Sunbathing the blues away

Sunbathing in the winter is the greatest thing to banish the blues. Course going down south to the Carribean is the ideal place to do this but that's not always possible. Certainly I can't afford to do that more than once per year and I've already had my trip to tropical paradise this year. I was in Cancun for 9 wonderful days in January and it was fabulous. But it seems so long ago now and the endorphin high has long left my brain. The next best thing is a tanning bed. Just 10 short minutes under this man made heaven is enough to make me feel like a different woman. The beauty is that I can go get 10 minutes of heaven anytime I want and it doesn't cost nearly what a trip to Cancun or Jamaica or Barbados costs. For just a few dollars I can get a dose of UV light enough to make me feel all warm a glowy for days. Today I needed it so much. Lord but did I need it. Now, well into the evening I still feel warm and have that sun kissed look on my face. Best of all my winter blues are farther away.

Winter, Winter go away

I know I shouldn't complain about winter's continuing barrage of snow and cold but I am so tired of it that I can't help myself. It is, after all, only March and we often still have winter in March here in Ontario but this year it seems like it's been going on forever. Ok, so I exaggerate but this is my journal so I can if I want. It started snowing here yesterday in the morning and except for short breaks it's still snowing. Enough already! I want spring ... I want to be out in my garden preparing it for planting and I want to stop wearing layers of clothing that keeps one warm outside but makes one too hot the minute you go inside anywhere. As I sit here at my desk looking out over the ... ok I'll admit it ... beautiful white scene I see from my window I also see the beautiful flame orange and yellow tulips I have blooming in a pot on my desk. They make me feel happy but they also make me long for the ones I hope will bloom in my garden soon. It's always this way at this time of year. Winter has worn out its welcome and I have to fight not to feel depressed over its endless presence. I will have to go out to shovel my sidewalks this morning. Again. I don't want to but I live in a neighbourhood with many old people and I'd hate to the cause of a broken hip. My cats, Sam and Luna are even tired of it and they love nothing more than lying on my bed sleeping most of the time. When the sun shines they sit at the back door waiting for me to let them out so they can sun themselves on the porch. When that first blast of cold air hits them they look up at me like it's my fault that winter has not gone away. I apoligize but remind them it's not my fault. I don't think they believe me.

An unspeakable tradedy

I just keep asking myself "how can this happen?"

What I really mean is how can this have happened in Canada?

I'm not naive. I know there are bad people out there and that there are guns out there. I also know that the guns usually find their way into the hands of bad people. It's just that something like this just never happens in Canada.

Not until this week.

Four young police officers murdered. Murdered because guns found their way into the hands of a person who should never have had access to them. Four young RCMP officers doing their job were brutally murdered while doing their job.

I can't imagine the grief their families are feeling.

What I do know is the fear every family of every police officer feels every day. What I do know is how much this tragedy reminds the families of police officers how easily they could lose their loved one.

I know these things because my brother is an RCMP officer and this week, more than any other, I am reminded of how fragile life is for him and his colleagues.

We know the risk involved in his job but we try not to think about it.

This week it has been impossible not to.

When I heard the news I wanted to get on a plane to go be with my brother. I wanted him to know how much I love him and to hug him.

I settled for sending him an email to tell him I was thinking of him and the men and women he works with. I wrote to tell him I love him.

He wrote me right back. It was a sign of how deeply he has been shaken by the deaths of those young officers. My brother always replies to my emails but it usually takes him days. This time his reply came back within hours. I know his quick reply was to reassure me and because when ever an officer dies he knows we all feel the fear we try to keep in the background. It made me love him even more than I already do.

He wrote "We try and stay focused in times like these. But thinking about those members families and loved ones makes it hard".

For my brother - not a man of long letters or email messages - those words spoke volumes about the pain and sadness he is feeling.

Most litlle boys want to be a fireman or a policeman when they grow up - at some point when they are little. Most go on to change their minds and to become something else when they grow up. My brother never did. He wanted to be an RCMP officer from the time he was young and he never changed his mind. He fulfilled that dream as soon as he was old enough and has served his community and his country as an RCMP officer for 23 years. He loves his job and has never regretted the path he chose. He's been a dedicated, honest and honourable officer and I am proud of him every day.

I have never been more proud of him than I am this week.

I thank God for having kept him safe for all those years. I pray that he will stay safe for how ever many years he chooses to protect and serve. I pray for the families of those fallen officers. I don't know their pain but I do know the pain I would feel if my brother had been one of them.

God please protect and keep my brother and all the other police officers out there safe.

about the little blue house

The little blue house is mine and I love it. I bought it in the late summer and moved in on November 1st. It's has it's quirks and it needs a new bathroom and kitchen but I still feel more at home here than I did in my last house which was brand new (I bought that one before they'd even broken ground). Old houses have a soul which, I 've discovered, is a very important thing for me.

