The PolyBlog

When reading resonates…

June 1 2021

I am part of what I call the PolyWogg Reading Challenge, a year-long “book club” with low intensity, lots of variety, and monthly themes. It’s nothing big, a small group of friends/family and myself, with me acting as ringleader. Part of the goal was to encourage me to read more and to have small discussions with others without being overwhelmed by the firehose approach of sites like GoodReads.

Most of the time, I read for simple pleasure. Many of my choices are murder mysteries — detectives, lawyers, detectives and lawyers, amateur sleuths, coroners, consulting detectives, etc. Way back in the ’90s, I followed an online discussion group and they had a list of rules for participation, one of which said that members were not allowed to discuss Anne Perry’s backstory. I didn’t even know who Anne Perry was, but she was the only author whose “history” was essentially verboten. I learned from others that she wrote historical fiction, and I didn’t know much about what that entailed. The closest I came was Sherlock Holmes, Murder in the Rue Morgue or Agatha Christie. Not “historical” in any sense other than it was previously contemporary fiction but written at the dawn of mystery writing.

I sought out some Anne Perry books to try one, and I tried a series with Charlotte and Thomas Pitt. Basic premise is 1860s England, Charlotte is not the typical society woman / lady, will never get married because no man is likely to take her opinionated self, etc. Thomas is a detective who befriends her. Joint sleuthing leads to affection to love to marriage, etc. I enjoyed the series and some of the sense of time and place. I bought a few in the series, but didn’t advance too far just by time and interest. In case you are wondering, the reason the author’s backstory was banned from discussion was that as a teen, her and her friend committed a murder, knocked down to manslaughter, and both were found guilty. Soooo, lots of people have views about reading a murder mystery written by someone who killed someone in real life. Most of the time you see current concerns more like cancel culture; this was way before that and discussions erupted with strong reaction on both sides until the moderators finally said, “Knock it off, no more discussion of her life, we’re here to discuss books.” Personally, it meant little to me, I just liked the books.

What did I say about resonance?

One of our past months had the theme of “history” and the goal was to read a book that was set or written before 1965. I included Anne Perry as one of the formal “challenge” authors, and I dusted off some of the old copies. One of the other series is a character named William Monk and most sites list the books as the “Monk” series. There’s something ironic about the fact that the other series lists both the husband and wife as the series name, but this series is marketed as the William Monk series yet has two other characters, Hester Latterly (a former Crimean nurse) and Oliver Rathbone (a solicitor & barrister). Hester figures prominently in the series, as does Oliver in many of them, and deals extensively with the role of women as a plot device, yet ironically it is the “Monk” character that gets sole billing as the protagonist.

In the first book, one of the most interesting aspects of William Monk was that he had had an accident and is suffering from some degree of amnesia. He didn’t remember his name, nor remember any part of his past, yet he was still functionally able to converse, talk, understand, etc. None of his functional abilities are impaired in any way, he just didn’t know who he was.

A police captain comes to see him, he finds out his own name, and he is scared that if someone finds out he is an amnesiac, he’ll be fired. And have no money on which to live. So he fakes it until he makes it.

I remember when I first read it, I was intrigued by the idea of nature vs. nurture. As Monk detects, he also starts to see how others react to him and he gets a picture of himself as a relatively harsh person. Regularly cutting, frequently ruthless in his dealings with others if he feels they don’t measure up to his professional standards, intolerant, aggressive, abrasive, and virtually no friends. He lived for the job, and while he was well respected by everyone for his abilities, it seems like no one likes him very much. He’s an ass regularly, just brilliant at his job. But it rubs him raw. His “new” self doesn’t much like his “old” self.

