the brush of his lips on my forehead and recount the details of “Falling Rock and Golden Eagle”.

Happy Father’s Day Golden Eagle!

Love always and forever,
Falling Rock

xoxo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El-C3w4CYqo

Beating the Odds

“I’m going in to put humpty & dumpty together again...” Linda

I can still remember that fateful day two years ago when my friend Linda called. We had just returned from a road trip of training across the province. We would stop at all the quaint garden centres along eastern Ontario’s rural back roads and pick up unusual plants and garden ornaments for our gardens and cottages. She would find the weirdest stores and we bought the weirdest things to take home to our families. She is the world’s best shopper and I never laugh as hard as I do when I am with her. Therefore, when I heard her voice I was thrilled and I started reminiscing about some of our private jokes. She did not laugh this time.

“I have breast cancer,” she said unexpectedly. I remember just sitting there and not saying a word. I was so confused. It was not possible. Linda is vitality and that is all there is to it. She is one of those rare nurses who actually takes her health seriously and is committed to a healthy lifestyle. This was wrong. I was mad.

A few weeks later Linda had her radical right mastectomy and proceeded through hell for a year of chemotherapy and radiation. Even through that year, she never lost herself or her sense of humour. She had to travel from her home 2 hours away to the Cancer Centre in my hometown for treatment. I would drop in during her treatments to check up on her. I was the one who always left cheered and inspired by her determination to kick cancer in the bloody face.

On some occasions, I would meet her and her husband the night before for dinner. She would model her wigs for me. The blond wig was her; the red was “Rediculous”. Nevertheless, she wanted to have fun with it and the red one was fun for her. As we waited to be seated one evening, in front of a long line up she loudly said, “Feel my booby”. Laughing I squeezed her right boob, “very taut” I replied. We both broke into hysterical laughter at the looks on the patrons faces. If only they had known that, I was squeezing her new mastectomy bra.

Last September to commemorate her first year of being cancer free, Linda walked in the 60 KM walk to End Breast Cancer in Toronto. She had trained all summer and finished the weekend walk through rain and sleet. She raised $10k for breast cancer research and proved once again why some people become heroes.

This morning Linda is going in for a 9-hour surgery. Not for cancer, but because of cancer. She is having a prophylactic mastectomy of her left breast. She wants to beat the odds of metastasis. At the same time, the microvascular surgeons are going to take some of her abdominal rectus muscle and reconstruct her right chest wall. They will then lypo her abdominal fat and reconstruct both breasts. With all her crazy humour she tells me, that she will finally have the “B cups” that she has always wanted. The D cups will be history.

As I look over the St. Lawrence River from my hotel window in old Quebec this morning, I am sending Linda all my positive thoughts and prayers while they put humpty & dumpty together again.

You go girl!

Celebrating National Nursing Week

Nursing has been my passion for 20 years. I cannot imagine any other life or profession. Nurses are improving clinical care, leading advocacy work and advancing technological innovation in all practice settings. Every day, we offer solutions to the challenges facing health care in Canada. Celebrate with us. Take a closer look at what we do.

Did you know?

• National Nursing Week is celebrated around the world in conjunction with Florence Nightingale’s birthday May 12th. Florence Nightingale is considered the pioneer of modern nursing.
• Nurses are the largest group of health-care providers in Canada, representing more than one-third of the health-care workforce.
• There are more that 270,000 registered nurses (RNs) in Canada and of these more that 250,000 are working in Canada as nurses.
• The average age of RNs working in Canada is 45.
• The hospital sector annually employs nearly two-thirds (63.2%) of RNs.
• The number of nurses who graduated in Canada in 2006 is the same number as it was in 1986. However, the Canadian population has grown by 24.9% since that time, outpacing the number of graduating nurses.
  
  

Reflections on the Hands of a Nurse-- written by Mark Darby

Let us take a moment to remember our hands. For these are no ordinary hands. These are the hands of a nurse. These hands help us do our work. These hands carry out the skills that make nursing possible.

