Category: mental health

2021, mental health, Writing

Procrastination Progress?

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Procrastination

Not only have I not written here since April, I am guilty of many writing procrastinations. So often my writing has been influenced by the pandemic. It’s hard to avoid. I am surrounded by nurses and people who have lost families to a misinformation vortex that has left them hurt and confused. I have reached the point where it hurts too much to write about it. That concerns me but…today something else.

Below is something I wrote for what was to be the beginning of 1000 words per day. It’s been…a while. Writing is “mine” and I so very often put “mine” at the end of the list. 1000 words per day…part 1

Stephen King tells me (not personally, you understand, though that would be awesome) I should write about 1000 words per day to start. Lacking any plan, today I guess I’m writing about writing. Stephen tells me my muse will appear eventually if I show up about the same time each day so he or she (or, this being a modern society, my gender neutral muse) can know where to find me.

What is it about writing that I’ll write? It beats the heck out of me; I’m new at this.

Or am I?

For years I have been promising all those who have told me, “You should write.” that I would.

This phase of my stop and start journey has begun with the purging of my office so I can think in this space. While purging, I came across a box casually labelled as “Roxi’s writing” in black marker.

I found I had worked on a piece far more thoroughly than I had thought, and the last time I had even attempted any ‘real’ writing was in 2009. It is almost 2018. I was floored and reminded if I am ever to get this done, I need to take it seriously and make it more of a priority.

And a phone call comes, my mentally disabled brother, for whom I am guardian, has been taken to the hospital in an ambulance. I am taken away from my thoughts for a few hours while I sort out with his home and the hospital how serious it is.

Not immediately urgent.

Finally, I am here at 3:00, 2 hours past my originally planned start time.

Writing.

About writing. I can’t dredge anything else from my weary mind today.

How then do I even know I am a writer?

I write sympathy cards, encouraging notes, Facebook posts (you should see them, they are epic), and the feedback is always, “You should write” or “You have a gift with words.”

If I do, why is it so hard to develop the “what” to write? What of that Stevo? Ah, the muse, I need to find my muse or perhaps let my muse find me. I like the idea that somewhere lies something (someone?) who will move me into the ‘idea’ place to get to the ‘write about’ stage.

Do I have a life to write about? Undoubtedly. It wasn’t an easy childhood; nonetheless, I am grateful for the input of all the people around me who kept me somewhat standing (and fed and watered on occasion.) I have chosen to focus on those people rather than rest in the caustic place of my mother’s illness which would have made me bitter and ineffective. So … I am grateful…and still occasionally ineffective (Let’s be honest here…2009 since my last actual writing!)

Besides the external feedback from others, is there something within me that urges me to write?

I believe so.  The thoughts rattling around my head often find their way into journals and social media. I can’t hold onto what I say whether anybody else sees it (Social Media) or not (journal). It’s like ‘verbal vomit’ but not as smelly. I get it out, and I feel better. Reading it later helps me sort things out. Or helps others sort things out if it’s addressed to them.

I was taught in one writing class to pay attention to the voice inside my head (I am not schizophrenic, for the record) and document somehow what the voice is saying. I did that for a while, carried a voice recorder with me. It was pretty grand. Little bits and pieces of things that could turn into something someday. I’m hoping today is someday. I have gradually quit listening to the voices inside my head and just blunder around from one life event to the other. I currently have some quiet time (until the money runs out), so I am trying to focus on at least attempting to write. Really write.

My nephew sent me three pictures today. He became a quadriplegic at the age of 14 and is now 34. A friend of his is having a hard time. This man has not handwritten anything for 20 years. Today he wrote her a 3-page letter of encouragement. If that won’t encourage her, I don’t know what will. If he can handwrite a three-pager after 20 years of not handwriting, this old girl can sure as hell come up with 1000 words on her computer. The gauntlet has been thrown down, and the gauntlet is enormous.

Stephen K claims his muse is a cigar-smoking fella, sort of gruff. If I were to imagine mine, I would probably imagine a slightly flaky chick, empathetic as heck, wearing colourful flowing garments, drinking wine and meditating from time to time.