In short, without all the layers of nurture/experience from his life, he has been reset to a bunch of core values of duty and honour, and even justice above both of those. The inherent “nature”, perhaps. In the novels, much of the mystery of his past is contrived. For example, he remembers he has a sister who lives in the country and he goes to see her. She’s warm to his arrival, but it’s clear he hasn’t stayed in touch much, nor reciprocated her feelings. There’s no animosity, they’re just not very close. He has a thousand questions, and he tells her nothing. Rather than simply say, “So a funny thing happened when I got knocked on the head, I don’t remember any of you or mom+dad, do you think you could fill in the blanks?”, he remains silent. It may work as a primary plot device in a lot of TV shows, but as a literary device, it’s a bit shallow. At least in a TV show, you wouldn’t be privy to all his thoughts at the time. And in many situations, he prides himself on showing courage and just asking something, facing his fear, but when it is his sister and the safest space he knows, he says nothing. Yawn.

But some of the books have been fascinating to see different aspects crop up. In one book, he remembers a woman that he cared about deeply, but not the context. He investigates, narrows it down to three possible cases, and goes to visit them. In all three, the people involved in the old case react to his arrival in both shock and awe, more signs of his ruthlessness and brilliance. But when he finally meets the woman, she reacts very harshly to his arrival. It’s a bit convoluted, but essentially they did both love each other, but she decided he was too much of a drama queen with the lows of feeling injustice for others and the highs of success in thwarting them; she preferred a more even keel, and chose a nice, quiet, safe life over being around his potential ruthlessness and passions, even if not directed at her. When they parted, they agreed that he would never return, yet here he is, so she ain’t happy. He’s devastated by the truth of the memory and also that he allowed himself to misjudge her. He’s not as upset about her, as he is about himself.

It’s a tough nuance, but that idea resonates with me. Revisiting old behaviour, reinterpreting how that behaviour played out, even your own motives for why you behaved that way. I find the idea compelling. Not to judge OTHERS or reinterpret their behaviour and ascribe motives that weren’t present at the time, but in analysing my own motives to find any hidden truths. While I didn’t get conked on the head, I have spent a lot of time in my life looking back at previous behaviour, analysing it, examining my motives, and not always liking what I found. There’s also an element in there of the “road not taken”, not in the sense of wondering “what if”, but more of the idea that a thousand little decisions affect the way your life unfolds. Simple decisions like choosing to sit in the second row of a lecture hall and meeting someone who if you had sat in the third row, you wouldn’t have. And perhaps they introduced you to someone else who introduced you to someone else who introduced you to your spouse. A domino effect that started simply because you sat in one row rather than another. In Monk’s case, he comes face to face with the one who got away and while he gets closure, it comes at a heavy price.

Sustainable employment income

Because the books take place in the 1850s/60s in England, of course there is very little evidence of a welfare state. The difference between classes is almost a sub-character of its own in both series, and one overwhelming theme is “what money will I live on?”. For Hester, the nurse, she does not want to rely on her brother to look after her, so she works as a nurse in various homes for those in higher society (i.e. those with money to pay her). It puts her a bit above servant, but not much. Yet she has to work because she needs money to live on. The books don’t dwell too much on whether she has any savings or if she’s literally living one paycheque away from disaster, but it’s not a soft cushion, if she has one. In that regard, it is something commented upon for most of the female characters.

They can’t own property, they cannot inherit anything, most of them cannot work without losing societal status, and many of the stories revolve around women and whether all of them married for money or occasionally love. It could sound almost cliché, and at times, it is.

But Monk himself is not too far off that point. He is terrified in the first book that he will lose his job, have no income after 2 weeks, and might end up in a workhouse which almost nobody ever leaves. I went to university, even law school for awhile, and I’ve worked for the government in a good job for the last 28 years. Yet I can remember wondering when I was in high school what would become of me.

Would I find something I liked? I sucked at pretty much anything manual, but had no real idea of what other types of jobs were out there. I never really saw any jobs where I thought, “I could do that. I could make a living at THAT.” When I was in university and working at the library, I loved it. Some of that was the nature of the job, and I’ve blogged about some of that previously, but some of it was straight cause and effect — I worked and I got paid. And they liked my work enough to keep hiring me. I was GOOD at something. So, for awhile, I thought, “Hmm…I like books, I like working in the library, maybe I could become a librarian.” Or one of the back office staff.

