The Dude and the Stone

When it rains, it pours. And this includes medical problems. The Dude had to go to emergency last night from a kidney stone, not that long after I wrote my last post. What a day.

He woke from a nap on the couch and complained of cramping. We figured it was gas, but it never got better. He started pacing and eventually moaning. Eventually I got the feeling it was a kidney stone. I've been down that road before. But that's another story for another time.

So we cabbed it to Toronto Western, and he's beside me, panting, groaning and trying in vain to find a comfortable way to sit, a totally fruitless effort. I can't think of a worse pain than a kidney stone. I've heard women say it's worse than childbirth.

Now, what really angered me is he told the triage nurse his pain was about a 9 or 10 out of 10. He still had to wait an hour in the waiting room. They were extra busy that night for some reason, but to allow someone to suffer without pain medication is beyond me. I'd never seen nor experienced anything like it. Even if you have to wait for tests and a doctor, they'll usually treat your pain.

He was huddled over me, shaking and moaning and after hearing about three people called ahead of him, people who were not in obvious suffering or distress, I had to call out that he needed help now. I was really upset. It was hard because I was still worried about aunt Debby and now my fiance was whimpering beside me telling me he couldn't take anymore.

And I knew exactly how bad it felt. It's like this unceasing clenching, wrenching, tearing, shooting pain that can make you feel like you're dying.

10 minutes after I made my fuss, someone came and took him and he was medicated. It was about this time I realized I had not brought a book. If you're going to spend an hour in the waiting room and only get tended to if you flag someone down, that doesn't bode well for how the rest of your visit is going to go.

Long story short, we were there four hours. Got home around 1:30 a.m. Dude had a kidney stone. If only you could go to the hospital, get pumped with morphine and then go home and quietly prepare yourself to pass something unnatural.

The whole thing, though, really showed me the importance of speaking up. It's really disheartening to see that a person can suffer, visibly suffer in front of dozens of people, including medical staff, and that nothing will be done unless you get pushy about it.

When the Right isn't right.

I hate Stephen Harper. I really, really do. I cannot understand how anyone would vote for his party, with him at the helm. People think "Conservative Party" and then vote without looking at this man's record in politics or the current state of the Conservatives. These are not the Tories of old. This is the Reform Party. Harper was part of Reform, a far-right fundamentalist Christian group.

They were fringe. They were a (scary) joke in this country because we value things like the CBC, Canada Post, healthcare and women's right to choose. Why would any sane Canadian want a party like Reform to run things? Answer: As a majority group, we don't.

Ah, but then there was the merge of the right in Canada, the name Reform was lost and essentially became the Alliance. Remember the Alliance, anyone? Run by Stockwell Day, the dude who doesn't believe in evolution and the one who wanted a referendum for everything? Then led by Stephen Harper?

Moving forward, There were then the PCs and the Alliance, the Alliance being the joke of conservative politics in Canada. They won 66 seats in their one federal election and then afterward there was the final merge with the Tories. Now who are they run by? A former Reform AND Alliance leader, Stephen Harper. Fantastic.

The new merge of PC and Alliance (Reform) headed by Harper won 124 seats, despite the fact they were now being run by a leader whose former party (which encapsulated all his ideologies*) had only won 66.

(*Please note the Reform party ideology opposed homosexual marriage, abortion, public healthcare, and was intolerant to French Canada and bilingualism.)

Shall we take a look at what this man stands for, as evidenced by his record in office?

1. He campaigned AGAINST healthcare. Oh yes. Click on the link. Read all about it.

2. His party is introducing new legislation on jail that will cost an estimated $11.5 billion over five years. Our healthcare needs attention, and he's relying on unproven legislation to reduce crime, even though it's been on the decline anyway for years. Link. Fiscally conservative my ass.

3. He's anti-choice. His party is not funding abortions to women who receive foreign aid. The G8 maternal and child health initiate for developing countries has a Christian moralist agenda, rather than a reasoned look at impoverished women's needs. His government wasn't even going to fund contraception initially. We have abortion laws in place here, but where he can he's helping to detract women in need from their right to choose.

4. He's flouted the laws of parliament. He's dissolved parliament to avoid A. a vote of non-confidence, and then again to avoid the will of the house in answering for Afghan detainee torture.

5. Draconian copyright laws, infringing on consumers (Basically you and me).

I challenge anyone who votes for this party to take a long look at themselves and their lives and values, and then ask themselves honestly if this man and his party speak for you. Are you comfortable with a man who does not play by the rules of our democracy? Who shows intolerance and a partiality to his own personal religious beliefs over unbiased data?

I've voted Liberal. I've also voted NDP and Green. I alter my votes according to who I think speaks for me, who I think is a sound choice based on their platforms and personal history. I think that is the intellectual duty of everyone who votes.

