| So I’ve been in my Victoria job for 4 years.
The province decides to download health care to the regions – double speak
for cut backs and unloading responsibility for small items like the health
of people. My job becomes 2 jobs as in reality I was doing 3 jobs. One
is management which they give to a creep who was going to be out of a job
but had been around. He doesn’t like me so sets me up to be fired. The
big boss who signs it is ‘my friend’ and supposedly my spouse’s good friend.
She actually is a ----- who soon after I get fired gets fired herself due
to total mismanagement. This all starts in a January but really is a February
kind of thing. Drags on and on into the next February, I take them to court,
go to 7 hearings/decisions, win all seven times and take them for $121,000.
They of course do not discourage the spread of vicious lies, claim I lost
and violate agreements again and again. I of course am blacklisted all
over and my career is ruined. I could write a book about it but I’ll just
throw in a sample. They told people that I shit when I saw the evidence
they had against me. In fact, they had about maybe 20 pages of evidence,
while I had over 2000 pages of evidence that the lawyer had me find. As
he said, ‘you got more time and are probably better at it’. I’ll tell you
the smell of … was mostly coming from their paper tiger lawyer.
Walk the Dog
The money didn’t last long as tax and living
consumed it quickly. So Februaries didn’t seem all that distinctive as
by the end of each month, there was just nothing left to eat. Living in
the fucking most expensive city in Canada didn’t help either. And even
the Februaries that stood out, seemed to start earlier and earlier.
We have a dog. A very cute dog. Her front half
is a black shitzu and the back half is a brownish poodle. We originally
got her for my daughter of course and of course she quickly became mine,
because I showed her the most affection and a biggie, I took her for walks!
It was the middle of November and I was walking
her about 3 houses away. I slipped with my left foot on a grassy knoll
that I haven’t had a chance since to measure, but I think is less than
2 feet high. I heard a loud cracking sound and realized that my left foot
was pointing in the wrong direction. A brief but painful experiment verified
my diagnosis. My ankle was completely broken, I was lying on the street
and my faithful dog was right beside me knowing that something was terribly
wrong. I always carry a cell phone in my pocket, except that day,
so my clear choice was a loud yell of ‘HELP’. Despite being close to 2
large houses where many people live, it was not until I used the magic
word ‘please’ as in ‘please HELP’ that 2 construction workers working
nearby and a neighbour down the street came running. The construction dudes
were great. One looked at my ankle and said, yep, it’s broken, we need
an ambulance. The other one went down to the corner to wait to guide ambulance.
And my neighbour took my dog home, woke up my family (it was early) and
got me a blanket. Then the ambulance arrived. The guys were great – said
their names were Bert and Ernie and even knew the origin of the names –
the cop and taxi driver in It’s a Wonderful Life. The good news was the
soft padding and tank of laughing gas (can you buy that stuff on ebay?).
Bad news was the tank ran out but it in typical Ernie style, he said it
could be worse. They picked up someone with a broken ankle and it was a
long ride to the hospital – no feeling in toes. They got a cast for a minor
break and lost 5 toes.
So I’m in emerg, not laughing and triage actually
bumps me up. I get a sliding bed thing in the hall. That’s luxury in emerg.
They finally wire me up with some morphine and memory starts to cloud.
I remember being told that I was lucky to get a bed in the ward. I remember
a surgeon saying he would operate the next day. I remember my spouse being
there, bringing some clothes as my jeans had been cut off – my underwear
wasn’t downy fresh but they were boxer style so that seemed to make it
ok. Apparently a friend biked to the hospital with a Starbucks coffee and
a treat. Thank you. I do remember your yellow gortex. It was in this dream
state that I thought of the title. If I had finished walking the dog, I
was to go to printers as I was scheduled to send a NYC agent my first 2
books, Just a Mulligan Stew and Murder in the Caymans . So I had
this vision of lying on the road, my cell phone is ringing and the ambulance
driver answering, then hands me the phone and says “Mr. Boland, your Agent’s
on your cell phone…” More about the agent later.