I *saw* jobs that would generate income and that I could foreseeably do. I had, in short, options. But I remember all too well when I didn’t think I had any options. I didn’t know if I could/would go to college or university. It seemed so expensive to me, it was not a “guaranteed” option for me. But I got a summer job at the library. I earned real money for a change, not the previous temp stuff I had done for pocket change. I started at a minimum wage of about $8.50 an hour or so, but within a few years, I was above $12, and I thought I was amazing.

More importantly, I was starting to see other jobs I could possibly do. A step above my station, as it were. It wasn’t until I went to work for the Ministry of Education in B.C. for a co-op that I saw what government really was like and saw TONS of jobs I could do. A myriad of options.

Yet when I look back, and partly because of the nature of my job now that focuses heavily on the labour force and what “skills” people need to have for various sectors, I wonder if there are students like me who are in high school with no pathway in front of them that they can see. Not because they have no pathway, or that their options are too limited, just that no one has said, “Hey, do you see this path over here? Or over here? Or over here?”. For some people, that was what guidance counsellors were for, except most guidance counsellors had no real training or special information about jobs. The internet has helped with finding information, but if you don’t know what to look for in the first place, how do you know where to start looking?

For many people, they’ll do a career quiz. If I pretend I’m a high-school student, and looking at potential careers, there are a lot of career quizzes out there. Many ask you questions you have no idea what the answer is…would you rather be an auditor or a politician? Umm, neither? Both? As a high school student, you may have no clue what a production manager does, or if it says “salesperson”, do they mean a telemarketer, a retailer, or someone who works for a company selling company products to other businesses?

For fun, I did one quiz, and I tried to answer as if it was me 35+ years ago. It came back with 30 suggestions…financial played heavily with accountant, auditor, actuary, bookkeeper, financial aid officer, financial analyst, foreign exchange trader, business valuator, and financial planner. That’s not a bad list, to be honest, although trader wouldn’t be anything I would like. But 18yo me wouldn’t have known that. It would have given me a starting point, I suppose. But I was already taking accounting in high school, and liked it enough to win a small local accounting contest, so that was already on the possible list. Court reporter showed up, as did a corporate lawyer but not a general lawyer (partly as I said I didn’t want to convince people in adversarial arguments, probably).

Weirdly, some health care stuff shows up…Health care administrator, hospital administrator, research tech? Sure. But dental lab technician or geneticist? Huh?

Other odd ones include surveyor (?), economist (yes, but back then I would have had no idea what that meant), food service manager (okay, a little specific), office manager (generic), IT manager (okay), systems administrator (hmmm), systems analyst (okay, but would have no idea what that was), venture capitalist (umm, I think I would need some capital first), small business owner (never), quality assurance engineer (maybe), and consultant (pretty generic).

The weirdest two go to opposite ends of the spectrum. The REALLY weird “hard pass” was sommelier. That is just plain laughable. Not only do I not like or appreciate wine, I have no discerning palate or nose for it either.

But the one that struck me as really odd, a hard yes of sorts, was not something that showed up ANYWHERE in the questions…astronomer. Unless the quiz pulled my browser history, that seems like a really weird coincidence.

Yet the problem with all of it is that nowhere in that list is “government employee”. Economist, perhaps, although when you click their link to see what they mean, they generally mean at a large banking institution. It’s just natural, most HR advice out there is geared towards the private sector, not based on an equally detailed knowledge of the public sector.

But I digress

As I read the books, and the various options available to women, it seems generally like it would collapse down to a much smaller list:

Get married
Servant or servant+ (professional nurse, not a general nurse)
Shopkeepers, general rabble
Prostitute
Corpse

Sure, I know it’s historical fiction, not a documentary, but I find some resonance in wondering “What do I do?”. We of course have a safety net, but it doesn’t stop people from asking themselves a fundamental question…not “What do I do or even want to do?”, but the simpler question, “what CAN I do?”

Some of that despair permeates through, and combined with the question of “Who are we if we are not surrounded by our decisions, if we were to break free and start fresh tomorrow?”, I find some of the thoughts consuming.

It’s strange to me that those ideas should resonate with me so much.

