| 16 September |
What Life Is All About |
Last night at about 9:30 I was getting ready to head to bed. Alas, Bran had other ideas. His chest was bothering him and he was worried. That stands to reason considering he’d just had a heart attack 26 or so days previously. He complained of a heaviness in his chest that was odd. He wanted to head into the hospital. I tiredly agreed.
On our way out he asked which hospital we’d go to. I said RUH as it is where his cardiologist works out of, where the cath lab is and where he’d get the most prompt service (not that St. Paul’s wouldn’t give prompt service, but it would likely involve another ambulance ride from St. Paul’s to RUH to the cardiac ward anyway). So that’s where we went.
They hooked him up to the monitors, the vampires came along and sucked some blood and sprayed some nitro under his tongue. He had a chat with the resident on duty. The resident said that his heart enzymes were elevated, not as much as when he had the m.i. previously, but weren’t zero. He was concerned that with the previous stent blocking up and needing to be redone and with there being another artery that was fairly blocked that Bran was having another “event”. So in comes the cardiac resident. He looked at things, prescribed morphine and Gravol for the pain (the heaviness translated to pain on our drive over) and heparin in case to keep clots from forming. He said that though he had to speak to the senior cardiac fellow (fellow being a position, not just a guy who does cardiology) but that the likely hood of his being admitted to hospital was very high.
By this time it was after 1 am and I was dragging my ass (hard work, let me tell you). I needed to stay awake. I needed to be there while there was a possibility of Bran being sent home. After all, someone had to drive him back, right? At about 2:15 the news came back that Bran would be admitted to hospital and the cardiac resident would push to get Bran into the cath lab first thing in the morning considering his history and worries about the other artery being involved. I went out to the parking lot to go home.
Here’s where my adventure got to it’s pinnacle. It was bad enough that I had the stress of Bran being hospitalized again, but I had to try and find the cash exit of the parking lot. For the life of me I couldn’t find it. It’s a good thing that I had my credit card with me because I was trapped there. The only exit was the “Express Exit” which doesn’t take cash, nor does it take debit. Not only that, but even if I’d found the cash exit I wouldn’t have had enough money. That 4.5 hour session in ER cost $13.50. At night. The gouge you something fierce there. It was crazy. Anyway, I was finally on the road at 2:40. The time lapse from leaving ER to getting out of the parking lot was spent trying to find the exit to the parking lot. Poorly labelled, with construction going on blocking exits, and stupid arrangements of parking meant that 20 minutes was spent just getting out of a parking lot. Yeah, I’m that pathetic.
I got home, Tweeted and Facebooked the news and also texted the news to Boy. He was having a difficult enough time trying to sleep on his friend’s couch. This added to his inability to sleep. Poor kid. At least I managed to convey that he shouldn’t put too much effort into worrying (not that it would help anyway). Of course, being Boy he worried anyway and I was answering texts until 4 am.
I had to be up at 7 am to get ready for work. We were going out to <"http://www.wanuskewin.com/">Wanuskewin for a Correctional Services of Canada presentation on the 20th anniversary of <"http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/text/prgrm/fsw/choices/toce-eng.shtml">Creating Choices. Creating Choices was the result of both a rather scathing report by the Commission of Inquiry into certain events at the Prison for Women in Kingston (Prison for Women was also known as P4W) and the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women. The task force travelled across Canada talking to women who’d been in P4W as well as interested stake holders like the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, Native Women’s Associaiton of Canada to name just two.
The event was organized by two women at Parole, the supervisor of parole officers and one of the program workers. The host was the supervisor of Northern Saskatchewan parole. Also slated to speak was the head of the Saskatchewan Elizabeth Fry Society, a former prisoner who now works with women at the Prince Albert YWCA and with prisoners in the federal and provincial corrections systems. She was truly inspiring as she spoke of her life from a young child being taken from her parents to a residential school, to being given to a man she didn’t know by her mother, her abusive relationships with men and how she spiralled into a cycle of drug and alcohol abuse and prisons. She spoke with amazing candour about her attitudes of that time in her life and how, one day she decided to change and used the healing lodge in southern Saskatchewan to help herself make the changes she wanted.
Another speaker university professor, Colleen Dell who has done extensive research with women offenders (both provincial and federal) as well as working within the CSC system as a parole officer. She also was involved in the research that created as part of the end findings a song and video “From Stilettos to Moccasins”:
The final speaker was an Aboriginal woman who now works at the men’s healing lodge at Beardy’s First Nation. She spoke not just of the Creating Choices successes and challenges but how important the document and direction was to the healing of Aboriginal people and communities. Of course there was so much more that she spoke about and I wish my memory was better. Suffice it to say that she’s truly a treasure that I hope CSC is grateful to have.
All in all it was a very interesting day and despite having less than 3 hours sleep I managed to stay awake through the entire thing. That says a lot to not only my interest in the subject matter, but to the speakers themselves. We had lunch at the cafeteria at Wanuskewin (pronounced wan-us-kay-win). I had the three sisters soup (beans, squash and corn) with buffalo meat and a ham and cheese sandwich (that was today’s special) and my two co-workers had the buffalo burgers. They were less than happy to discover the burgers were cooked to medium rare. Neither like their meat to be pink (get your minds out of the gutters people). I’m waiting for the unfortunate side effects of the beans to take effect.
I took photos of the statuary, all except one of a medicine man wearing a white buffalo hide holding a buffalo skull aloft. I don’t know why I didn’t take a picture of that, but for some reason it felt wrong. So I went with my feelings and didn’t take a picture of it. Here they are:
So there you have it. That was my day. Now I await Boy to get home from the hospital after visiting his Dad. I was too tired to drive and rather grumpy. I made sure that most of the items Bran wanted were sent along with Boy so that at least Bran wouldn’t be bored (music, phone charger, something to read). Boy will be bringing home subs for us to eat and then I’ll be going to bed. Speaking of bed but has nothing to do with it. It’s murder and mayhem night. I’m going to turn the TV on and veg out.