Let us remember our hands and be grateful for what they do. For the eyes may see, the mouth may speak, but it is the hands that hold, the hands that heal, the hands that give the caring touch.

These are the hands that feel the first breath of a newborn child; These are the hands that feel the last breath of a dying one.

These are the hands that hold a family, who has just lost a loved one; These are the hands that clap for joy at the healing of a disease. These are the hands that insert tubes that bring healing to the body.

These are the hands that touch a forehead and tell, within a degree, normal or febrile. These are the hands that feel a pulse and know fast or slow, weak or strong, effective or for naught.

These are the hands that restrain the angry from self-harm. These are the hands that compress the sternum to bring life.

These are the hands that clean unspeakable places on another person's body but do so with dignity and respect which allow that person to feel like a human being.

These are also the hands of different people not just black or white, brown or yellow but all. These are not the hands of male or female but both.

Other hands may build buildings or write books. Some hands may even pull the trigger or plunge the knife but these are the hands of life.

These are the hands that take up the task passed down from so long ago—to bring healing to the sick, comfort to the afflicted, hope to the hopeless.

But these are not the hands of timid maidens who look for direction outside themselves. These are also the hands that can be clenched because sometimes something has to change. These are the hands of a nurse. These are the hands that have the privilege of being at the bedside.

For these are the hands of a nurse, the hands of a person that does a job that not everyone can do.
These are the hands of a nurse, the hands of strength compassion and love.
These are my hands.

I am kicking off Nursing Week in my shop by saying “Happy Birthday Flo”. I hope we make you proud.
http://www.solarnavigator.net/history/florence_nightingale.htm


Happy Nursing Week!

The Year You Were Born

“The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.” ~Rajneesh

I am celebrating my fourteenth Mother’s Day this weekend. I was discharged from hospital on Mother’s Day 1994 with a baby daughter, a set of sore tatas and a throbbing suture line you know where. While I wondered that day what I had gotten myself into, the following 14 years have proven to be the happiest years of my life.

As I reflect back on 1994, I thought I’d throw some of the events that intrigued, enraged, amused and inspired me into Dumbledore’s pensieve to share with my daughter Hilary.

1994-What was happening in the world the year you were born:

· The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect.
· Jean Crouton as we call him was Prime Minister of Canada.
· Bob Rae was Premier of Ontario.
· The 1994 Winter Olympics were held in Lillehammer.
· Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed on the right leg by an assailant under orders from figure skating rival Tonya Harding's ex-husband. Tonya Harding was banned from the sport and Nancy Kerrigan went on to win a silver medal at the 94 Winter Olympics.
· Lorena Bobbitt was found not guilty by reason of insanity on charges of bopping off her husband, John Wayne’s bobbitt. They actually retrieved his bobbitt, secured it in the zip lock bag and sewed it back on.
· The Church of England ordained its first female priests.
· Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira died when a missile shot down their jet near Kigali, Rwanda. The Rwandan Genocide began shortly after in Kigali. Don’t let history repeat itself.
· Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana, was found dead. It is believed to be suicide.
· Former United States President Richard Nixon died.
· Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis died.

· South Africa held its first fully multiracial elections. Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa's first Black president. Learn about and from Nelson Mandela. You will be a better person for it.
· Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered. NFL star O.J. Simpson and his friend flee from police in his white Ford Bronco. The famous low speed chase unfolded live on television and ended at Simpson’s house where he then surrendered to police. The Bronco chase was recreated in Shrek 2.
· Israel and Jordan signed the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace, which formally ended the state of war that existed between the nations since 1948.
· The Irish Republican Army (IRA) announced a "complete cessation of military operations."
· The sitcom Friends premiered on NBC. Thursday nights were booked for years to come.
· The web browser Netscape Navigator 1.0 was released.
· Boris Yeltsin ordered troops into Chechnya. Another lesson from history to never repeat.
· The Nobel Peace prize went to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and, Yitzhak Rabin. I have never been able reconcile in my mind why Yasser Arafat got a Nobel Peace prize.
· Hilary Carragh was born. My greatest inspiration.