When I first saw this little cottage I fell in love with it. The colour is ... well it's really bright ... and wouldn't have been my choice but it's growing on me. Eventually I'll have the house painted but for now I will leave it the way it is. The porch that starts at the front door wraps around the side of the cottage quite a ways making for this wonderful place to sit and relax. I can hardly wait for the warmer weather when I'll be able to sit out there enjoying my morning coffee or a glass of wine in the evening. I've always wanted a house with a long covered porch and now I have it. The little blue house sits on a corner lot in a way that makes the yard mostly at the side of the house rather than at the back. There's a little back yard but only just enough to access the garden storage shed and the back door which goes into the basement. The side yard is a larger space than I've had in any of the other houses I've lived in and I'm very excited about its possibilities. From my lovely porch I will be able to enjoy the garden that will be. Right now it's mostly grass with some planting beds along the side of the house but that will change when the spring comes. I'm not so much a lawn person as I am a flowers and herbs person. Lawn seems such a waste of potential to me. The yard is fully fenced which makes for a nice private yard - soon to become a nice private sanctuary filled with colour and whimsy and even a vegetable patch. The front garden, though smaller, also has great potential. It's been somewhat neglected over the years but it too will become the lovely cottage garden that this little blue house deserves. When I left my last house I took with me two rose bushes and a hydrangea; I put them in the front garden of the little blue house. I'm hoping they survive the winter but only time will tell.

My love of gardening comes to me from my maternal grandmother. She had wonderful gardens and I have strong memories of a childhood spent in them with her. I still have a clear picture of her in a summer dress lovingly tending her garden - gently dead heading the petunias, carefully examining her roses for aphids, and always stopping frequently to drink in the aroma of the various flowers. Still to this day the aroma of petunias evoke the memory of her. I'm sure my love of hydrangeas and roses are her legacy to me.

florence nitingale faces a challenge

Once a week I inject myself with Methotrexate to keep my joints from swelling up, causing great pain and becoming deformed over time. I've been doing this since May 2004 when my rheumatologist decided that it was time to try something other than anti-inflammatory medications. I'm a nurse so I know Methotrexate but before I started to take it for my arthritis, I knew it only as one of those cytotoxic drugs used to kill cancer cells. I now know it well, almost too well. It all started suddenly last March when the joints in my hands and feet began to swell and cause me considerable pain. Some days I couldn't even make it up the stairs in my house and I'd have to kind of crawl up on my bum. Some days I was so exhausted I couldn't get out of bed. It was a sudden and shocking change in my energy level and in my mood. I sank into a depression that felt like a deep and dark place from which there was no escape. Some days I even thought about ending my life. It sounds so meodramatic now but at the time I really felt overwhelmed. My job, which I love doing became impossible and I had to go on medical leave. My doctor sent me to a rheumatologist, a wonderful woman who spent almost 2 hours with me talking about the arthritis it seemed I had, about its treatment and about the depression I was experiencing. When I left her office I felt more hopeful because at leat now there was a plan of action. That hopefulness waned some as we tried one drug after without seeing any change. Before long we were out of options in that category. The time had come to switch to the scarier drugs; those that would alter my immune system to battle the disease attacking my joints. It's basically a no-win situation. I take one drug to supress my immune system to prevent it from attacking my own body and in doing so I make myself vulnerable to other illnesses - infections and viruses. At the time I didn't feel like I had a choice really; I couldn't live with the pain and how it was affecting my life and my spirit. I didn't know what the drug would bring but I felt like it was my only hope. I started out on the pill form of Methotrexate once a week but the nausea and vomitting for days after was intolerable. After a couple of weeks of that we switched to the injectable form which is much better for me. I only get nauseated some weeks and only for a day at the most. I hate those days but I can tolerate it. The other lovely feature of this drug is that it is very toxic to one's liver so I have to go for weekly blood work to monitor how mine is doing. Down the road I'll have to have a liver biopsy to see how it's being affected by the Methotrexate. See what I mean? Scary!

The challenge I face now is that my immune system is so depressed that I get sick with every bug that goes around. I've had more bad colds since I started taking the drug and they last so much longer. I've now been sick with my latest cold for 8 days. Really sick - laid flat in bed for the last 6 days with each day seeming worse than the one before it. I've missed more work in the last year than I ever have before. Lately I've been wondering if taking this drug is worth what it's doing to my immune system.

Today the doctor put me on an antibiotic and a steroid inhaler to combat the infectionI have in my chest and sinuses. More medications. I'm tired of it and yet there aren't a lot of options. There are some newer drugs out there but we're not sure yet if my drug plan will cover me for them. Psoriatic arthritis is still a grey area when it comes to the newer drugs. In many other countries they are using these drugs to treat it but in Canada they're using it and getting coverage only for Rheumatoid Arthritis. We're hoping that my plan will cover me cause if it doesn't I won't be able to afford it; the cost is somewhere around $25,000 per year. Yikes! The newer drugs are also immunosupressive but, unlike the Methotrexate, they aren't randomly so. The newer drugs target the specific T-cell that people with rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis have too much of; the T-cell that is attacking our joints and, in psoriasis, the same T-cell that is causing my skin cells to proliferate at an overwhelming rate.