Simple medical appointment, complex reaction

May 22 2021

I have diabetic issues, which is a fancy way of saying that my bloodwork bounces around between not-diabetic, pre-diabetic, and diabetic. I have trouble saying I’m diabetic at times because I feel like a bit of an imposter saying it. Like I’m over-claiming my issues. But what it means is that I should be doing regular bloodwork to check my A1C numbers.

When COVID hit, I was a bit behind on my bloodwork and was due for a new “update”, partly as the resident doctor I was normally dealing with at the family centre was no longer available, and I’d be getting someone new. We postponed until her arrival, but by the time I was set to do an appointment, COVID had hit, and my bloodwork got pushed. I did basic stuff over the calendar year, but nothing for my bloodwork. TBH, I didn’t really want to … the idea of going to a lab when I didn’t “have” to seemed almost scary risky.

Then I had all my leg issues in January, we agreed we should do some new labwork, but they wanted me to be off all my antibiotics and other related stuff so it would be clean, and my mental load was already high enough at the time. So I was going to go in March, just in time to have complications with my leg wound and another round of antibiotics. Fast-forward to April, and the doctor wanted me to do a totally different set of labs anyway, as she wanted to screen for mental health stuff too.

Enter the scheduling problem

I went online to book an appointment at a lab near me, and the first available date was almost 4w away. This was just after the most recent lockdown happened. I searched around, found another lab in the same group which has really good online results that I like, and I booked for about 2w later. All good. Way over in Gloucester somewhere, but whatever, it was the earliest available anywhere in the group of labs.

Fast-forward again to the day of the labwork and I woke up feeling a bit off, almost feverish. It didn’t seem like a great risk, and I was still having a bit of anxiety about going. Sure, I don’t like bloodwork normally, but this was more just about going for a health appointment to a general lab. I assumed, 14m into the pandemic and everything being appointment booking, that it would be relatively painless to go, but still.

I cancelled and rebooked, and my new appointment was this past week on Thursday. I prefer to do these types of appointment first thing in the morning if I can, but the available times were at 1:00 p.m. so would go over lunch. Great.

The appointment

I needed to head out about 12:30, and about 12:15, I grabbed the requisition that I had printed weeks ago, and my phone which had the address. I had never been to the lab before, so I wanted to look it up on my phone app to see the best route. Checked the address. Huh.

I mentioned above that the lab was in Gloucester, which is about 20m away. Well, the FIRST lab was there. Apparently when I rebooked, I had decided that going all the way to Gloucester was overkill, and I would have to wait longer in the booking system but I rebooked in my neighbourhood. I had absolutely no memory that I had done that.

Don’t get me wrong, once I saw where it was, I remembered thinking that I might as well go to the one close to me, but if you had asked me that morning on pain of death, I would have said I was booked in Gloucester. No doubt in my mind AT ALL. In fact, if I had known already where the lab was, I would have hopped in the car and driven straight there without checking anything. It was just that it was my first time going to that location, so I had to look at my phone to see what address I had saved in my calendar. If I had printed out the instructions the first time, I would have just grabbed them and drove. All that way for nothing. Huh.

Okay, moving on, I had a bit more time to kill, went over and entered the building. I was expecting some sort of “new procedure” to get registered but I wasn’t expecting chaos. There was a woman standing in the doorway, with her back foot kind of holding the door open while she took people’s forms and health cards. There was a pseudo line up of about 5 people waiting to hand her stuff, and another 10 people or so around the large hallway just hanging out, obviously waiting. I had thought, and I even thought I had read this on their site, that they weren’t doing “walk-ins”, only appointments. Nope, they were fully open for business. The only real difference from before to now was that they weren’t letting people wait in the same waiting room inside. They had to be “outside” the lab. Umm, okay.

I wasn’t really thrilled, I had expected extremely limited contact with people, and here was a 15-person queue with no indication where to sit/stand/wait, etc. Some were standing too close for my comfort, and I moved farther away. But that’s a lot of people hanging out in a hallway for extended periods of time.