My motherhood journey has experienced cuts, bruises, bumps, sutures, a broken arm, a peanut allergy, episodes of anaphylactic shock, bags and bags of Epi-pens, school musicals, and theatre productions. We travelled gloriously through station 9 3/4 in the 7 Harry Potter books. The childhood years together were magical.

Hilary is heading to high school to find her art in September. The next several years will prove interesting as she crosses the chasm between adolescence and adulthood. I know we will survive. My mother and I did.

I thank Hilary for making motherhood fun. I wouldn’t have done it without her. I leave you with the lullaby that I had to sing to her every night when she was young.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQfNfJSRajA

“Your life is an occasion. Rise to it.”...Mr. Magorium.

Happy Mother's Day!

BIG Hair a la Sally

I come from a family of BIG hair. Our hair is thick, unruly, and curly and has a life of its own. Perhaps that is why I have always been obsessed with hair. I have spent countless years trying to control ‘my lid’ so that it would not overtake me or my life.

Every doll I have ever owned became a victim of my scissors so that I could unleash and express my creative side. I progressed to chopping my own hair when I was five. I can still hear my mother’s wail about my looking like “a boy” and stating that she already had “4 boys and only 1 girl”.

Eventually I graduated to cutting my brothers hair for years. When I got my scissors to them, they referred to me as “José Eber”. I was flattered because José was my icon. José is the leading long haired hair maven. He created the original Farrah wings, the Cher mane, the historic age of wash and wear hair and he showed women how to embrace our own personal style. I watch everything José is doing, have read his books, and I so want to experience his work on my own hair someday.

There was a time when I seriously considered becoming a hairstylist. I would dream about opening a salon and calling it “Jacqui’s Cut & Curl”. Retrospectively my salon name sucks; furthermore, my dad thought I would make a better nurse, which should tell you something about what he thought of my hair creations. I think my dad likened my hair design skills more to a Sweeny Todd character running a tonsorial shop rather than being in the vanguard of beauty like José. What my father never realized was that inside every ICU nurse was a hairstylist screaming to get out, as we snipped our patients hair with suture scissors to leave them looking well groomed and in the perfect “assessment position” at the end of our shift.

Like Sally Allbright in the movie When Harry Met Sally the episodes of my life can be seen through my hairstyles. Thankfully I missed the 60s beehive but I did the 70s Farrah Flip and the afro. The 80s were the height of my singleton days and I’m convinced that I was born when I was, so that I could experience the 80s era. What set the 80s hairstyles apart was their diversity. The start of the decade saw the extravagance of strange hair colours and cuts. By 1984 the trends had settled and focused on one simple concept - volume. More hair was better. Your hair could go up, out and down. It could look like you put your head in a candy floss machine - as long as it wasn't straight! I didn’t even have to try. I had it made.

I was screwed when the 90s saw the return of straighter and more controlled hairstyles. No matter what I tried, my efforts always resulted in big hair. I looked like a Texan. So in an effort to control my hair and my impulse to cherish the 80s I cut my hair as short as I could for as long as I could.

Recently I decided it was time to grow my hair out. That was fine at first, but the longer my hair gets the more unruly and curly it becomes. I invested in a flat iron and tried that for awhile. I hate it and I hate straight hair. So I’m at the crossroads, BIG hair or short cropped hair? Then I heard José`s inner voice say to me, "Shake Your Head, Darling", so I`m letting my hair go au natural and embracing my own personal style. The current flat hair is boring. Who knows, maybe I’ll start a trend towards the return of BIG hair. If not, I still have my trusty suture scissors and short hair is good, it works for me.

So to celebrate my own personal style and uniqueness, I’m going to watch for the 50th time the movie When Harry Met Sally tonight. I never did learn how to “fake it”. OH, and did I forget to say that "Meg Ryan has the best hair of anyone I’ve ever seen and it’s BIG!"