Almost two months ago, I re-caulked my shower stall, and at the end of the year, it looks like I'll need to do it again. A pain to be sure, but necessary in so many ways. Not just because the stall and the washroom need it, but I do too, for reasons related to my respiratory health. After a couple of years of breathing and coughing symptoms, I was finally diagnosed with asthma this past August. It was three days after the smoke cleared out of the Lower Mainland from the interior BC forest fires. Finally, things had cleared up. In many more ways than one.
2016/17 was, as Queen Elizabeth II once said, annus horribilis; every area of the world and my own life seemingly on a tail spin. By the time of my second anniversary Post-Op, it had taken its toll and I was in trouble. 2016 was the year that I was supposed settle into myself, finally, and deal with some unfinished health business: namely, the sleep and eating issues that I had developed over years of being closeted. I had just begun that when, suddenly, my work environment was in turmoil. The above mentioned issues became exacerbated. Then came the news that the clinic I had been in for SRS had been attacked. I had (and have) many fond memories of staying there and it had been a healing moment for myself and friends and family; now, it had literally been charred. Six weeks later, the Orlando shooting happened, and my sense of personal safety shattered. Then there was the social and political chaos in the US and EU. By year's end, I was exhausted. My respiratory problems worsened.
That winter saw several snow storms locally, the cold and damp of which affected my health. I took many days off work to recuperate, at times waking up not being able to breathe properly at all. And my antidote to despair had been to become more politically active, but after the January Women's March, I was simply too fatigued. When I went to the local drop in clinic, I was (mis) diagnosed and given what would turn out to be the wrong inhaler. I returned to my regular routines, feeling better, but it would not last.
Isolation is usually, not the best thing health wise, but that is exactly what I became as winter gradually became spring. A late snow storm in early March made going outside treacherous breating wise. So, aside from work, I stayed home, only able to peer at the world I had wanted to engage as it became more and more chaotic. I watched as the local anti-racism march was attacked by white supremacists, I heard of friends and friends of friends being threatened and attacked themselves. Every day brought a fresh hell from south of the border and, sometimes on this side of the border.
Tatum's health mirrored my own in this strange symbiosis that exists between humans and their pets. Often, I felt that he was all I had; he had been with me through it all and I with him. I feared losing my job and my financial footing and having to give him up; once, years ago, he had been surrendered in northern BC and months later I had adopted him. The though of abandoning him kept me up at night.
As snow turned to regular and torrential rain, I tried to keep up with my responsibilities, but floundered. I felt my self worth plummet. When my respiratory issues failed to clear up completely, I booked an appointment with my regular doctor and was put on to a waiting list for the lung clinic: it was six months long.
Sometime in April, I heard that a friend (who had arranged for free travel back to Montreal for surgery) was in the hospital in Toronto with congestive heart failure. I knew that I could afford to travel there, and felt horrible, but kept in touch with mutual friends to get updated about his condition. I felt some relief when he was discharged.
*
I had been living in Vancouver nearly 22 years; I had arrived in a city of desperate hope and strangers with a mountain of grief and unexplored issues on my shoulders. I wanted to continue my mother's personal growth work to avoid the tail spin she had got into in her last years. She had died at 47; in 2017, I would be 47; on the first of June 2017, she would have been 70. As Mother's Day approached, it was all too much. I began posting the kind of desperate social media posts that I had posted back 2009 when my life had seemed at a dead end. The work week leading up to that May weekend had been particularly stressful and came out of it feeling that I had lost my way in life. Then, that weekend, my friend in Toronto had a massive stroke. Information was sporadic, but I learned that the stroke has left him half paralyzed and with his short term memory gone. Again, I could not get there.
I staggered through the next two work days alternately angry and depressed; I was awakened at night by panic attacks; I would gaze at Tatum and burst into tears not wanting to lose him. After my late shift that Tuesday, I went home in a daze and wrote down my own funeral arrangements in a notebook. it sounds profane that while my dear friend was fighting to live, I was making preparations to die, but I had developed tunnel vision feeling I was of no use to anybody. Early on Wednesday afternoon, after my morning shift and lunch break, I had a nervous breakdown and went on stress leave. In a blur, I got my things together and numbly walked out to the bus stop to go home, all nineteen years at my organization passing in front of my eyes. I would not return for four months.
I began six weeks of crisis counseling that week with a phone call to an employee counseling service 1-800 number. I give a lot of credit to the counselor I spoke to for helping me regain my will to live. Tatum had a lot to do with it as well. I was placed with an in-person counselor starting the Thursday evening of that first week. The following weekend was Victoria Day long weekend; I had booked an appointment with my regular doctor's office. Another doctor who was substituting evaluated my anxiety levels: almost all my indicators were tops. Oddly, it was almost as much of a relief as it was an upset. I would be re-evaluated every two weeks by my doctor. Documentation would be sent back and forth, phone calls, emails, faxes: in the middle of it all I began to gradually get my footing again.