Meditating, now that’s been interesting to me. I started meditating about a month ago. It taught me how noisy my head is. It’s no wonder the muse can’t get in. Man, that space is crowded! Breathe in, breathe out (I wonder what to get Bob for Christmas) Come back, breathe in, breathe out (Is that person I’m close to gay…I think they are gay…how can I help on their journey?) Come back, breathe in, breathe out. (Where will everyone sleep Christmas night…27 people!) Come back, breathe in, breathe out. I’m getting better at it, squirrel less often, and I really think it is helping me to stay in the moment a bit more. Just starting, but I hope I’m on to something.

My therapist, (yes, I have one…you guessed, didn’t you?) says my problem with staying in the moment likely comes from childhood.  She could be right. I was always scanning my environment, trying to predict when the floor would fall out again and constantly having a contingency plan for when it did. On the one hand, being a planner who looks down the road and plans for the eventualities has served me well in my work world. Doing it all…the…time…however, is exhausting.

It is getting quiet, closing the door to my writing space and planning 1000 words per day. This is how it all begins. Day 1, December 11, 2017. If it’s another nine years, find me and slap me. Please.

The good news is it’s “only” been 4 years, no slap required. (A wee nudge perhaps?) How do you other writers stay on track? Please let me know!

#COVID19, 2021, Doing what's right, Health, mental health, Uncategorized

My Child, Me.

granny18
My child, Me

Today I looked into the eyes of my child. (from an appropriate distance).
My child has children of her own, but today she was my child. She is in pain. I want just to hold her and hold her and hold her.

I cannot.

My child is a nurse. She doesn’t work in the city Emergency Department as often as she used to. The little she is right now, is enough to hurt a skin already scraped raw. She knows others are seeing the same things, doing the same things but doing them day after day after day. Her own experience hurts—her awareness of their’s hurts her too.

There has always been trauma in Emergency.
Emergency nurses know they will see traumatic things, even that they will see death. It’s an unavoidable part of the job they signed up for

But…

This is different.

As cases rise in our area and a more transmittable variant becomes ever more prevalent, COVID cases are pouring into hospitals in our area. And while age shouldn’t matter; (indeed, I said so near the beginning) https://pathtothepasture.com/2020/11/04/ageism/, there is something so painful about being a nurse to someone very near your age, knowing they, like you, have children at home. Knowing that in this wave, much younger people are in ICU. Knowing that much of this could have been avoided.

How do these people come to know the patient has children at home? These nurses (& their colleagues) get to know these patients more than they generally have time for. They hold their patient’s hands, sit down next to the bed and tell their patient they won’t leave them in their terror. As that patient slides into sedation, that same nurse may move to the far less human process of intubation. That shift from connected humanity is hard. So hard. Nurses and doctors are making these connections with their patients in ED, in ICU… as family members stay outside…hungry for updates. They connect with these families more than they sometimes have had to. And then they hook their recently connected patient to an ECMO machine, prone them, administer drugs, fight for their lives…often losing that fight.
This third wave is even crueler. It is traumatizing, and they haven’t rested long enough.


Then they get traumatized again. Leaving work, they hear people saying the virus “isn’t real,” “just the flu,” “only sheeple believe in it”…. “Don’t get the vaccine.”
Remember the story of the nurse waylaid by an anti-mask protest making her late for her ED shift? This kind of pain is visceral, and their fellow citizens are doing it to them. Some friends are doing it to them. Some family members are doing it to them. My daughter has been off social media for months because she can’t bear to see it.
These people are down, and you are kicking them. You are kicking us, the families of those in health care. We look into their eyes, and we see pain. These are not superheroes; though we value them highly, they are human beings…battered human beings.

They KNOW it is real; they KNOW it is bad; they KNOW the variants are thus far worse; they KNOW it should not have happened this way.

Somehow, the wearing of a mask became enough to make people disrespect people like my daughter. My daughter…One of the ones who will hold your hand in your terror if someday this virus reaches you and takes you down a grim path. One of the ones who will update you if someday one of your loved ones takes this terrifying journey.

A doctor I admire said this,
“For everyone yelling “but the Charter of Rights and Freedoms” – You might be forgetting the part it starts off with: “…subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified.”
There. Are. Limits.