Now, yes, I had an appointment, and after the woman went back in to register all these people and hand over the forms and health cards, I was the first person she called when she came back out. My appointment was at 1:10, I got there about 1:05, through the line about 1:11, and they called me into the waiting room (where about 3 other people were, all the other chairs removed) around 1:18, and then called me back to the cubicle about 1:25 or so.

One of the tests the doctor asked for is not covered by OHIP apparently, so I had to pay $13.00 for something, which is a bit unusual I guess, but whatever. When I got to the cubicle, there was nobody there, just me, and one person basically doing all the blood work. She was going from cubicle 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4, 4 back to 1. When I got there, she was doing blood with someone in cubicle 3, so I had to wait for her to do 4, 1 and 2 before she got to me. Not long, maybe another 15m or so, but the whole time I was thinking, “What the heck am I doing in a small enclosed space for 15 extra minutes when I don’t need to be here?”.

My anxiety level went up the whole time I was waiting. The initial COVID screening amounted to the equivalent of “Do you feel sick or have you travelled?” and that was about it, so it’s not like I was feeling “safe” or that someone else might not have been sick and in the same airspace before me.

Literally, my skin was crawling. I wanted to just leave. I need the bloodwork, and my brain was likely over-reacting, but I kept thinking, “And this is what it is like when I made an APPOINTMENT?”. I noted when I was leaving that the waiting list (a digital one nobody in the queue can see because it’s in the old waiting room, not the hall) showed intake waiting period of 72 minutes, which was definitely NOT shared with anyone registering anew. If I had waited 72 minutes + another 20-25 to get through the bloodwork, I would have been unhinged.

Plus, there was something odd with my regular bloodletting. Because of my size and fatty arms, they can’t do blood in the crook of my arm, it’s just easier to do it on the back of my hand. Lots of people can’t do that, it hurts, but it’s minor compared to multiple stabbings in the arm. So we do the right hand, she needs 5 vials, and normally after the initial needle is inserted, it doesn’t hurt. This time, it hurt the entire time the needle was in. At the end of vial 3, my vein said “Okay, I’m done”, and closed up. It clotted fast. It’s never done that before.

She switched to my left hand, started in, got another vial, and that vein closed up too. She was puzzled, I could tell.

And it makes me wonder if it could somehow be related to the AZ vaccine…there are risks of people having blood clotting problems. Is it possible that even without bigger issues it causes faster clotting generally? I have felt more sluggish since I got the vaccine too, 3w ago. Who knows? I’ll mention it to the doctor when we review my bloodwork results. I have my results, my A1C is a bit higher than I would like, back a little in the actual diabetes range, but still lower than my highest and I’m surprised considering my eating and exercise habits of the last year.

When I was leaving, I thought about taking a picture of the waiting list and then letting people outside in the hall know their status, a “nice” shared group experience and instead I just bolted. I just wanted to go. We had all bonded briefly in the hallway when new people showed up and wondered “what do I do? where do I stand?” when the greeter wasn’t actually there. But nobody was looking to make friends, we were just helping out because there was no signage and nobody wanted others being stressed as we compensated for the poor setup.

Understanding my reaction

I’ve been thinking about my reaction since I left. I was in such a rush getting out, I paid for my parking and then tried to throw the stub to get out of the lot into the garbage can and just take the receipt. I wasn’t in a fog so much as I just felt “icky”. Like I needed to go home and take a shower.

But as I reviewed the experience, it wasn’t simply the chaos. Or the waiting. Or the blood-letting. Or the time.

I think what bothered me most was that after 14m of a pandemic, THIS is what they have in place? Really?

I was expecting streamlined, organized, something resembling intelligent delivery design.

Instead, I had a greeter holding the door open with her foot while she took forms from whoever happened to step up next. Every other medical thing I have done in the last 14m was handled better for COVID. This was a shit-show.

The Kid Detective (2020) – MR00009 (2021) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

May 19 2021

Plot

A guy solved a bunch of cases as a kid, received lots of accolades, and then burned out as he got older because he couldn’t solve a case of a missing girl.

