Blood Work

Blood Work and the Intricacies of Life

It’s a rainy day in January.  We actually had thunder and lightening during the night.  I parked my Cooper outside the Life Lab on University Ave for a routine blood test for my doctor.  I guess really its for me when you think about it.  The clinic is again packed.

I queue. Get my OHIP card at the ready, shed a brief tear for Obama Care, as I participate in a Canadian birth right of Universal Health Care.  But I’m not all political today, this is more about living in the moment.

What is life without your health.  Simple question but takes some deep thought to consider some of the angles to the question. Today, for me, routine, or as routine as it can be after a heart attack, an ablation, cartio-version and a minor stroke.  I look at the people around me young, middle aged and old but mainly like me older.  Everyone here for a test.  Concerned about their health.  Some, in one row, for x-rays and imaging, and my row for blood.

I sit on a  beige plastic chair and glance at the dirty floor, and observe the constant stream of people who walk and shuffle in and out.  An obese man on a cane, an obese woman with a walker, a mother with an infant in for imaging, an Old Order Mennonite woman wearing a winter cape leans against the wall, perhaps unwilling to commit to the process, a teenager wearing winter inappropriate clothing.    

After five minutes of waiting I retrieve my smart Phone from my inner pocket and continue reading a Longemire novel.  Sheriff Longemire is in the midst of solving a case using his common sense, forensics and his intuitive instincts. I reserve this book for just such occasions,waiting rooms, and am making remarkable progress. 

This lab is an example of private enterprise developing a single tier of service in an otherwise government run health care system; so naturally I wonder if the people working here are trained to the same degree, and are paid the same amount as their counter parts in hospitals and clinics.  I wonder why the lab looks so dirty and run down and why I have a slight feeling of being a refugee while sitting there.  It has a distinctive worn and shabby appearance with its temporary partition walls, worn linoleum floors and faded tiled ceilings.  

As I wait I am surprised by the number of people who have expired OHIP cards and who in turn are surprised that the cards have expired.

I was  told on my last visit that I could review my results online and also book appointments online to avoid waits.  I soon realized two things.  One, in reviewing my results apparently I lacked the necessary medical degree to make any sense of the results.  Two: it was useless making a reservation for an appointment as everything was booked weeks in advanced.

Waiting, I have a brief flashback to the Jinhua Regional Municipal Hospital in China where I was once an out patient.  There I also sat on cheap plastic chairs set in rows, situated in an unheated building where mother’s allowed their toddlers to pee on the floor.  

Flashback over..

I am directed to cubicle #5.  Asked to hang my coat roll up my sleeve and wait.  I’m hoping I will not get an infection, that the staff is well trained, the needles are clean...but then I stop and realize the spiral I am on. 

The nurse is fast and efficient.  I answer the questions correctly concerning, my name and by birth date. The blue rubber band wrapped around my upper arm helps pop my veins and arteries.  The needle goes in, the blood out.  I am then given a cup for a urine sample and directed towards the washroom.

Have you ever had to do this and really had no urgency, desire or ability at the moment to pee into a thimble sized container.  The directions on the cup and repeated on the washroom wall indicate that I should begin filling the “cup” midstream.  Not sure what that actually means, I’m afraid that if I waste any sample I won’t be able to fill the quota.  

Is their shame in under achieving at this stage.  I think magical thoughts of swimming pools, sprinklers and long road trips and before you can say DSM V  I proudly hold my warm sample up to the flickering fluorescent lights.  Fearful now of spillage and waste of the valuable contents I cap the cup and with as much clandestine subterfuge as I can muster place it in the metal container outside the washroom door and set it down besides seven similar containers.  A lovely sight.

Timely Comparisons

At fifty-five my father was told

that he could not shovel snow any more,

turning 66 I have the same directive.

He smoked a harsh cigarette-Daily Mail

which he rolled himself from the age of 14.

I smoked at 14 to be cool and stopped somewhere 

in university because it no longer was.

He drank red wine a concoction that be brewed himself

using Niagara grapes from my uncle’s vine yard.

I drink Corona with lime on those summer days that I barbecue

He died at 79.

Blue Cross Junction

an ache in my arm, 

harder to get out of the car, or in

arthritis in my wrist, 

haven’t played a sport in years,

aware of ice

I walk slowly toward the entrance

of the drug store 

a man, my senior by a decade

wears floods with white socks, 

he has thin white hair

I thought 

shit that’s me in ten years 

we each walked

to the prescription counter

by separate aisles

I got there first.

Last Time Ever

Have you ever gotten to the point

when

because of some quirkie anomaly concerning

your age

you have thought:

This is the last car I will ever buy.

This is the last suit I will ever wear.

This is the last trip I will ever make.

This is my last mortgage...

Yeah, I have

 and that’s the last time

I ever do that!