The challenge I face if I don't get coverage for the new drug is making the decision about whether to stay on the Methotrexate or to stop taking it. On the one hand, I like being pain free so I can do all the things I love - riding my bicycle, gardening and doing stained glass work. If I can't be in my garden working in the spring, summer and fall I would be miserable. On the other hand, I don't love the way it's making me so susceptible to every bug that's going around. I've not yet talked to my doctor about stopping it but I'm thinking about doing it - stopping that is. I'll have to come to a decision before I see her next in April cause if my drug plan says no then I want to be ready to make the decision. So what do you do when you hate both choices you have?

more of florence nitingale's adventures

We had more snow last night and today it's clear and sunny and gorgeous outside. Bitterly cold but gorgeously crisp and white. This is when I love the snow. When it's all clean and untouched by the grime of the city. Before the melting that turns it into a grey ugly mess. This is the snow of my childhood, memories of which are devoid of anything but pristine clean white fluffy snow. Sad that it can't stay like this until, magically, you wake up one morning and it's all gone. I'm sure people would like winter a lot more if that were the case. I know I would. I actually don't mind winter ... that is until February when I begin to mind it very much. February, when spring is close enough to be an enticing promise but too far away to feel in the air. I need to feel it and smell it in the air before I can let myself believe that winter is actually on its last legs for another year. February when the remaining snow is often grey hardened masses rising up like icebergs, meanacing and ugly. There's nothing beautiful about February where I live - the ground is hard and grey, the trees are bare and grey, and the snow is grey. Bleak is the word. So, when I woke up this morning to find a beautiful white landscape against a backdrop of the blue sky and bright sun I felt happy and somehow lighter.

This would be a perfect morning to go cross country skiing even if only on the golf course just blocks from my house. Would be if I weren't sick with the flu - another reason to hate February - which has laid me low since last weekend. Despite yearly flu shots I have the flu. Despite being home from work for the last week, I'm not sure I'm any better now than I was at the start. I've tried every combination of cold and flu medication to mitigate the symptoms that make my days a fog and my nights a series of naps interrupted by deep racking coughing jags. Nothing seems to make a difference. Last night, out of desperation I took a nighttime Contact cold and flu capsule, two tbsp of Robitussin DM, and a big mug of Neocitron before bed. I felt smug and clever as I imagined out-witting of my nemisis. I wasn't in bed for 20 minutes before I began my first coughing jag of the night. Deep racking coughs forcing me to sit up in bed to get my breath. That was the first coughing jag of the night but not the last. This morning I'm just as sick as I was yesterday and the day before and the day before that.

A perfect day for cross country skiing. I got new skis and boots this year and I've not had the chance to use them yet. Sadly two of the best snowfalls we've had have happened while I was away. The first when I was in Vancouver over Christmas and the second when I was in Cancun in January. Any number of snowfalls since then have been overnight and during the week. We've not had one work stopping snow day this year. Talk about frustrating. My friend S and I are talking about taking a weekend trip in search of a good ski before the snow starts to melt up there even. While I could take a couple of vacation days mid-week, she can't because she's a teacher. So we either have to go on a weekend or we have to wait til spring break. This weekend we wouldn't have to go anywhere - if only I weren't sick.

the adventures of florence nitingale

Last night out of desperation I went in search of the Vicks vaporub to put up my nose and on my chest. I knew I had a jar somewhere in my bathroom and I was determined to find it. Now you would think that I, as a nurse,would regularly clear out my medicine cabinet of all expired or otherwise useless medications wouldn't you? Apparently that doesn't apply to the Vick's Vaporub. I finally found my little jar tucked back into a corner of the cabinet (having just moved in November means I actually brought this with me). Feeling as excited as if I'd found something far more valuable I opened the jar ready for it's magic powers of healing to envelope me and for that heady aroma to surround me and infiltrate the thick fog that has made taste and smell an impossibility of late. You can imagine my disappointment when there was no heady aroma on opening the jar. "Gosh" I thought "this flu is pretty bad if I can't even smell Vick's Vaporub cause it usually gets through any amount of sinus gridlock". I wish I could say that it was my cold that had kidnapped the aroma but,alas, it was not. On a whim I checked the expiry date of that Vick's Vaporub to find, shockingly, that it reached it's best before date in theyear 2000. Can you imagine??!!! Clearly the lack of aroma had nothing to do with my cold. Maybe I don't even have a cold? No, wait, I know that's not true - all that off-putting coughing proves that. Whew! You know what the worst part of this story is? The worst part is that even though it was long expired and had no smell, I still slapped it on my chest hoping for some of that lovely heat I so desperately wanted to feel. No, you don't have to ask the question. Yes, I did actually go to nursing school.