Dr. Fung is right. The people you are endangering also have rights; people working in health care have rights. Your rights don’t supersede theirs. If we had all worked together to stop the spread, you might already have your lives back; Dr. Fung and I may be going for dinner. I might be able to hold (and hold and hold) my daughter.

Cape Breton Trail 2019

We could be closer to the end of this pandemic. We could have been like the Atlantic provinces, whose citizens cared for each other and understood that public health restrictions were meant to protect those they held dear and those they had never laid eyes on, but loved anyway.

I’ve shown you deaths aren’t the whole story. I’ve told this story before but seeing my daughter today brought it back. Although not the entire story, I’ll end with this. COVID has killed 23,062 Canadian citizens…so far. Many more have long term effects. We are a long way from fully vaccinated; some variants are more apt to cause severe complications and cause them in younger people. For perspective, these deaths roughly equal the total deaths from —Pancreatic, Colorectal, Kidney, Breast, Cervical, Larynx, and Thyroid cancers in 2019. Imagine if we could have saved my Dad, my sister-in-law, my friend’s brother, and other mothers, fathers, sons and daughters by wearing a mask, washing our hands, social distancing?

Imagine…

#COVID19, Doing what's right, Health, mental health

They protected us; It’s our Turn

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Today we honoured veterans, including those from World War II and the Korean War.  I hesitated to intrude on this day with another blog post but watching the surviving veterans compelled me to say something about what we owe them.

Approximately 33,000 Second World War veterans are still alive, with an average age of 94. 6400 Korean veterans remain with an average age of 87. (Veterans Affairs – Demographics)

These folks are “old,” those that many in society devalue and say should stay locked up at home, so younger people don’t have to wear a mask into a store.

As young men, these guys went to war against a tangible threat.

The veterans interviewed today and telling their stories were young men once, as the ones we lost forever will be.

Louis Dautremont, lost in the Netherlands, age 25, April 21, 1945

As Robert Laurence Binyon wrote in his 1914 poem,

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not wear them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them. “

My daughter bringing an Afghanistan veteran into our family truly brought home how young those lost were, how much life they had to live.

Some came home and carried on with their lives, though often not without significant scars from the battles they fought.  Globe and Mail’s Les Perreaux paid tribute in 2016  to 31 of the then 70 Afghanistan veterans who lost their lives to suicide after returning home, in his article The Unremembered.

I have no doubt we lost some the same way in those earlier wars.

Those that survived World War II and the psychological aftermath are among the seniors most at risk for serious complications and death from COVID 19.  

These people went to war for our country…

 to protect others…

 I think it’s time we return the favour.

Let’s protect these strong (but vulnerable) soldiers of our country. Let’s protect the partners who waited for them to come home. Don’t let them die in such a horrific way after what they have given.

To reference Mr. Binyon,

They have grown old,

Age has worn them; the years have condemned,

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them too.

As deaths in long-term care once again reach a crisis point, as we in Alberta break hospitalization and ICU records, there are undoubtedly some veterans or those who love them, among the statistics.

  • 217 in hospital (average age 62 years – range 0 – 102)
  • 46 in intensive care (average age 60 years  -range 4 – 89)
  •  7 new deaths reported, 383 total (average age 82 years  – range 27 to 106)

Pay tribute to these veterans.

Wash Your Hands

Stay Home if Ill

Sanitize Surfaces

Social Distance

Wear a Mask Indoors Where Social Distancing is Difficult.

They protected us. It’s now our turn, and our honour, to protect them.

#COVID19, Doing what's right, Health, mental health

Our greatest protest for healthcare

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Alberta hit 919 cases today. We don’t know our hospitalizations or ICU admissions currently; our system is experiencing technical difficulties at an inconvenient time. (My experience with technical difficulties is that’s ALWAYS when they hit.)

We had five additional deaths reported…

 These deaths are a tragedy, no matter their age, no matter the circumstance. If you’ve lost someone, you know, it’s a tragedy for these five families.

Death is the most tragic part of this illness.

We know we will add deaths to our COVID total if this continues. We need to know we may have additional deaths from other causes too, unless we get this under control.   

Let’s talk about our health system.  