Every week it seems I read more and more angering political news that keeps me up at night. This has just got to stop. The only way it will is if people see past their comfort zone of voting conservative just because they always have and really look at the party as it is today. It's effed up. Get informed!


PS I'm seeing Iron Man 2 tonight. That'll make me happy.

Yes they can.

So they passed healthcare reform in the United States. I'm not as familiar with American political systems as Canadian, but I understand this a huge deal. A vote went down and the Democrats pushed it through. Sounds like it goes to the Senate and then vrooom. Some change goes down.

I'm pretty happy for them. I can't actually fathom living somewhere I couldn't rely on being medically treated if necessary. I mean, I was out of work for six months after college. I didn't worry about healthcare even once. It was just a given. I know Americans aren't going to be given the same great deal we have here, but I'm comforted as a fellow human being that over 30 million people, a population the size of Canada itself, will no longer live without covered access to medical treatment. Cheers to that! Cheers to our neighbours!

I love when common sense and decency win out in the world.

And I found this cartoon, which is all nifty and relevant.

Though I'm pretty sure Smokey does feel this way.
Most house cats, probably.

We will choose

I read a lot of blogs. I've mentioned this before. The subject of abortion never fails to capture my attention and interest. I'm a pro choice woman. I don't leave any doubt about that when the topic arises. I don't know how I feel about abortion, as a moral stance, other than that I feel is best left up to the consciences and hearts of the women who face that prospect.

I've had one pregnancy scare and I've taken two pregnancy tests in my life. Once was when I was 19 and the other was last year. The more recent one I was 95% sure I was not pregnant, but I wanted confirmation. When I was 19 I was more nervous. I was young, inexperienced in adult life, in college and living in a family's basement.

And while I was worrying, I realized then that I considered abortion a valid option. Not one I was ready to commit to, but one to consider strongly. I was on the pill, but in my whole history of taking it, I never got the hang of keeping it to a strict schedule.

I remember crying in bed, praying (I was still a Catholic in my heart in those days, if not a practicing one) and asking God to forgive me if I had to abort. I went home and while at my father's I went to the local drug store, bought a test, took it home, and disposed of it in the trash can at the neighbourhood park. It was negative and I had my life back.

I never forgot the fear, though. And knowing a taste of that fear, which I only truly experienced in the hypothetical, has stayed with me. I don't look at abortion as right or wrong, but rather if it's the right or wrong choice for a woman as an individual.

I came across this today, which broke my heart and spurned me again to touch on this topic. It's a tragic story involving a woman's choice, and one can only imagine the further grief she would have endured had her right to choose not been available to her. I think we as women, along with being born able to make babies, are born with an innate ability to choose and make the right choice. We have this gift because we need it. Even a very pro-life woman who gives birth to an unwanted baby has made a choice.

Without choice, our bodies aren't our own. Without lawful choice, our bodies belong to the governments that regulate us. We are not our uteri. We, as gatekeepers of all human life that enters this world, will decide when the time is right. Not our governments, not religious leaders, not men, not lobbyists. Us. It's a grave responsibility to bring a new person into the world, but it's not an obligation.

Sex Ed

My job is so strange sometimes. Last week I learned what the euphemism for "tossing a salad" meant. Today I learned how to behave if I encounter a wild bear. Quite a variety of channels at play here. I do so enjoy what I do. Most days anyway.

I bought the new Freakonomics book, SuperFreakonomics, yesterday and it's already as fun and interesting as the first one. I've already finished the chapter on how a prostitute is like a department store Santa. I love books like that, out of the box thinking type books that buck conventional wisdom in favour of a complex yet simplified look at stats and figures.

I want more quiche. This means I will have to make more quiche, as vain though it may be to say it, my quiche that I made this past weekend was the best I've had in my life. In a way, it's probably good I'm a wee lazy in kitchen matters, because that quiche was also loaded in fat. Lots of protein, though. But lots of fat.

I still want another one.

I read an article today that spoke to me about sex ed in schools. I remember my sexual education via the Catholic school system over 10 years ago: Here are the mechanics. Here are the undesirable consequences. DON'T DO IT!!!1! Jesus! Throw in a video of a woman giving birth with some closeups of the crowning head and you're done.

The article was about pleasure-based sex ed, letting girls in particular know that it's supposed to feel good. I can speak for myself that no one ever told me that, and had I known it was supposed to be enjoyable, I don't think I would have allowed certain things to pass when I was a teen. My first boyfriend at 16 would have been dumped promptly for being so inept with his fingers.

I don't think abstinence education makes any sense. Telling people not to do something isn't education. It's issuing orders you don't have the authority to enforce. Parents don't even have the authority to enforce abstinence, not really. A person's sexual autonomy (and age of legal consent) occurs before the age of 18 and there's little that can be done to prevent it.

There's also the creepy idea that teenagers are children. They're not. Teenagers are sexual. Children are not. Teens have pubic hair, sexual urges, developed sex characteristics and an ability to procreate. Children have none of these things. So teens hence are not children. They have differing needs, one of which is a need of information about their sexuality, the type of information that will enable them to act safely in their choices.