Next day it’s surgery. I don’t remember.
The surgeon said it was a good thing as he had to do more work than he
wanted. There were too many bone fragments to take so he put in 8 pins
and a plate. He’s standing there telling me this just as I wake up from
surgery. He’s got an xray he’s holding up – all I can tell is there’s a
round bone shaped like a sharp edged donut that is completely disconnected
from other long bones. Not pretty. I didn’t ask for a copy. Later, they
did send a copy to my shrink cause he was listed as a doctor. I had to
phone him later and cancel an appointment. He said “Yep, that was a very
bad break. What were you doing…?”
That night my spouse brought a wonderful dinner.
You know how hospital food is terrible – no Loma Linda hospitals around
– well the food had just gotten way worse. The fascist provincial government
had fired all the cooking and cleaning staff in order to get rid of the
union. So they contracted it out to some friends who hired whoever would
accept $8 an hour instead of the union wage of $18. Nice …So the food was
beyond shitty and the whole place was filthy. I never saw a cleaner. I
guess they ‘forgot’ to hire some.
I quickly remembered and verified why the wards
were full. About half the beds were occupied by people waiting for long
term care beds. I had 2. One was an advanced case of Alzheimer’s
(remember, I’m a social worker, I can tell these things). He received
virtually no care and I don’t think his days were long enough to make it
anywhere. He had no visitors, nothing, a sad case. The other was a woman
with some kind of dementia who was very talkative but fearful at night.
The staff ignored her pleas when she was scared so I took it on to reassure
her. Usually took about 30 seconds. Once a staff actually came to observe
how I did it. Poorly trained staff to say the least. She at least had a
sister who visited except I had to remind her of her visitors the next
day.
The only surprise was that the government is
giving their biz pals print money contracts for new long term care buildings
but it doesn’t seem to have made a dint. Every so often you read or hear
the latest pack of lies from the health board about the bed situation.
Maybe cause I had 2 people working for the board, sent to prison for fraud
and accessory to murder in my first book…(totally fiction of course …)
– maybe that slanted my view or maybe just slanted my book…does that make
any sense? If not, let’s just move on.
So they discharge me with bleeding stitches.
No prob. They’ll get the urgent community nurses to come to your house
and here’s a prescsript. for 1 weeks T3s. Ah…excuse me…I’ve been on morphine
so the codeine will do dick and what happens after a week…Oh, and the best
part. They had put on a sort of ski boot looking brace which immediately
caused huge blisters everywhere. Now, that became the focus of attention.
The surgeon insisted these blisters that hurt and bleed were not caused
by the brace, but rather by the fracture. And 15 nurses, a pharmacist,
an xray tech and 2 family doctors all disagreed. So I immediately took
off the brace, and every day I would hoard my T3s and a different nurse
would come and change the bandages. Some were excellent, some were pathetic.
After a few weeks, I am told to go back to see the surgeon at the cast
room at 10:15 sharp. First problem was how to get there…why the $78 wheel
chair taxi of course. Pick you up and return you home from anywhere for
just $78, even when you live 5 blocks away (like me).
It turned out that everyone was scheduled at
10:15 sharp, taxi got lost in the five blocks so I was last on list. I
took my last T3 and waited 4 hours with my foot propped up on a chair,
so the surgeon could change my bandage, give me 1 more week of T3s, and
say come back in 3 weeks and I’ll put a real cast on. Gee…it’s a good thing
I can’t add.
Then the urgent nurses switched me to the regular
community nurses who promptly refused to come to my house. They had either
been tipped about my employment, were suffering cutbacks or just lazy.
They had a wonderful solution though…take the $78 taxi to my GP and get
them to change the bandage…or better still get the GP to make a home visit
like they did 50 years ago. The word I chose was ‘stupid idea’, ok, so
I called it a stupid fucking idea but I blame it on reading David Sedaris.
So that was the end of the nurses.