What I Liked

So I have to start with the recognition that I have no memory of how this movie ended up on my “to be watched” list. I assume I saw a reference to it in some “”upcoming”” release article, and was attracted to the idea that a kid detective became an adult detective. I’ve enjoyed the premise in other shows like Psych and Carter. There’s even an element of it in the Nancy Drew series, albeit with more of a supernatural bent now that she’s older. So I wanted to give it a go.

The odd part is that the movie is relatively flat for the first hour. Dark, somewhat bleak, even though the main elements are there. Lots of cases, barely getting by, doing whatever he can to survive but being very cynical about the world. It is the ending after the reveal that makes it almost watchable…after effects, the callbacks, the tying together of early clues, etc. Based on the first 80% of the movie, there’s no expectation the last 20% will give you anything, and yet the plotting is decent.

What I Didn’t Like

As noted, the first hour is really flat as well as dark and bleak. The narrator/lead notes that after it is all over, it’s like the city is in colour again, for the first time in years, and you see it in the cinematography. More lively, brighter. There is no amazing acting anywhere, although the lead is okay; the rest of the cast is relatively terrible. TV-movie-of-the-week-quality overall, but for some reason, I enjoyed watching everything except some questionable camerawork in the first 5 minutes that sets a tone that I felt was off (blaming a victim).

The Bottom Line

A surprisingly decent ending for a lacklustre start.

Vaccine reactions

May 18 2021

If you clicked here thinking I was talking about physical reactions, you’re only partially right. Mostly I’m more interested in the emotional reactions.

In our household of 3, we all have slightly different medical issues that raise our individual and collective profiles to higher-than-average risks. I already posted about my experience Joining the herd, and my emotional reaction when my wife hugged me afterwards, a “lighter” overall reaction than I was expecting from myself. I thought I’d be shaking when I left the office, or emotional in the car, or dancing a jig. Instead, it was rather ho-hum.

We were waiting for Andrea’s number to come up in the pharmacy lottery at various locations and then one popped up for a mass vaccination option on a weekend at a school. She registered, it all went through, and she had her appointment. I felt almost as much relief that SHE had an appointment as when I got mine. YES! She went in the a.m., lined up in a field more or less (they had set appointment times, it wasn’t a long line or anything), got her jab and came home.

Physically, I dealt with headaches and fatigue. She also got the Astra-Zeneca dose and had sweats and chills. She said she woke up in the middle of the night freezing, colder than she’s ever been in her life. Anecdotally, people are saying/estimating that your degree of reaction to the vaccine is likely the same degree you would have to the actual disease, but of course there’s almost no evidence either way. It’s a popular thought, with no way to test it, but it’s somewhat comforting almost as well as disturbing. “Oh, it’s good that I got it because if that was my reaction to the VACCINE, imagine my reaction to the disease!”.

At any rate, that put us at 2/6 shots for the house. I felt almost more relief I would say at her having hers than me having mine. That’s not some sort of altruistic thing, it’s just a mark of where my stress lies.

The big news

We have been interested in the news around the approval of various vaccines for kids, and the cut-offs. First it was good for people 18 and over. Then some news showed up where studies had tested down to age 16. Then 12. Now they’re doing some trials all the way down to infants. And as I said in my last post, we estimated he might be able to get his first shot in the fall.

But Ontario has been making some progress, having passed the 50% “first shot” threshold recently. In a conversation with a social worker we chat with at CHEO about J’s anxiety issues around a pending surgery and other topics, we mentioned that he is confirmed for return to in-person school in September and that we were really hoping for him to get vaccinated with at least one dose before then. I figured maybe 2 doses by Xmas, but there wasn’t much information out there, honestly. Not local anyway.

The social worker told us that CHEO was now doing vaccinations for some of their clients, and were reaching out to those in various conditions. This was fantastic news, of course, although it would likely mean nothing for Jacob, we thought. He’s not a super-high-risk overall, although he has some respiratory issues, and interactions with other conditions would be unpredictable/unknown. Mostly, it’s a mental health issue, if I was characterizing it definitively, at least currently. We’re in lockdown, we have been doing the “right” things for 14m. We don’t take risks. The recent lockdown makes almost no difference to our life, the only thing that changed was more curbside pickup than previously.

