At home or not at home?

At home or not at home?

Jan 1, 2007

We arrived into the Vancouver airport and were picked up by Dhalie's sister. We drove straight to the Emergency of Vancouver General Hospital, who were fortunately waiting for us with a bed/space. Up till then, everything had been happening so fast - from Mandalay to Yangon, with the quick, kind medical service in Yangon; then from Myanmar (Burma) to Bangkok, with the amazing, beautiful and lightning-fast service in Bangkok.

When we got to ER in Vancouver, everything ground to what seemed to us to be a crawl. We instantly felt so lucky to have a "private" room to ourselves - this actually only amounted to a small space "fenced off" with a curtain, in the midst of many more of the same, with other emergency patients coming and going for the entire 36 hours that we were there.

At first we thought that things were going to move quickly. After a good chunk of time we realized that this wasn't the case, and thinking that we were basically there to quickly see the neuro-oncologist who would say "yes, make appointments with your chemo and radiation oncologists" we almost left. We were standing up to leave and one of the nurses pointed out that the neuro-oncologist had arrived and was about to see us - so we sat back down. He came over and let us know that he had looked at the MRI from Bangkok, and we were going to have to do - and i call this "door #3" - surgery! Again! For the 2nd time! This is the same surgery as i was told two years ago would only happen once. We were surprised at that. We were told that it was important for the surgery to happen sooner rather than later, and so we should stay in ER as that was the "fast track" for the surgery - if we went home and made an appointment for the surgery we would not be able to have it done any time soon, and arguably not soon enough. So stay in ER we did. Our (Dhalie's & my) space in ER quickly turned into a very nice space for us - we could sit well there, read to ourselves or to each other, and enjoy our conversation and our space together.

After 36 hours of waiting for a space/bed in the neuro-sciences ward, we finally moved up there. But you couldn't say that there was a space waiting, it was still full up there - they informed us that i was going to be their "hallway patient"! After some "persuasion" by Dhalie they moved my bed over by a window in a room with 4 other spaces/beds. I spent a short time there before i invoked a 4hr "day pass" where i could head out in the world and come back within 4 hours. The first thing i did was go and get a haircut, even before going home. As we drove down Broadway i looked out the window and it was such an odd feeling - it sort of felt like the world was "out there" and i was "in here". None of this city that we drove through was mine for the living, i was just there temporarily, and soon i would be gone back to the hospital, which is where i had to be.

When we got back to the hospital 4 hrs later we found that i'd been moved to a real bed in the ward, which was nice. Through the next several days i got out on a few more 4hr day-passes, which would basically involve me coming home for that time. One of the times involved many Vipassana friends coming over and we had a really nice group sit and visit. There were group sits at the hospital as well, again with many people joining. That room/space/spot that i had was again a really good spot for us, felt strong to us, and i was again so grateful to have a good space to be in while everything moved forward.