Anyone keeping track of your province’s Chief Medical Officer of Health (or their equivalent elsewhere) has heard about “overwhelming the health system.”

We saw it in Italy with military trucks hauling away bodies, with Italian doctors and nurses having to choose who received care (and who did not) based on survival probability. Many didn’t “make the list.” These weren’t all COVID patients. Patients with other situations were hitting those hospitals at the same time. Triage, I imagine, was a nightmare.

We saw it again in New York. Bodies were stored in refrigerated trucks when the morgue and funeral homes ran out of room for the bodies.

Mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, sons and daughters…in a reefer van

(via CTV news)

And here we are. We are talking about an “overwhelming” of the system here in my home province. The metropolitan city north of me is feeling the strain. As of a couple of days ago,  30 percent of non-urgent and elective surgeries in Edmonton have been postponed for the foreseeable future to ensure hospitals have the capacity to withstand any outbreaks.

Calgary, just 25 minutes from my town, is bracing itself. ICU departments are holding emergency meetings because (typical of 2020) ICU departments are already experiencing higher than normal levels of NON-COVID ICU admissions…and the COVID wave is headed their way. Of the 919 cases today, some proportion will hit the Emergency Department; will go to acute care, others to ICU. Again, our data has not been updated for current numbers, but this is what I have.

The age breakdown for total COVID ICU admissions we have to this point is:

1 – 4 years – 1 admission

10 – 19 years– 4 admissions

20 – 29 years – 8 admissions

30 – 39 years – 11 admissions

40 – 49 years – 22 admissions

50 – 59 years – 41 admissions

60 – 69 years 56 admissions

70 – 79 years – 49 admissions

80 + years – 21 admissions

(Looks like my husband’s age group is winning the ICU lottery…)

The last current data we have is 171 COVID patients in hospital including 33 in ICU. 9 hospitals have outbreaks.

Resources for ICU are expensive, but it doesn’t stop there for those that recover, especially older patients.

Dr. Darren Markland, an ICU doc in Edmonton, took to Twitter to share some information on COVID ICU admissions for older patients. (shared with permission from @drdagly) We know mortality is high for this demographic, Dr. Markland shared that should someone over 80 need ICU, their mortality pushes 80%.

“Consequently, they rarely are admitted to ICU. This means:

  1. ICU occupancy lags hospital admission rates significantly and is an insensitive metric for healthcare capacity and strain.
  2. These are preventable deaths that take a significant number of quality years with them. “

Dr. Markland also points to the weeks of treatment required for these sickest patients.

He talks additionally about those that survive the ICU and how they continue to need augmented support in the hospital for an extended duration. Physiotherapy, occupational therapy, and nutritional support. If not cared for, he says they can end up back in this rapidly filling ICU.

Finally, Dr. Markland tells us,

“This situation is preventable. Our hospitalization numbers are a serious warning that mandatory measures are needed now. But while we wait for direction. Please do not go to work if you are sick. No more in-person parties until there is a vaccine. Wear your mask around people.”

He ends with…

In the middle of this, people in healthcare are stressed by a government that has chosen this particular time to address health care costs. I’m a fiscal conservative; I get it. The old Alberta Advantage seems to be a page in history. However, our health minister appears to be hesitant to collaborate with doctors for cost savings, refused arbitration and ended their contract early. He’s announcing layoffs of the very people specifically trained to clean to COVID protocols (while hiring private folks without that training). It looks like he’s eliminated overtime at a time when health professionals need to use it the most, needing to cover shifts for those self-isolating, caring for kids who are isolating…becoming ill.

Before the second wave of COVID19 completely hits our health system, we have a group of fragile people on the front line.  

They are already tired.

Our government has put the burden on us to try to turn this tide. Many people posit that the government should be doing more. It’s a hard call to make. There’s no question the spring shut down negatively affected business owners across the province; many closed.  Most restaurants have done a stellar job of adopting COVID protocols to keep their customers safe, and very few infections have come from those types of gatherings. Is it fair then to shut down a restaurant owner, many who operate on the thinnest of margins at the best of times? Maybe not. I don’t have the answer.

