Getting shot

So what’s the real story with the H1N1 flu anyway?

I’ve been trying to make an informed decision as to whether or not I should get the vaccination against it, but the stories are all so conflicting. I just don’t know what to believe.

I have heard that if you are born before 1957, you only have a very small chance of catching H1N1, so to me, that says that the shot would not necessarily be worth it. But I wasn’t born before 1957 anyway, so this argument doesn’t apply to me.

I have also heard that it’s far more severe in young adults 18 – 30, an age group where most of the deaths are occurring. Well, that’s not me either.

BUT … older people (presumably those of us past 30 but born after 1957) are apparently having very severe symptoms should they become ill. A larger proportion of this group is ending up in hospital and dying. I guess that’s where I come in.

There is a priority system in place right now. The risks have been evaluated by the powers that be (according to which information, though?), and only certain groups of people can get their vaccinations at the moment. I am not in any of those risk groups. I am not a child aged between 6 months and 5 years, someone with a chronic illness (particularly asthma), pregnant, a health care professional, or someone who lives with or works with any of the listed groups. So I would have to wait, in any case.

I do have a number of friends and acquaintances who do fit into one of those risk groups and who have had their H1N1 shot. Every single one of them reports that their arm hurt like hell. Some of them had huge welts, some didn’t, but all said their arm ached really badly for up to a week. Some couldn’t lift their arm for several days, some couldn’t even bear to have their arm touched. A couple of people actually had noticeable flu symptoms for a few days and “felt like shit”, to quote one friend. Everyone who normally has the seasonal flu shot claimed that this shot was much, much worse.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it?

Now, I have never had a flu shot, despite them being available for free for anybody working in the public education system here. And I have only had the flu twice in the past 23 years. I am certain of this because I know I had it when I was pregnant with DD, who is now 22, and I was unable to take any meds. (Fortunately, I really only had one day where I was flat in bed.) The other time was in February 2002, when I missed a whole week of work. I am certain of this one as well because once I could crawl out of bed, I lay on the couch in front of the television watching the Winter Olympics from Salt Lake City, USA. Vancouver is almost the same time zone as Salt Lake City, so I watched it all live. (Do I remember much of it? Just the Canadian men’s and women’s hockey teams winning the gold medals. Not much else – I was sick, dammit!)

Well, based on information I have gleaned thus far, I think I’m leaning towards not having the vaccination.

But the Winter Olympics are coming to Vancouver in February 2010, so maybe I should. Seems as good a reason as any.

No rest for the weary

I woke up this morning with an ache in my nose. Well, it was actually in my sinuses. I took some sinus medication and carried on getting ready for work.

The medication apparently did nothing. The pain spread to my forehead and around my left eye. I had a small breakfast and felt faintly like vomiting. Which should have been my first clue, really.

I went to work. The pain got worse. I took another sinus pill. I started to see faint lights at the periphery of my vision. Ah, I thought. I have a migraine.

I told the office staff that I had to to go home while I could still drive. I spoke to the other teachers with whom I usually work on Wednesdays. Then I went home.

Normally, when I have a migraine (admittedly not very often), a couple of Tylenol and a good nap works for me. I’m lucky that way, I know. I’ve only ever been really incapacitated by a migraine maybe once or twice in my whole life, but I know many people to whom this happens quite regularly, like once a month or so. I know people who have very strong prescription medication for their migraines. I also know a couple of people who don’t take their medication in time and end up suffering for an entire day and a half.

Anyway, when I approached my house (which is actually a triplex), half the driveway was blocked by one of those lift trucks. There were several signs posted along the driveway stating “Caution. Men Working Above.” There were hoses snaking all over the place. There were a couple of pressure washers parked near the house itself. Oh, I thought. Now I remember. Today is the day they start cleaning all the gutters, exterior siding, and windows. With pressure washers. Noisy pressure washers.

So I squiggled my car around all the cleaning paraphernalia into my garage, went into my house and popped my two Tylenol. However, a nap will be out of the question today. It’s just too noisy. But at least the Tylenol has done its job and although I’m still feeling a bit fuzzy two hours later, the pain has abated.

I guess I’ll just lie on the couch in front of the fire and gaze out my newly-cleaned living room windows, listening to the dulcet tones of pressure washers.

All fall down

I’ve got two friends whose lives are simply falling apart around them, and I don’t know how to help or support either of them, other than listening to their sad stories.

