Inside of Me

Inside of me there's mixed feelings.

This constant tiredness I have, so limiting, so crushing. Raising the old voices: You're lazy, you're good for nothing. Why are you pretending? You can't be this tired. Nobody can be this exhausted.

Inside of me I think, as I park beneath an ice-covered sign, and get George, my trusty companion cane from his back seat, why am I here again, at my nephrologist's, going over the readings: the stalled (I hope) kidney deterioration, the never really controlled blood pressure. He will be dismissive and win the latest award for complete lack of bedside manner.

Inside of me perks up when his nurse talks about my media appearances how all of them are quite impressed at what I have accomplished even if it's only awareness of the crisis of senior poverty.

Inside of me cringes, I've gained five pounds. Not surprised. I am far too good to myself as my people have it.

Inside of me, I'm pleased he meets my eyes many times and apologizes for having to take a cellphone emergency call from the dialysis unit.

He goes over my latest results on his screen and stabs at my blood readings.

You are severely anaemic! he says, did you know about this? Are you exhausted all the time?

Inside of me I flutter with mixed emotions: well that explains it, oh that's a relief. I'm not a lazy arse after all.

This is serious, he continues, and may involve some kind of bleeding. I'm sending you for some tests.

Inside of me I think: Add this to the Test Pile. I'm on this medical testing treadmill now. An old woman who talks incessantly about the stream of specialists and tests cluttering her daytimer and grimly condemning the wallpaper in God's waiting rooms.

Inside of me I yell at my inside classroom: Which one of you is misbehaving? Is it you liver? I haven't heard from you in a while. Not you bowels, you've always behaved yourself. Sort of, as you can be quite secretive and rebellious. You've let down many of my friends. Skin? No cuts or bruises. Good job there, skin. Heart, you keep booming late at night and missing those beats, and that congestive nonsense has got to stop - that's another test coming up. A Holter test to catch you in the act, so to speak.

Inside of me I think: Is all this necessary? Should I just cruise on, oblivious, reading and knitting and tired and wonky on the pins. Does health stress, tests, consults, exams and all the rest of it contribute to a far earlier demise?

PS
And oh yeah:
This is our current weather status here. Worst winter ever. I offer it to my Australian readers, it might just cool you down, if only for a minute, looking at this.

The Sea, oh the Sea

I can't tell you how breathtaking it is here at the moment. Crystal skies, matched by the ice crust on the edge of the ocean which has its own private language for me alone as Ansa and I walk along beside it. It whispers and nudges and squeaks and squeals and shoves. Quietly. Ansa's back end keeps needing a rest. And that's fine by me. Ambling and pausing is delightful. And sea gifts. I picked up a pine shelf on the shore. I thought it would fit a window culvert in my house but no.

I've worked my library stint. Socialized with a few. Drank another coffee and then embraced the day outside.

I can forgive winter a lot at the moment. This magnificence can't be captured by any camera, it is so very perfect. All our snow has been gone for a while. And spring beckons. I sense it. I can weather another winter storm with this promise in the air.

Renewal. Redemption. Reinvention.

And yeah, I'm reminded of this songs, nailed by the Dubliners.

Flashing Lights

Where Ansa is on our driveway became covered in snow a few days later so the ice underneath was not visible.

Yup. Many of those lights to write about.

(1) Flashing lights: A really, really bad fall on the ice resulting in the stars and moon in front of my eyes. Short term memory loss. Swellings on lower spine. Like the humps of a camel. Pain. Oh pain. Increased blood pressure.

(2) Flashing lights: Emblazoned on neon inside the skull - call Daughter.

(3) Flashing lights: Ambulance pulls into driveway, they check my swellings, stretcher me, put me into ambulance. Two lovely, lovely women.

(4) Flashing lights: they pull the ambulance over periodically to check my vitals, BP, sugars. I am IV'd.

(5) Flashing lights: inside hospital, overhead, on probing lights into eyes, ears. They have called ahead I am given a room in spite of other sick souls in corridor.

(6) Flashing lights: I am moved to a long steel table and my whole spine xrayed. "Sorry," says Blaine the technician,"This is very painful." "Not at all," I say back to his belly laugh, "I've given birth twice."

(7) Flashing lights: As I am released four hours later: no bones broken, tissues bruised and swollen but unbloodied. Strong bones, my doctor says, really, really strong bones. A light of overwhelming gratitude fills me. This could have been catastrophic and it wasn't.

Yeah, I hurt. Yeah, I walk like I'm 105 and I don't recognise the purple and pink and black swollen mass all over my behind and down my thighs. And I'm told this will worsen before it gets better. And I'm not sleeping well as I keep waking with pain.

BUT, so very many have it so much worse. So very much worse.

Thanks for all your kind thoughts and wishes out there. They mean so much.

Dolphin Update

This montage of photos by Joan Borden shows the attempt of five Seal Cove residents to rescue ice-stranded dolphins in their community. (Courtesy of Joan Borden)

Note: Click to embiggen for all photos of this.

Distressed by the suffering of a group of trapped dolphins, men in a small Newfoundland outport took matters into their own hands on Thursday and cut a path through ice in a bay.

The crew claims three dolphins — five of the mammals had been seen earlier this week in a small patch of open water near Seal Cove, White Bay, on the island's northeast coast — made it out safely to another area. The four men and a teenage boy counted four dolphins in the water when they started their effort, which involved towing one of the creatures with rope.

{Read more here at CBC News}

The downside of all this is that these efforts may have done more harm than good but it is hard not to sympathize with the 'rescuers' who couldn't take the crying of the dolphins any more and did everything in their power to release them.

Another Icy Post

These dolphins came in to feed in Seal Cove, a bay not too far from where my home is in Newfoundland. Advancing ice has trapped them. Many great minds have been brought to bear on finding a solution to save them.

I find it so, so heart wrenching. Their panicked cries at night haunt the inhabitants of the area.



Dolphins are one of the closest mammals to our species and have a language all their own and are extraordinarily playful. They frolicked with our boat this past summer. At times they appeared to be laughing. They were far too quick for my camera as evidenced by the picture above!

Apparently an icebreaker could do more harm than good.

All are praying that the ice melts before it is too late.

Cracking Through the Ice

On December 30th, 2008, we took the ferry from Riviere du Loup to San Simeon in Quebec, across the mighty St. Lawrence river. A far, far different experience than it is in the bright heat of summer.

I took this picture of the still white and grey landscape with frozen boats, remarkably monochromatic, as we waited to board the ferry. Devoid of the bright colours of summer, but still hauntingly beautiful.



Travelling through the icefield, the engines of the ferry were muffled underneath the cracking sounds of the ice splitting in ever expanding seams from the prow of the boat, widening out to the horizon and then folding in once more behind us covering our freezing trail.

A remarkable experience.