We talked about it, mentioned our excitement to hear the news, etc. and two hours later, CHEO called us to offer us a spot. We have no idea if this was linked to the conversation, or was more because of possible surgery coming up, or just we were next on their list in some category. We didn’t care, we said yes immediately.

They also said we could bring up to two caregivers over 16 with us (i.e. the parents or someone else if we already had our shots). We tried to see if we could squeeze his cousin in (she’s only 14 though), but alas, no. Unfortunately, by the time they got back to us with the answer, it was too late to randomly grab any friends or family in need of a shot to go with us (the names had to be provided in advance). So it was just Jacob.

He went in with Andrea, got his jab, all good, and over the two days that followed, he had a slightly sore arm with no other reaction to the Pfizer shot.

When no reaction is the reaction

Yet again, I’m not talking about the physical. Jacob got his first shot; this has been my single largest source of stress for 14m, worrying about him, wanting and waiting for him to get vaccinated so I could breathe out. And when it happened? I shared it on FB, but, well, I didn’t feel anything.

I didn’t jump for joy. I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel some weight being lifted from my shoulder. I tried to. I actually tried to “lean in” so to speak to the experience, to force myself to feel it, and there was something there, I’m certainly happy FOR him and WITH him. But no giant “hurrah”.

Yet we have reached the mid-point. Three out of six shots, and a strong likelihood our household will be fully vaccinated BEFORE the end of the summer. This is HUGE.

The biggest news in our household since the pandemic started. And that’s not just me thinking it. Everyone that I’ve told about Jacob’s news has reacted the same way. “Holy cow, that’s amazing!”. Because it is ground-breaking. Parents? Sure. Us? Sure? But our kids getting vaccinated? That’s huge!

Yet I feel almost let down by my own reaction. How am I NOT reacting more strongly? Am I just numb? Is it the languishing thing still? I can talk about it, I sense some “relief” resonating inside somewhere. But 20 minutes afterwards, it was like “What’s next?”.

I still feel like there should be some sort of milestone marker that happens. A “V1” stamped on your forehead with indelible ink that only fades when you get V2. A giant pinata you get to smash on your way out, shaped like the Corona virus molecule. A lollipop for getting a needle. SOMETHING that says “Your life is different now.”

Ay, there’s the rub

As I wrote that last paragraph, I had a small epiphany with myself. This is often why I write my blog. Because as I write, I uncover what I’m thinking but having trouble defining, an act of articulation where a phrase pops out of my mouth where I go, “HEY! Look at THAT! THAT’S IT!”.

My life didn’t change. Andrea’s life didn’t change. Jacob’s life didn’t change. We got jabbed, and we still live in a pandemic world in lockdown. Just as the new lockdown barely changed our lives, having our first jab has made zero difference either. We’re still getting up in the morning in a Groundhog Day world of computerized plug-in until lunch, meeting together for sustenance, plugging in again until dinner, sharing sustenance again, doing something together after supper (currently binging Supergirl), and then bedtime at some point for each of us. The next day, we wake up, and Sonny and Cher are singing “I Got You Babe” on the radio.

Getting jabbed is a precondition for the world opening up again, for our world to change, but it has a much longer incubation period than walking out of the office and hoping to break a pinata. And I’m not sure that I will or can feel that “hurrah” until we can do something normalish. Last summer, after the first wave, we were excited to go out for dinner and eat on a patio in Norland, Ontario near the family cottage. I’m not sure what this year or the end of the pandemic looks like to me.

I think we all need an End-of-Pandemic Bucket list. A top ten list of things I want to do when things are open again. Really open, not temporarily open.

What would be on your bucket list? How are you going to mark the occasion? How will you “feel” the world is open again?

Joining the herd

April 25 2021

As of today, we have completed 1/6 of our household steps towards vaccinated immunity. With the recent drop in age for the AZ vaccine, my GP’s office had sent out a broadcast email to patients over 40 to say “Come and get it!”, like ringing a dinner bell. But my profile isn’t completely typical, so after reading a bunch of stuff online, I reached out to my GP to check on whether the AZ vaccine was right for me and that my curation had been correct.