After a week, a friend managed to get me down
the stairs to the GP, who changed the bandage and YES, gave my a script.
for morphine. On the way out thru the parking lot, a big SUV (sucks up
volumes, stupid useless vehicles), began to back up into me. When I pointed
out it was not wise to run me over when all I had was a walker (I’m sure
those were my exact words), she took offense. Turns out she was the landlord
of the building, and had me banned from the building, bye one GP.
I did manage to get back to the surgeon who
liked me for some unknown reason. I thought I’d get a lollipop for sure.
I picked baby blue for my cast color to match my eyes. Red would have been
better. It was only 4 days til my morphine xmas and as it turned out, my
cast was to come off on, yes, February 14th, Valentines Day. How sweet.
Later
It is now almost 6 months later. It was before
Xmas. Why would I wait 6 months? Well partly because I wasn’t writing all
that much, though I managed to submit a few things. My other monologue
about Spalding Gray got a nice rejection letter from the New Yorker which
I managed to do what they do in movie ads. Using ‘taking out of context’
to it’s outmost boundaries. So that it was short and sweet for the web
page, but it’s still essentially so… And partly because I do other stuff
on the web, and often, still confined to bedroom and washroom, I was often
very tired after words, partly because I was already in bed, I often chose
to have a rest. And partly because I was buying and watching a lot of videos
and DVD’s , as soon as I got a TV. Now we finally get back to xmas. I was
buying videos that I knew would never get to DVD, thereby either becoming
unavailable or very expensive, boot or otherwise. And I figured as they
stopped making VCRs this was probably a cool time to buy a TV, VCR combo.
They had 21” and a 13”, both now for half price, going fast and faster.
So I figured this out – I had the time. First, I buy the big one, supposedly
for my spouse, knowing that she won’t want it cause she wants a 13” which
would fit in kitchen – so would 21” in same spot, but she can lift the
13” which is true. So 21” shows up and I immediately want to use it so
I tell her about it, she doesn’t like it and I order the 13”, which arrives
for Xmas and so my daughter gets the 21” for her room, I get the 13” by
the bed and the kitchen still has the old one with the picture tube going…that
was the extent of Xmas…
Oh, except for the chanting monks story.
We live just behind, or in front of a large
castle that a coal baron built for his wife about 150 or 200 years ago
– I really can’t remember. Anyway he died before it was finished so it
has a very dreary look inside. The outside is quite spectacular because
of the solid stone, turrets and slate roof. They recently replaced the
slate roof with recycled slate from demolitions. Even then I think it cost
200 grand. So they have special, touristy Xmas stuff, bagpipes and such.
Then one block over is the art gallery and they have a lot on including
a fairly regular appearance of Tibetan monks who are there to build a sand
mandala and throw into the ocean.
So one evening just before Xmas, I’m lying
in bed actually aware that sounds have become much more important to my
awareness. I hear this odd sound that sounds like it’s going by the castle.
I hear my (ambulatory) family rush out the front door. I listen intently
and realize that must be Tibetan monks chanting and they even have their
long horns blowing away. I listen very carefully and the sound moves away
so I realized they were going down the street, I was wondering what they
were doing besides the chanting and horns. My iterant nephew who occasionally
makes into my Mulligan ® murder mysteries, would have been begging
for food as that is what his particular sect does.
My family comes in and asks me if I had heard
“it”. I was wise enough to ask what it was. About 50 some odd 16 wheeler
trucks going by on the main street at the bottom of the hill, each blowing
there horn as part of different Xmas carols and collecting food for the
food bank. It was at that point that I realized I couldn’t necessarily
count on my senses all the time, including the Buddhist sixth sense which
is the mind.
I remember February coming and going. I was
still in bed virtually the whole time. I was really looking forward to
having the 8 week cast taken off, and in the mean time, my daughter’s best
friend’s dad died. He had just turned his life around as he quit drinking.
He was so talented that he made a still in his garage, all from parts from
the dump.