One friend has a teenage daughter who is almost completely off the rails. She recognized that there was something “off” with the girl from the time she was about two, and has had her to counsellors and therapists and specialists and who knows who else. My friend has read enormous amounts, talked to untold numbers of people, questioned her and her husband’s parenting abilities over and over and over again. Still, their daughter lies, cheats, steals, makes unreasonable demands, often refuses to attend school, has huge tantrums, has been violent. About the only thing she hasn’t yet gotten involved with is drugs – and we’re all praying that doesn’t happen.

Because pray is about all we can do at this point. The girl has been diagnosed with several mental illnesses (back when she cooperated enough to go to doctors with her parents), but so far has refused all treatment. She needs serious intervention, and her parents, like most parents, are willing to do whatever it takes to help her get better.

It hurts my heart, it does. Part of me just cries with my friend, and part of me wants to shake that kid so hard that her eyeballs fall out. Another part of me wants to hug that kid forever and tell her it will be all right, because I know that deep down, she is in a painful hell all her own. And yet another part of me whispers, “How did you get so lucky with your own daughter? Can you imagine if this was DD? But thank goodness it’s not.”

Then my other friend is watching her marriage crumble rapidly as her husband of over twenty-five years has what appears to be a giant mid-life crisis. Out of the blue one day he told her that he no longer loved her the way she loved him, and he moved out of their bedroom. She never saw it coming, of course, went into shock, and has spent the past several months crying rivers of tears. He brushes off her attempts to talk about it or he rages when she dares to speak to him or else he simply says, in an exhausted manner, “I don’t know what I want.” He no longer participates in their family life, and even if he had previously agreed to attend a social function with my friend, shortly before it’s time to go, he either informs her that he is going out with some male buddy and will most definitely not be accompanying her, or he simply disappears without even a note. He once disappeared for several days, and only returned home, furious, when my friend left the last of many frantic messages on his phone, saying that if she or one of their kids didn’t hear from him within two hours, she was calling the police and reporting him as a missing person.

My friend has been seeing a counsellor and has rallied her friends and family around her, and from all accounts, everyone agrees that he is the guilty party here, that it appears as if he has had a complete change of personality. There have been musings about a possible mental or physical illness causing such a change, but the man in question insists he’s just fine, that he’s been “thinking about things for a while”, that there’s no way he’s going to see a doctor or a counsellor anyway.

My friend loves her husband very much and values her marriage and her family life tremendously. She will fight to keep what she’s got. She is willing to work with him to improve whatever he believes needs improvement. But she is being stymied at every turn. She is being forced into a corner. She is losing energy. She is so, so sad. She doesn’t know how this will end, and it’s far from over right now.

And I listen to her, too. I cry with her and offer what little advice I have. Part of me is furiously indignant on her behalf: “You bastard! How dare you treat her and your kids like that! If you want out, go! Quit your whining, get off your ass and just go!” Another part of me says, “How could she not see it coming? There are always signs, small ones, true, but if she was observant, she would have seen them. She wasn’t looking, she was too complacent, too self-satisfied.” And there is that tiny guilty whisper deep inside: “I did this to my Ex. I left him. Now I see the other side, and I can only hope that I didn’t hurt him as much as my friend is being hurt now.”

Sobering thoughts for a Saturday morning.

To serve and protect?

PG lives across the street from a neighbourhood pub. It’s a pretty nice place, with good food, and we go there often.

Unfortunately, so do a number of what appears to be homeless people. While they don’t exactly patronize the pub, they do pop into the liquor store that is attached to the pub, and pick up whatever they can get cheaply. Then they go outside, sit on the cement ledge around the corner of the pub entrance, and proceed to drink their day away. Illegally. In public. One person is invariably joined by a few more, sometimes with shopping carts full of cans and bottles (or even all their personal belongings), sometimes with a portable stereo system, usually with more liquor. They get progressively louder and louder, and nastier and nastier. They are not always there, but they are there often enough that they are annoying.

There are a lot of seniors who live in this area, and I can imagine that they would be disturbed by all this going on on the street in front of their homes. I don’t like it, and I don’t even live there (nor am I a senior). It’s hard to walk past these people drinking on the sidewalk, because they end up taking up a great deal of walking space and harassing passersby for cigarettes or money. They also swear a lot, and if my own mother is anything to go by, seniors most emphatically do NOT like that.

