Oh Canada

Being a young Concordia graduate in Canada means that I must do my part to keep up the reputation of my alma mater. Concordia is famous for its politically charged atmosphere- and its students reputed for speaking (or screaming out) their political views. In these rare moments where I contemplate for a moment how lucky we are to be in Quebec, and in Canada, I feel I need to acknowledge them.

Fred waited about five months for his new kidney/pancreas set. Our friend Ethan waited two years for his kidney (also in Montreal). In Ontario, patients wait up to eight years for a kidney transplant and have to be on dialysis before even being put on the transplant list. Fred was fortunate that he is an AB blood type, making him a universal recipient. His age and his diabetes allowed him to move up the list quickly, saving him the ordeal of undergoing dialysis. On top of that, the Royal Victoria Hospital here in Montreal happens to be the only hospital in Eastern Canada that performs pancreas transplants. Had we been anywhere else, we would have had the added stress of flying here for the procedure and dealing with hotel bills for his family and myself, not to mention the absense of friends around us.

Every day this week I have contemplated how fortunate we are not to be living in the US. The base cost of Fred's procedure in the US is broken down as follows:

• Procurement of organs: 118,000$
• Hospital stay: 70,400$
• Physician: 20,500$
• Testing: 12,400$
• Follow-up: 40,800$
• One year of Immuno-suppresant drugs: 31,000$
• Total: 293,100$

Cost to us for Fred's procedure in Canada:

0$

• Cost of Immuno-suppresants in the US over the next fifty years: 1,550,000$

• Cost of Immuno-suppresants in Canada over the next fifty years: 35,000$
• Canadian citizens pay no more than 700$ per year for prescription drugs
• The Immuno-suppresants cost 2,000$ per month, charged to the Canadian government
  

As much as we bitch and complain about our less than perfect system, we need to remind ourselves that the grass is not always greener. It almost makes me wish I weren't spending Canada Day helping people move (yet again).

Mommy, Where Did My Pancreas Come From?

I am not a doctor. My experience with medicine is limited to repeated ankle injuries and an addiction to ER. Yet here I sit, on the third floor of the Ross Pavillion at the Royal Victoria Hospital wondering what could possibly be taking so long. The whole thing seems fairly straight forward to me. Unplug a kidney, plug the new one in. Unplug a pancreas, plug the new one in. I suppose I shouldn't be basing my expectations on a TV show where every problem is resolved within an hour with room for commercials.

The phone rang yesterday afternoon as Fred and I sat down to watch an episode of Lost. I could hear the calm voice of his nurse making small talk and I went back to watching TV. She sounded far too calm for this to be THE CALL. After a few minutes, she revealed that they may have a donor and we should stay close to the phone. The blood type was a match, but they needed to run more tests to be sure. She told us to be ready to come in later that night, likely around 11pm. I checked my watch. Nine hours to kill. Fred hung up the phone and we both burst into tears. Though our wait has been relatively short, it has seemed as though the surgery would never actually take place. We collected ourselves and started to clean up the apartment- the one thing we were capable of doing. We began to make calls- he called his mom as I called his dad. Then his sister, brother-in-law, and my dad. I emailed Thelma. We braved the wind and rain to stock up at the pharmacy down the street, and returned home to pack Fred's hospital bag.

Claire, Matt, Christine, Michael and his mom turned up at dinner time to hang out while we anxiously waited for the call. At 9pm, the phone rang and we frantically rushed out the door, arriving at the hospital a few minutes later. Again, they told us nothing was for sure. We still had to wait to be sure the organs were good. At 11am, fourteen hours and countless tests later, Fred went into the operating room. Matt, Claire, Christine, Michael, Fred's mom, dad, sister and myself had spent the entire night at the hospital- eagerly awaiting the verdict. At 7:30pm, they rolled him out of the operating room to the ICU. We were told that the surgeon would soon be by to brief us on the operation. We waited forty minutes, but no one came. I snuck through the steel doors leading to surgical ICU and crept carefully to Fred's room- expecting someone to pounce on me for entering. No one said anything- so I stood and waited at the door to Fred's private room- I could hear his nurse talking to him, and Fred was responding in garbled words. We all took turns poking our heads in to say hi and the nurse told us the surgery went well. At 10:30pm, we decided to let him (and us) get some sleep.