Personal responsibility, however, has led us to 919 cases in one day. We don’t appear to be a very responsible lot. Why? Again, it probably relates in a big way that it’s mostly “old people” who die. Here’s where I say,

If you can’t get behind saving the lives of the aged, could you get behind saving the lives of the general public who may suffer harm from an overwhelmed system?

Can I appeal to you to “protest” for our health care workers by protecting them from this onslaught? Is wearing a mask, sticking to your own household, sanitizing etc. harder than walking a picket line? Maybe not.

 Is it more meaningful at this moment in time than honking your horn as you go by or clapping for them as they leave the hospital?

I daresay, your actions to bend the curve on this thing will be the single most loving and impactful thing you do for our health care workers.

I know. I love a couple and hold the rest in my heart.

Health, mental health

Hurting, Healing, Hugging

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The kindness themes for the past few weeks have revolved around being present in our interactions with others, finding good homes for things we no longer need and being kind to yourself.

The one that resonated was “Be Present.”  

One of the unexpected gifts of this COVID19 physical distancing is a renewed connection in some relationships. We used to be next to each other regularly, checking our phones while talking, focused on what was coming next instead of the moment in front of us.

That precious moment.

If we had known how long it would be before we’d be sharing dinner again, hugging good-bye, having a long face to face conversation…might we have been more in tune with each other? In that moment?

When we get together for our social distanced visits now, we listen more than we used to. We are aware of each other as we never were before.

Nobody checks their phones as we talk. (Though there is some distraction caused by the kids at times…)

Every visit with my children ends with eye contact, real eye contact, and I’ve discovered there are messages in those eyes that speak to, and heal my heart and theirs.

I ache to hug again. Children, grandchildren, friends. It will be a prolonged hug; I am certain. I am hopeful we will end those hugs when they return, with eye contact … exchanging messages between our souls.

Health, mental health

Week 16 Kindness Project Week 4 A Captive Audience for Comparison

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The Theme for Week 16 of The Kindness Project is “Stop Comparing Yourself”.

The Kindness book speaks about focusing less on external things and more on our own hearts and minds, worrying less about whether we’re “better than” or “less than” the people in our circles.  Those of us following the “Social Distancing” protocol pretty closely would, you might imagine, have an easy time not comparing ourselves to others when we only see our own families every day.

But, at times of isolation like these, we are drawn to Social Media, especially Twitter and Facebook, to find information, to connect, to find some small part of this we can control. What we see instead is a myriad of misinformation and panic-inducing partial data and…a few people who seem to be doing self-isolation just a bit more creatively than we are.

As if the mere fact of being apart from loved ones, being unable to enjoy a hike in the forest a change in work or loss of income wasn’t enough to cause depression, here’s another factor.

Research has shown a link between social media and depression brought on by comparing our lives to someone else’s.

https://www.statista.com/chart/19262/impact-of-social-media-on-mental-health/

We can’t control being apart, being banned from provincial parks or our employment situation. Still, we CAN be selective in our social media exposure, and when we do engage, be mindful of what we are thinking when looking at someone else’s posts. It’s important to remember that what they are showing you is the BEST version of their lives. They don’t post themselves weeping in frustration, close-ups of their wrinkles or the explosion of temper their frustration brought them. (You don’t know my dark…or wrinkly…side…) Not because those things aren’t real, but because it’s not what we post on a platform like Facebook. Kind of like the old Christmas letter, we left out the embarrassing bits.

Twitter runs its own risks as misinformation is RAMPANT.  I’m beginning to realize I need to get information only from reliable sources and quit reading the comments. QUIT READING THE COMMENTS!! You will be tempted to correct someone sharing some misinformation, but you will NEVER WIN!

I tried. I’m exhausted.

On Twitter, a comparison might just be okay. I’m feeling comparatively intelligent these days…

If you’ve come to me via social media, know this, if you are doing your best, if you skid to the end of the day alive, you are doing just fine in these tumultuous times. You’re doing okay, friends. Just keep doing it another day.

And another.

And another.

One of these days, we’ll lay some face to face love on those social media friends, those who seem to be perfect, those who seem to be losing their minds, because deep down, we know all of us are just doing our best to be…”okay”.

Be kind to others, be kind to yourself.

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