He had decided to save money by either spending
the winter sleeping on the North Beach of Hawaii – he was an excellent
surfer – or spending the time here but sleeping in his station wagon. Something
I had done at various times but not through the winter, even here as there
is about at least a week of below freezing weather each year. Just before
the yearly cold snap, he built a propane heater. He was amazing talented
at everything mechanical including refrigeration.
So what he would often do was catch a nap
in the afternoon so he didn’t need to sleep as much at night. The first
cold day, he hooked up his heater, took a nap but never woke up because
a misdesign or something caused a CO leak. The police found him dead in
the night.
But I still went to get my cast off. It was
bad news I thought. The wound looked bad to me. The doc said it was fine
but I would need to wear an air cast. When I asked him for how long as
this seemed to be a reasonable question, I suddenly felt like I did when
I asked the brain surgeon how long my mother would live given that her
tumour was inoperable , and he said 3 days to 30 days. She died 2 weeks
later.
So the doctor says 3 months to 3 years depending
on how my ankle healed. I took that as a downer cause I looked at the 3
year side whereas I could have looked at the shorter side. “Come back in
a month”.
This doc is so busy that you have to constantly
be asking questions as he moves so fast that he will call out ‘next’ at
any time. There are hordes waiting for him. He is only there one afternoon
a week and it’s show up, no appointment given. At least now we know to
take a picnic as well as pain killers…The state of health care when the
government has fascist leanings…oops, can I say that? No, actually I didn’t
really mean it, so in a court of law it could not be seen as intentional
slander, or subject to any punitive or aggravated damages???
A month more in bed, trying to get used to
a new kind of cast. Oh, I almost forgot. When I got the air cast on, I
noticed that the cast room was plastered with signs saying that the air
casts cost $50, and it didn’t matter if you were a loser on some kind of
disability pension (which had just been seriously cut) or on welfare (also
recently cut) or right from the poor house, the air cast was $50 bucks
and you had to pay before you left. Fortunately, they forgot to charge
me and later sent me a bill which I ignored, figuring as that the health
region was basically stupid and might forget to send another bill. (do
ya get the feeling that little comment might cost me 50 bucks). Anyway,
I figured, worst was they’d get nasty (nastier) and threaten to send it
to creditors at which point I’d send them $5 bucks with a promise of another
$5 in a month. This way, they would need to generate at least 10 more bills
at about their cost $10 a bill, thereby costing them $100+ to retrieve
$50. So far, the stupid argument is winning. And as an aside, if you have
not seen the documentary, Stupidity, the Movie, check it out. www.stupiditythemovie.com
So on to the next specialist visit. He looked
at it, said looks better, then remembers to take an xray, says looks better,
and wear the air cast every minute for 3 months and come back in with the
hordes.
Two days later, the wound reopened due to the
pressure from the aircast that actually fails to adjust to swelling as
there is almost no air in it. Yet, the constant reminder, besides the cost,
is not to blow more air into it. The tone of voice suggests a fate similar
to the cult horror classic, Carnival of Souls, now on DVD (www.imdb.com/title/tt0055830/)
. So my wound is now open and I have no GP doctor, due to the afore mentioned
unfortunate incident in another doctor’s parking lot. So I start playing
the fun game called, first find a doctor taking new patients (hard) and
then flip a coin to pick one of those. A friend recommended someone, I
thought based on reputation, but it turns out, it was based on ‘takes new
patients’. I had to overcome my hate of male doctors, but as it turned
out, this guy is Dr. Business. First, he told me to go back to my shrink
and get my benzoids decreased, and if I did, he would see me again the
next week. And if not, here’s some pain killers (finally some decent ones)
and then find another doctor. So, as I had wanted to get off some of the
up to 4 benzoids I was on, I did just that. I went back the next week and
my officially new GP doctor introduced me to the secrets of skin patches
over wounds. At 10 bucks a pop, I was hoping they worked. I got home, put
it on, and ideally glanced at my watch to see how long it would be till
I noticed a difference – maybe by the next day. Within 60 seconds, the
relief was dramatic. I figured even if these things were 30 a pop, they
were worth it. And what could be in these things as they had no ingredients.