The morning after.
Surprisingly this is not the worst Fred has looked in the morning.

I dragged myself from the comfort of my uncomfortable mattress the next morning, showered and prepared to return to the hospital. Just as I was walking out the door, my phone rang and Fred's voice demanded to know where I was. I anxiously ran out the door- every minute of the half hour trek seeming like days. I was excited that Fred was already capable of bitching at me. On arriving at the hospital, we were briefed on his condition. His brand new kidney had already started working, as had his pancreas. He was in alot of pain, but was alert and quickly recovering. We discovered that his surgeon had been the only one in the hospital the night before and was responsible for the transplants of a few different patients that night. Good for us since he happened to be the only surgeon specialising in pancreas transplants in Eastern Canada... not so good for the guy that got the liver that night. We soon found out that Fred had been passed over several times in his wait for new organs. His doctor was determined to find the closest possible match for him- in age and tissue. As a result, the match on his new kidney/pancreas is very close to perfect.

We have been so lucky it's unbelievable. For so long, both of us have wondered when our luck was going to turn around and it seems as though it finally has (as I knock furiously on wood). Fred is doing extremely well. The efficiency of the kidneys is measured by the level of creatonin found in the blood- the higher the level, the less effective the kidneys. Before the surgery, his creatonin was over 400- this afternoon it was 98 (better than average). After the surgery, he was receiving 35 units of insulin an hour to keep his blood sugar regulated. This afternoon he was down to half a unit per hour. I can't explain, can't put into words how overwhelming the last week has been. Anxiety, fear, guilt, joy and hope have all been around this week. While Fred, his family and his friends anxiously waited for the confirmation that the surgery would happen, we were informed that the family of the donor were still in the hospital. The donor was young, close to our age and I imagined how their family must be feeling. We'll never know who that person was, or anything about them. It is absolutely unbelievable that a complete stranger saved his life- and we'll never be able to explain to them how thankful we are.

I hope that all of you have signed your donor cards and will allow your final good deed to be the longest lasting, most heroic and powerful thing that you've ever done. We have the rest of our lives to be thankful for the donor that allowed Fred and I to build our lives together.

Two days later. Green means morphine.
Thank you, Mr or Ms Mysterious for saving my Freddy.

Montreal: City of Design

Old Anglican church on Côte des Neiges-
the peeling of the bells can still be heard throughout the community

The people at UNESCO have announced what all of Canada has known for so long. Montreal is a uniquely beautiful city. As celebrations for the 40th anniversary of Expo 67 kick off, Montreal was officially declared a UNESCO City of Design, along with Berlin and Buenos Aires. With summer upon us, I've promised myself to really appreciate what we have here. Despite having spent last summer immersed in a different culture and language, the summer came and went without my usual summer activities. Seoul being a rather concrete city, my summer lacked lazing about on the grass and listening to the drums at the tam-tams. This summer I have decided to do my best to record the beautiful city I live in, and remember how it blew me away when I first moved here.

The politics of Montreal are inescapable.

I have also come to the realization that I am quite detached from the Montreal theatre community. When first I arrived in Montreal, I was launched smack into the middle of the mess that is the anglo theatre scene, but as I distanced myself from the Fringe Festival and other grassroots events, I've lost touch. This, of course, makes it difficult when I am occasionally hit by a stroke of genius and realize that everyone I know in theatre has made the move to Toronto (damn you, Toronto!!). So last night Fred and I hopped on the Metro to St-Laurent & Ste-Catherine (the sketchiest corner in the city) and strolled as quickly as we could to Théâtre Ste-Catherine. The theatre was bought by a young Calgarian who moved to Montreal around the same time I did. Though it doesn't yet have the same feel as Calgary's Loose Moose Theatre, it's a start. A few of the actors are imports from the Loose Moose and trained with Keith Johnstone- the god of the improv. world. Some of the skits were good, others were bad, but it didn't really matter. The audience was more engaged and more involved than I've seen in a theatre in a long time. Best of all, it inspired to get my ass back into the theater.