I suppose it's hard for parents to be objective about their kids, whom they've diapered and kissed away their boo-boos and taught to ride a bike. I imagine it's hard to acknowledge that your child is not physically a child any longer and has sexual urges and a body that can and wants to act on them. And being unable to view your offspring as sexual may further incline a person to wish to prevent them from having a sex life. It probably feels creepy to even think about.

But that's just not realistic. Parents have a lot of say over what their teen does, but it stops at being able to direct the course of their sex lives. If a teen isn't going to learn from their parents about all things sex, someone's got to tell them, you know, before they get pregnant and infected. As for preventing them from having sex in the first place, if they're not making babies or passing along disease or putting themselves at risk with god knows who, I couldn't be bothered what consenting people do with other consenting people.

Abortion

Lately I've been reading a lot of feminist research, literature and articles. As time has gone on I've felt a subtle push against women's rights and freedoms, perhaps as a backlash of the feminist movement which changed the Western world and ruffled many feathers. I think maybe also with gay rights now in the forefront gaining more and more recognition, the same sorts of people who either hate change or can't empathize with people who aren't just like them are tightening their holds elsewhere.

Abortion laws, in particular. The Stupak amendment, which although won't affect me or my fellow country women in Canada, is pretty much on of the emerging great tragedies to women's healthcare of the new millennium. Seriously. No funding for abortion? None?

Here in Canada it's federally funded. Women have the right to choose and choose they do. Of course there are organizations like The Back Porch, located in where else but Alberta, who more or less work against Planned Parenthood and counsel women to continue their pregnancies. Which, I have to say is pretty unethical. I've been doing a lot of reading about this group. Their goal is to talk to "abortion-minded" women. This translates to mean "we actively talk women out of the choices they've decided to make." And they don't advertise this. So women with an unwanted pregnancy and are looking to explore their options can find themselves in the hands of these pro-lifers whose concern is not for the woman herself, but her fetus.

And this rather pisses me off. Yes, a fetus does eventually become a baby. But until it's actually of this world and a separate entity from its mother, it's not a person. It's certainly reasonable for an individual to feel differently about that and consider a fetus a person if they choose. But it's no longer reasonable to enforce that feeling into either law or another person's decision making.

Consider: The risk of an abortion is 13 times less likely to result in complications/death than giving birth. The risk of severe mental anguish is distinctly higher for women undergoing adoption than abortion. In countries where abortion is illegal, a total of over 70,000 women die from unsafe abortion practices each year.

So who are we going to care about? Whose life should matter? A full-grown woman with a life, dreams, responsibilities? Or a grouping of cells which have yet to form into full person and is engaged in a parasitic relationship with its host? Yes, the wording is harsh, but pregnancy while important and beautiful is also a reckless force of nature that if imposed on a woman without her consent is cruel to her body and mind. I object to laws and movements which treat women like vessels. It's not a woman's fault she was born with a uterus and she is not under any obligation to give birth at any time.

But going back to the adoption path... if there's one thing that strikes me as terribly painful, it's continuing a pregnancy to term, giving birth and then giving my baby away just as all the chemicals kick in to create a devoted attachment to it. Then to recover from the birth, breasts leaking milk that no one drinks, hormones dropping and causing mood swings with no recourse to feel better because every day forward will be a day you're not with or raising the baby your entire being is calling to. This is a deeply personal decision that no woman should feel compelled to make due to another person or people's agenda, any more than a woman should be compelled to have an abortion for reasons that are not her own.

There have been people in the pro-life movement who claim something called Post Abortion Syndrome, citing high risk of depression, self loathing and suicidal thoughts. However, the American Psychological Association has studied this issue and has concluded: "Although there may be sensations of regret, sadness, or guilt, the weight of the evidence from scientific studies indicates that legal abortion of an unwanted pregnancy in the first trimester does not pose a psychological hazard for most women." Women coerced into an abortion from family or unsupportive partners are more likely to experience these negative feelings, which only highlights the importance of allowing a woman to examine her own feelings and needs and make the right decision for her.

I could rant on and on about this, I really could. Whether a single mother of two needs an abortion in her second trimester because the child is going to be severely disabled and she cannot care for it without detriment to her existing children, or a woman in an abusive relationship can't bring a child into violence, or any woman with a new or current health condition makes pregnancy dangerous or fatal, or her necessary medications will critically damage her fetus, or she was raped or requires a D&C after a miscarriage (Which still counts as an abortion, even though the fetus is dead and D&C prevents infection or infertility), the choice must be hers.

I'll leave this rant with a cartoon which depicts how I feel about the direction the United States is going with their healthcare.


Jerry's condition is unchanged at this point, and if it remains so, my next rant may have to with birth control access, which of course is directly related to this post.