This Old Carcass

It has served me well, I have to keep thinking of the positives rather than the negatives, which is an easy pit to fall into.

I have three more tests coming up. And I want these to be the end of it.

Next up is a colonography next week which involves starvation and massive amounts of ingestion of disgusting materials. A couple of bottles supplied by the hospital itself and a few more from the pharmacy. Fortunately, unlike the others, there will be no invasion of the outlying crevices of my body. 

A few days later, there's a new specialist investigating further why I went just about blind in my right eye the day after the colonoscopy. My eye doctor is baffled as the dye tests produced a normal.

And towards the end of the month there is a breath test scheduled which will validate/invalidate my own doctor's speculation that I have a hidden bleeding ulcer causing this constant, chronic and serious anaemia. 

My gratitude circles around the assurance that none of the specialists think this is cancer. And I can't praise enough the specialist care this old woman has received in their attempts to discover what  the hell is going on inside me. 

And the big one? The universal health care we have here in Canada.  Yes, it could be better, what system is perfect? But the fact that anyone from pauper to millionaire can access it for whatever medical crisis looms without going bankrupt or stressing about payment is one of the enormous benefits of living here.

Special hat tip to my own doctor, who calls regularly, monitors my blood, checks to make sure I attend my various hospital procedures and cheers me up with his humour and good nature.

And for those interested two charts.

First one is expenditures by country on health care - note universal health care spends less per capita.

The second chart is life expectancy in all these countries.

(Data published by Spartan News - Michigan State University)

Gratitude

Thank you all for the comforting words on my last post. They meant more than I can say.

A mixed bag of items here.

To start with the weather outside as I hit the keyboard:

It is hard to believe that this continual assault of terrible weather has not lessened as we brace ourselves for more. That is our building manager outside, struggling with the snow blower. The snow goes upward and horizontally in the driving wind, a blizzard.

Gratitude # 1

I live in this building, protected from the elements, knowing the snow is going to be taken care of.

My niece let me know about this Geist competition - a postcard story, and asked me to look at her two entries which blew me out of the water they were so fantastic. It fired up my own story brain and I hauled down this card sent by an Ontario friend last year which reminded me of a crow story I wrote about in my blog and I didn't check the blog entry out as I thought I would delve into memory and see what I recollected and maybe enhance it or dramatize it. So that's what I did.

Gratitude #2

My creativity hasn't abandoned me.

Daughter can't seem to do enough for me. It truly overwhelms me at times. A lot of small stuff but it is the small stuff that is always the most important. I had briefly mentioned that my Amazon order was delayed as ferries weren't running and it had my annual load of TP on it. I laughed as I was going to borrow a roll from a friend to - ahem - tide me over. And Daughter shows up yesterday with a cartload of TP and stocked me up along with 2 lbs of my favourite dark roast coffee beans and took me out for a fabulous brunch (Croque Monsieur, fresh fruit, home made hashbrowns) at Baystar. We forgot to take pics as we fell on the food so fast.

Gratitude #3

The tiny gifts in life are by far the most important of all. And nothing is as precious as the care and attention of a loved one.

I could write loads more (I have had two trips to the hospital for more tests with the support of a friend) but this is enough for today.

I am in a place of gratitude and I want to savour it.