Alliance of Artist Communities

I was super excited to stumble across this site. For years, I've contemplated checking myself into the Banff Centre for the Arts and creating something really amazing. But that takes advanced planning and forethought and we don't get along so well. As I've begun to write more and have spent more time away from the stage, I really that I need to build myself a community. Writing I can do on my own, but acting takes a team of people. I have great trouble auditioning for films and plays because I have a deep and unsettling feeling that I am about to become involved in a bad project. And I'm usually right. Unfortunately, like any field, there are far more half-baked artists than really talented, intelligent and creative people. The discovery of a worldwide artistic community sponsoring internships and residencies is really encouraging. I can't wait to further investigate this...

Stephen Harper is Embarrassing Us!

The Clean Air Act is a total embarrasment to Canada. Our country is not doing enough to neutralize climate change. Please, please, please- click on the link below and send a letter to Harper. The message is already written for you! Just type your name and click send- that's it, that's all.


http://www.avaaz.org/en/harperdotherightthing/

What does David Suzuki think?

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/latestnews/dsfnews04270701.asp

Reuters reports Canada receives international "Fossil" award for misleading countries on climate change:

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39038/story.htm

What does Al Gore think?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070430/ap_on_re_ca/gore_canada_warming

Free Hugs in Korea

Feeling that I had been slacking in recent days with my yoga practice, I arrived at the studio early on Friday to properly prepare myself for class. I lay my mat down in the center of the room, stretched out on my back and closed my eyes. I was sweating before the class even started, but was quite successfully focusing on my breathing. As the instructor walked into the room, I opened my eyes and stood up. I was shocked to find that the three people closest to me had laid their mats painfully close to mine. I was annoyed, but class was beginning so there was nothing I could do. The day before my mirror view had been blocked by some girl who seemed intent on always stretching just as high and deep as I did to ensure that I would have the worst possible view. Today, all was well during the hour long standing series, but the last half hour on the floor was a test to my patience. The girl to my right, sporting a black t-shirt with the message `It's all about me', which she seems to believe is ironic, though I suspect that the shirt was probably a gift from an ex-boyfriend with a real message. Over the next half hour, I learned that in fact, it was all about her. She nearly kicked me in the face at least four times during various stretches and I spent the rest of the class flicking, slapping and catching her feet as they came flying at my face. Buddy next to me must have recently broken up with his girlfriend (perhaps Miss Self-Centered?), because he seemed quite lonely. He was cuddled up so close to me that I couldn't properly stretch, and I had to continuously move his hands off my mat. Mr Shaved Head at my feet seemed to have a foot fetish, as he took every possible opportunity to fondle and play with them. I kept snapping my feet closed on his hands and kicking them away from me. By the end of class, I was worn out from defending my space and dealing with the 'Plateau People' (a special breed of Montrealer that attends McGill on their parents dime, lives in an overpriced apartment in what is sarcastically referred to as the ghetto).

There are a lot of things that piss me off on any given day. Part of the reason for starting yoga classes was to help me with this, but it can be very difficult to relax in a room with sixty sweaty, tired, cranky people believe it or not. All this to say, I came across this clip the other day, and it seems that Free Hugs is a recent sort of flash-mob, performance art thing that is happening all over the world. This particular video is shot in Hyehwa (the area where my play went up), Seoul. I thought it was beautiful, and no, it didn't piss me off.

PS- Yes, I know this video is there twice, but when your screen looks like this ?????????????????????, it's a little difficult to figure out how to change it. If you like, watch them both simultaneously and pretend that your computer does picture and picture. Or you can imagine that you're at Future Shop looking at all those TVs that play the same thing...