Soon afterwards, my friend's sisters had him flown from Toronto to Richmond Hospital where he underwent more tests and procedures. I visited once on a very hot spring day. On a rainy June 1st, my mother's 70th, a mutual friend and myself went to see him. He was stabilizing; he was due to go to St Paul's for a procedure for a few days, then he would be sent to the G F Strong Rehabilitation Centre in Vancouver. I spent the rest of June 1st with a counseling session and another friend's comic book launch.
Near the end of June, I touched base with a friend I had gone to library school with who volunteered at the local Van Dusen Botanical Gardens. We spent an afternoon there. I realized that I had missed being around nature. I also began writing again, poems mostly, although I also had a couple of ideas for TV that I needed feedback on. Other times I would walk down to my neighbourhood park, sit on a bench, write, read (spiritual, emotional healing books: Gabor Mate, Mark Epstein, Mark Wolynn, Pema Chodron) or just sit while the sounds of life moved around and through me. On Saturdays, I doubled down on the internal martial arts practices I had started at the beginning of the year.
But it was with friends, visiting one friend at the Rehabilitation Centre, spending an afternoon with another at Crescent Beach, taking long walks with yet another, that I regained a sense of being connected others, catching up on our lives, seeing the value in each day.
*
A couple of weeks after Canada Day, I was contacted about an appointment at the lung clinic. My breathing had cleared up with the weather, but I was happy that my wait four months instead of six.
Not long after, smoke from the Interior BC forest fires was pushed out to the coast by changing air currents where it stayed for three weeks. I had been gardening a fair bit and getting to know the nature in my backyard, but now I had to close the windows and stay inside. Some of my symptoms returned. I stayed in and watched old 60s and 70s TV shows on DVD at home, occasionally have a friend over. I didn't walk in the Trans March this year but instead waited at the end point in a park, and with a breathing mask, welcomed the marchers home.
When the smoke cleared, in mid-August, I went for my lung clinic appointment. I was tested on a Monday and the following day I got the diagnosis. Asthma. I had grown up with one smoking parent at a time when there was no awareness of second hand smoke. Over the years, my chest colds had been particularly harsh and my dry coughs lasted quite a while afterwards. Then there were my spells of pneumonia in November 2015 and February 2016. One of my inhalers was replaced with another with different medication. My symptoms improved over the next couple of weeks.
*
A week later, on the morning of the total eclipse, I woke up to a deep orange light and strange shadows. Perfect in an unusual year.
*
Exactly one week after the eclipse, I flew back home for two weeks. Returning to my roots seemed very fitting this year. I feel that since coming out to them a few years ago, my family and I have been doing very subtle but deep healing work. Along with that, the joy of renewed connections and the sadness of missing years surfaced in me. My couple of weeks were everything a trip home should be, everything seemed to have added meaning. I have always been a very nostalgic person, and this was no exception. Maybe it was a brand of biscuit that I remembered growing up, or a song that I had heard. We spent an afternoon at a foodie-type festival down at the old port. On the morning of my 47th birthday, I woke up to find the kitchen table decorated with a gift bag and card: I felt 16 ... the right kind of 16 this time.
On my last Friday in Montreal, my stepmother, her sister and myself went to the Rue St Hubert shopping district. It was mostly window shopping, but my stepmother treated me to a new 2-piece outfit from a boutique. Lunch was at a classic Montreal diner with a 50s rock 'n roll playlist. Dinner that evening was back in the old neighbourhood at a great pizza restaurant with a few other relatives.
The next afternoon, we literally went walking down memory lane; I saw my old elementary school, a shell of its former self, streets that I remembered, one of my old pre-schools, the building was there, but it now occupied by someone else. I felt the impact of that walk the next day, I was flying out that evening. I was once repairing the relationship to my mother and then, she died. Now, I was growing closer to my father and stepmother and I feared losing them. I burst into tears over brunch the next morning and again back at the apartment while old songs played in the background. It was a rare moment when I felt the passage of time move all of us along.
And then, we were at the airport departures, me a mess, them watching over me as I moved through the security line until I was out of sight: a girl all grown up.
And then, I was home greeted by Tatum.
And then, I was back at work the next afternoon. There was a little welcome back party for me with tea and refreshments. It was touching, I managed to keep my tears in.
*
At first, I was on limited hours, four hours a day for four days. I gradually got back to full hours after six weeks. I found that I had a center now, I could handle the pace. The pace seemed easier. Perhaps the pace and me met somewhere in the middle.
Autumn was a blur, but I felt better as time went on. My doctor's assessments reflected that. My respiratory health was manageable and improving. I dove into Christmas early, immersed in the cozy and twinkle of it. I spent Christmas with an old friend and her family. Meanwhile, the friend that had had a stroke was doing much better and spending the holidays with family in the Interior BC.
As usual, I grew reflective towards the end of the year. Earlier in the fall, I gave myself a project, to paint and re-caulk the bathroom. The painting went fine, the re-caulking, as I started this piece off with, needs to be redone. What better time than at the end of a year like this one.