A few days ago, I arrived at PG’s place in the middle of the afternoon. As I got out of my car, my ears were assaulted by the tune “Barbie Girl” by Aqua on some street person’s portable stereo. That’s an inane song at the best of times, but to hear it at full blast on a hot summer day is unbearable. PG was up on his balcony, gazing at the owner of the stereo and his buddies, who had obviously been drinking out there for quite a while and were also yelling and swearing at each other over the sound of the music. I yelled up at PG, “How long has this been going on?”

He yelled back, “A while!”

They eventually turned the stereo off and moved on.

The next day, PG and I were returning to his place from a walk up the street for brunch, and this time there were two men and a woman sitting there on the ledge outside the pub. The men were clearly well on their way to being tanked, and the woman seemed to be trying to reason with them. They were all really loud. We gingerly stepped past them and made our way towards his apartment. One of the other apartment residents, an older man, was leaning over his ground-floor balcony railing, watching the proceedings. He and PG talked briefly about how this drinking in public just wasn’t right, and how noisy it always got, and how disturbing it was to the neighbourhood. They agreed that it wasn’t the pub itself, it was these people who seemed to feel that it was okay to sit on the street and drink and disturb the peace.

When PG and I went inside, we watched as the two men began yelling louder and louder at each other, while the woman tried to calm them down. One of the men shoved her, so the other decided to try to strangle him. The woman tried to pull them apart. Fortunately, they did little damage to each other and soon let go and settled down somewhat. Then they began to swear and shout at each other again. Again, the woman tried to keep them apart and calm them down.

In the meantime, PG called the police.

We kept watching, waiting for a cop car to show up. There was more shouting and swearing, but the men refrained from further physical contact, and the woman persuaded them to go somewhere else. Then it was quiet. Twenty minutes later, not one, but two cop cars slowly cruised by. Good timing, officers!

I think PG should keep calling the police every time he notices people out there drinking. I understand that these may be people who are somewhat down on their luck right now, but that still doesn’t give them the right to illegally drink on the street and upset the residents with their loudness and off-colour language. And the police can’t move them along if they don’t know about it. And if the seniors are too nervous to call, well, PG certainly isn’t.

Would it do anything for those unfortunate street people, like help them find homes or find steady jobs or get them off alcohol or get them treatment for their mental issues? No. But it might help the people in this neighbourhood sleep a little more securely at night. And sometimes that’s all you can do.

Lagging behind …

Jet lag sucks. Really a lot. Especially when you live in the Pacific Time Zone, regardless of whether it’s daylight savings or standard time.

For the past three weeks, I’ve been living in a time zone ten hours ahead of what I am used to. Going there was just fine, since we arrived in the early evening. We were able to just settle in the hotel room and crash, then wake up (fairly) normally the next morning.

But coming home is more and more of an adjustment every time. We arrived home late in the evening Pacific Time, so you would think that after being up for around 24 hours straight, I would have hit the bed and slept the sleep of the dead.

No.

I awoke at 1:30 am. Then again at 4:30 am. At which point I realized that I was not going to beat this immediately, so I got up, went downstairs and made coffee. DD arrived downstairs shortly afterward, as discombobulated as I.

I got through the day, all the way to 10 pm. I shall sleep well now, I thought, as I plumped my pillows and nestled in.

No.

I awoke at 5:30 am. Better, but not the best. I got up, went downstairs and made coffee. DD joined me shortly afterwards.

Again, I got through the day, but now I was noticing all sorts of aches and pains and even some dizziness. This makes sense, I said to myself as I crawled into bed at 10 pm, you are still recovering from the time change. And also, don’t forget, self, that you put your back out somehow while in Crete, so although it is better, you still do need to visit the chiropractor. So make that appointment tomorrow – and have a good sleep tonight.

No.

I awoke at 6:30 am. Again, some improvement noted, but more is necessary. And again, more aches and pains. But this time, I was able to drift back to sleep until 9 am. Which may not have been a good idea, since my back is aching even more. (Yes, the chiropractor appointment has been made for later this afternoon.) DD, on the other hand, went downstairs and made the coffee at 6 am. Which also meant that by the time I got myself to the kitchen, there wasn’t much left – and it was getting cold already.

And so the past several days have gone for me. Maybe I’ll get a restful sleep tonight? Maybe the back adjustment will help?

Jet lag sucks. Or did I already say that? I can’t remember things really well right now …