Session 2
Today Cherie came with me to my appointment. I told her I really want to save the support until later but it was great to have her come and see what it is like at the Odette Centre. We left for a 4;20 appointment on the first real snow day of the winter and I parked at Sunnybrook because of the wind and slush. No walking down the hill from Sunnybrook on this day. I put an hour and half on the meter in the parking lot assuming we’d be a bit late.

It was a whole new experience from my first session. On that day in the morning everything was on time . This time we checked in and sat down in the Middlefield Atrium (the big waiting area and I noticed a digital sign board. After saying welcome to the Centre it began announcing the delays on the various machines. Mine, Syn1, was the lowest at 40 minutes. Cherie had a choir practice at 7 so we were immediately into calculating the latest she could stay. She had to go home and then downtown and the roads were a mess. Also my parking payment may have been optimistic. We settled in anyway and Cherie bought herself a date square and me a coffee. She’s a date square connoisseur. It was good to have her company The coffee was a calculated risk. I needed a full bladder but I was drinking a diuretic and if the wait was too long I could wind up drained. I started in a Sudoku I found in the Star among a collection of papers, one Cherie had already done earlier.

While I was sitting waiting I found myself ruminating about the Olympics. I’ve kept my distance from the Olympics I think because I have been repelled by the hype, especially the Own the Podium slogan. People have had difficulty understanding my distancing and I’ve tried to explain it. Some of it goes way back to my childhood and growing up poor. I am hypersensitive to people puffing themselves up and making fools of themselves when other people are privately sneering. I feel like we are doing that as a country. I see that we have already had unprecedented success and I am not opposed to subsidizing the opportunity for elite athletes to compete. I guess I see our pretensions taking away from our athletes’ successes because somehow we were supposed to do more. With hockey it is a whole different thing. I yearn to cheer for our hockey team and will probably wind up doing so in spite of my enormous distaste for what the NHL has done to hockey. Enough ranting.

Not long after 5 we’re called into the inner waiting area for Syn1, a lot less glamorous than the Atrium. I’d seen it but Cherie hadn’t. We started recalculating drop dead departure times for her and I fretted about the possibility of a parking ticket. We decide to ignore the possibility thinking the snow would deter the attendants and possibly make it hard for them to see times on tickets. After I change into my gowns and returned to my seat Cherie let me know I had just mooned all the waiting patients and supporters when I bent to put my clothes in the locker. The gowns aren’t that long and mine was pulled up in the back. We had a laugh and I gave her permission to tell the story to friends.

A woman a few seats down struck up a conversation with a stranger, the daughter of a patient. She told her story about her lung cancer, a hard one including her husband having a stroke in the midst of her illness. She talked compulsively showing a deep need to get her story out. She had never smoked and clearly felt ripped off by her illness. I found myself wavering between empathy and dread that she would talk to me if the other woman left. I knew without asking that Cherie felt the same way. The woman seemed bitter, almost defeated. Sure enough the other woman left and she did start talking to us. Faced with our polite distant “Canadian” response she gave up and soon went into be treated. I wasn’t proud of myself but I was relieved.

Time dragged by. Sometime after 5:30 Cherie had to leave. About 6 I was called in and we did our thing. I learned a way out that avoided the Atrium and led straight to the front exit. These little successes are important in the face of so much loss of control. Outside the weather was awful and the ground covered in slush. I had a few anxious moments figuring out where to catch the bus down Bayview and settled on crossing the street. I got home at 8 and ate a little. I knew I had to go out and move snow but watched a little TV first. The unfinished painting in Patrick’s room called me as well. At 9:30 I went out and cranked up the snow blower. The snow was wet and heavy and I had to push it out of the grooves in the driveway to get the blower to pick it up. Cherie arrived with car and I waved her off until I cleared the drive. Then I got into it and did the laneway out to the corner, all my sidewalk, and the walk into our house and our immediate and wonderful neighbours to the south. I took pleasure in the hard work and in felling virtuous. Of course I wondered if the continuing treatments would start to make it hard for me to do this kind of labour.