Month: August 2023

A Taste of Canada: Getting Tick-ed

August 29, 2023

I contracted Lyme disease and take anti-biotics to get rid of it, doxycycline tablets for twenty-eight day. Not sure when a tick, those nasty tiny little bugs, gorged on my blood but suspect that when I cycled on a rail-to-trail over a month ago and stopped in the tall grass to relieve myself, a tick may have found me. That night my foot began to hurt, swelled up and was hot to touch, and the next day I could not put any weight on it.

The pain went away in a few days when I decided to see a nurse practitioner to find out what it could have been. She examined the foot but came up with no conclusions, so I ignored it. In retrospect, that was a mistake.

A month later, I had the worst shakes of my life, my teeth were chattering. The following days I had become extremely tired, moved like molasses, and lost my appetite to such an extent that I lost six pounds in a few days, symptoms of Lyme disease. On the positive side, if you can call it positive, I had no headache and fever. And then a rash appeared on my belly, another symptom of Lyme disease, that I was not aware of that time.

The symptoms convinced me to go back to my clinic and this time I saw another nurse practitioner who gave me a thorough examination and sent me for blood tests, including Lyme disease. But impatient to wait for the test results which would take numerous days in the labs, I admitted myself to emergency at the local hospital knowing that it could be a long wait, hours, to see an emergency doctor. But I would have the results immediately at the hospital emergency department.

Enterng the emergency room, a large sign welcomed me announcing that the waiting time to see a doctor is five hours, measuring at least four feet by four feet,. OK. Then I looked around and absorbed the cacophony generated by dozens of people in the room when a middle-aged and heavy person in a tennis outfit rolled around a wheelchair with, I think, his wife in it, who moaned loudly about the pain that she could not bear any more and wished to be dead. The scene reminded me of a lunatic asylum. Across from where I sat was a youngish fellow with a neck brace. Some people stood and shifted their feet back and forth; there were not enough chairs. The loudspeaker called my name and nurses triaged me asking about the reason for my presence here. I explained that I thought I had Lyme desease. The nurses took copious notes while measuring my blood pressure and pulse rate. And then I returned to the waiting room.

I observed the people around me and was struck by the diversity, i.e., including all shades of brown to black. Is this the composition of Ottawa today? Or are these the people who have no family doctors and forced to attend the hospital emergency room for health care? But then the loudspeaker called my name again for registration; I had to provide my address and other information, information that the hospital already possessed. During this time a little girl, perhaps three years old, held by her father, was crying constantly, adding to the loud buzz in the emergency room. This whole experience was emotionally taxing on me and imagined that there were people here who have had much more serious problems than I had. But Lyme disease can be very serious in the long run if not treated.

But after five hours, as announced on the large bulletin board entering the emergency room, my name was called again, and I entered a large room with a dozen or so examining rooms around a central area where the emergency doctors and nurses worked and consulted with each other. A nurse directed me to a small waiting room that I shared with a young teenager. He moaned about how hungry he was, having been here for eight hours with no food. I asked him if he would be picked up by his parents, when finished. Or were his parents waiting in the outer room and could get him some food at the food outlet next door? No, he said, his parents were not there, he will take the bus home after his stay at the emergency room experience. That surprised me and felt sorry for him.

It was close to midnight when an examining room had become available, and I was invited to enter it. I did not have to wait long, an emergency doctor came to see me and in ten minutes, prescribed an antibiotic for the blood test that showed a high count of white blood cells and another drug for the rash. And that was it; he said he did not know about Lyme disease.

Leaving after midnight after a seven hour stay tired me out. And I found it emotionally taxing observing all the people in the emergency room suffering from some ailment. But the simple recommendations of the emergency doc soothed me somewhat even though he did not confirm I had Lyme disease or even identify my illness. 

The bombshell came the next week when the the blood test the nurse practitioner ordered showed I had Lyme disease. I had been tick-ed. And I received the typical treatment: twenty-eight days of taking doxycycline.

I learned a few lessons from this experience. A conscientious nurse practitioner may provide excellent service. An emergency doctor treats obvious symptoms and may not search for root causes. And although I find emergency rooms interesting, I prefer to avoid them in the future.  When I go for a walk in the country now, I wear long pants and long-sleeve shirts and tuck my pant legs into my socks to make sure no nasty ticks can access my body for a blood-sucking treat.

Monetizing Past Grievances

August 8, 2023

I attended a concert, with fifty people in the audience, in Collingwood, ON, as part of the porch festival on July 26, in 2023. The concert triggered my thoughts on monetizing past grievances.

The porch festival evolved in response to Covid when artists could not perform in closed venues. Instead, people with a porch on their houses and a backyard welcomed artists to play on their porch to an audience in their yard, sitting on camp chairs.

Quammie Williams gave the concert, with Tiki Mercury-Clarke and a local bass player. Quammie, an accomplished drummer, singer, actor and consultant on culture – he was Director of Culture in Barrie, ON – sang and drummed African “resistance songs” with Tiki, who played the piano and ssng in an impressive tonal range.

As usual today at these venues, the MC started out by thanking the Ashininaabi (indigenous) people for letting use of their land for this concert. I am not sure what the homeowner thought about that.

Quammie and Tiki included history talks about slavery in between songs during the concert. Although I heard many of these stories before, I came to listen to jazz and began to get restless as the performance went on with lengthy stories. Quammie’s stories about the emotional toll of slavery on Black people were draining and should have been told with more anger and shouting. But no. Quammie quietly explained the stories behind the “resistance songs”, making his message of slavery even more powerful.

I looked around and beyond the three black artists on the porch, there was not one black person in the audience. But the audience lapped up the talk and the music and gave the performers a standing ovation. Whether the performers meant it or not, the underlying message was unmistakable: white folks were the slave owners creating hardship for Blacks. In my offbeat way of thinking, I thought the enthusiastic clapping was almost an exorcism for the well-heeled senior crowd, consciously or unconsciously, cleansing their souls of having embraced slavery in the past.  

I really enjoyed the music and my negative reaction towards being told to be grateful to the Anishinaabi and being responsible for slavery were fading, when I read that the Black Class Action Secretariat (BCAS in Toronto) sued the Government of Canada for past discrimination of black civil servants for C$2.5 billion in the court system.  I do not question that discrimination has occurred against Blacks in the Canadian federal civil service and wish it had not happened. The government should have solved this issue in the past. What concerned me was that past grievances have become issues for restitution, always resulting in monetary awards.

The mother of all these restitutions is the “reconciliation” process with Indigenous people in Canada. It started out with “reparations” for the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, that ended up with a C$5 billion settlement. Other claims followed. To date, over C$60 billion have been awarded to indigenous people by the government (there were circa 1.2 million Indigenous people in Canada in 2021). And other claims are in the pipeline. Compare this number to the Canadian defense budget that was C$26 billion in 2021.

I am afraid this trend to sue the government for past grievances will continue and the grievances will become weirder and weirder. Any minority group, ethnic, religious, or other, could organize a class action claim and sue the government for damages. Many may be legitimate, but I wonder if we should consider whether grievances to historical events should be compensated. How far back in history should we go to fix past wrongs made by previous generations?

Monetization of past grievances is a dangerous and costly trend and should be stopped. Why should the current taxpayers pay for injustices committed by previous generations?