They have to have an instant pain killer and probably an antibiotic. When
turns out they are just way more absorbent than huggies and suck out all
the bad stuff so the wound can actually heal. We were well on the way to
healing until one day, I decided that since I was venturing to that place
called ‘out’, I would I would be safer with the air cast on. Well, the
aircast bent, leaving a large, deep indentation in my ankle and a wound
now open even more. I retired the aircast, and went with the skin patch.
Now, 2 ½ months after seeing the ‘specialist’ with his special on
aircasts, my wound is very nearly healed. Thanks to Dr. Business. A sincere
thanks.
Oh, how could I forget as I spend most of my
time either starving or day dreaming of food. Dr. Business put me on the
South Beach diet as I had been on the North Beach diet for years. In a
fairly short time, I’ve lost 25 pound towards the 70 (yes that’s seventy)
pounds I need to lose to get to my goal weight. And I wasn’t really fat,
just needed to lose some to put less weight on healing ankle and stay clear
of a male family history of heart attacks. I know when I get to 175, I’ll
be proud and the SB maintenance diet doesn’t look so bad.
Walking the Dog (part 2)
Well, this story’s gonna end soon as I’m due
to take the dog for a supervised walk. She has been a sweetheart the whole
time. Knowing not to jump on my sore foot, sleeping beside me. But as soon
as I began to walk down the hall without my walker, she began sitting by
the front door, thinking that walking down the hall could also mean a W-A-L-K
(doesn’t help – she also spells). Wait until the first walk – then she’ll
think we’ll be back to twice a day. And we will be, but longer walks this
time, to help with the weight loss.
The thing is once I walk her again, we will
have gone full circle since the walk that lead to the slip that led to
Bert and Ernie and the laughing gas that led to…
But there are a few loose ends. First, I’m
supposed to go back to the specialist and the hordes in about 2 weeks.
I’m debating the return. The last time I went his main advice was to walk
in the water at the community pool and to do these exercises with this
stretchy shit that you buy. Well, I could never go to the pool because
the wound was open and I’m sure I just barely made it out of the hospital
without getting flesh eating disease (this area has the highest incident
rate in the world). And I was a good boy and sent the Sherpa (no, not my
spouse) to get this stretchy shit, set it up like the shit poor drawings
he gave me, first time doing the exercises I pulled my lower back and was
in writhing pain for 10 days, relying on some morphine sulphate I had left
over from another doc, which in turn caused writhing bowel pain, all of
which just took my focus of the neuralgic pain shooting up and down my
leg. So if I go, it may be just for more words of wisdom.
And the agent. The fuckin story’s called Swimming
for an Agent, after all. As you may recall, I was to go to get the first
100 pages of my first two detective fiction books printed and whisk them
off to a NYC agent who had qualified by having a pulse. Well, I got the
Sherpa to do that. I’m not sure if I still have her email reply. She basically
said I jumped around too much – no shit – and she couldn’t be bothered
and that my story was too ‘hip’ whatever the fuck that means. So I wrote
her back thanking her for comparing me to Spalding Gray who jumps around
too much and David Sedaris who originally was called too hip but is sure
to be laughing from his north of Paris stone house…Besides, I’ve had people
read them right thru and enjoy them who were survivors of a school system
that still mishandles their ‘ADD’ diagnosis which now has translated into
Adult ADD. And I don’t know about the hip thing cause everyone I know or
hang out with is hip, man…
This story is dedicated to my spouse and daughter
as well as Spalding Gray whom I continue to advocate sainthood for by my
work on www.spaldinggray.com
and my own web page, www.johnboland.com which
you might know of already as this likely will end up posted there.
jb aka upton aka the rev aka ratz garcia while
in NYC only…aka spuddy san . . . |