Efficacy concerns

Generally speaking, of course, the recommendation is to go with availability over efficacy rates. Currently, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are about rated to 90-95% efficacy, while AZ was down at 70%. Those are the initial efficacy rates against contraction, but all three of course are almost 100% effective against serious illness leading to hospitalization or death. In other words, even if you get sick after that initial efficacy number, your second number is generally 100%.

So what’s the issue?

I’m on the cusp of pre-diabetic / diabetic. When the three available vaccines were tested, they had very few people in the sample group with diabetes, and when they did, they usually weren’t separated out between Type 2 (controlled with lifestyle or medication) or Type 1 (requiring insulin shots). I would be near to the Type 2 category.

For the results they DO have, the numbers drop for efficacy — anywhere from 15-25% lower than that of the general population. Again, though, that’s the efficacy rate against contraction. Very few of the studies reported had reliable reporting on the secondary efficacy, but it LOOKED like 100%.

Yet you can only get one vaccine type, and I was reasonably sure I was good to go with the AZ one, but as I said, I wanted to be sure. I booked my appointment and then reached out to the GP for a quick consult before getting it.

My questions broke down into three steps:

a. As a near type 2 patient, was there anything that suggested I should wait for Pfizer over AZ? Was there anything with my health that said “wait”? As expected, and as hoped, she confirmed that the second efficacy number is close to 100% still for AZ for diabetics, and thus, yes, availability is more important than initial efficacy.

b. My household has an atypical profile with all three of us in the house having higher-risk profiles individually. Did that change anything in the calculation? I was mostly worried that I could still contract it with the lower rate and transmit it to them. But “some” immunity faster is still better than efficacy rates, as expected and hoped. It might even strengthen the rationale, although it is a double-edged sword, of course.

c. The last question was one I found no information about anywhere…some disease profiles suggest that the person should NOT wait 4m for the second dose but should get it sooner rather than later. Certain auto-immune diseases for example are being recommended to get Dose #2 as soon as possible. While AZ is being rolled out for dose #1 now, and the second in 4m, I wanted to know if anything in my personal or household profile changed that calculation. Put bluntly, if I could get Dose #1 of AZ now but Dose #2 wasn’t available for 4m, but I could wait a month for Pfizer but get 2 doses a couple of weeks apart, then waiting might get me “completed” for dose #2 faster. Diabetes didn’t seem an obvious candidate to avoid the waiting period, but as I said, you can only get one dose. I didn’t want to find out after the fact that I should have gone another route.

In the end, I was all clear. I was expecting to be, sure, but I did want to be sure. It’s too important to rely on Dr. Google for this one.

The shot

I confess, I don’t often think of it as a shot. Sure, I say “flu shot” like everyone else, and my “COVID shot”, but I would never use it as a verb. A couple of friends posted about being shot and I was like, “Huh?”. Because for me, it is very clearly a stabbing. 🙂

I booked the appointment through my GP’s online site and was relatively shocked to see that they had Sunday appointments available. I didn’t click as soon as I got the first notice, I wanted to check a few things, but I was able to book on Thursday for Sunday’s schedule. Pretty quick overall.

I arrived, parked in the lot next door (free on weekends!), and entered the hospital (the clinic is in the first floor of a LT care facility). A security person directed me to a COVID screening form, a receptionist checked me in and gave me a new mask, a nice escort took me to an available nurse in one of the examining rooms, and it was on like Donkey Kong.

Cathy, the nurse, did a simple run-through of who I was, checked my contact info so I could get receipts and follow-up notifications, screened me for a bunch of Qs again about reactions or likely reactions to a vaccine, confirmed a few details about the vaccine itself (where I was like, huh? Oh right, yes, she should tell me what she’s injecting, I suppose). Small needle, go to the waiting room for 15 minutes.

While I was in the waiting room, I got the notification from the scheduling portal for my second dose. They also told me orally that it was assuming they got the vaccine then, and nothing changes to either move it up or back. It’s an administrative booking, basically, more of a reservation than any guarantee that they’ll have a dose available then or that it will take that long.

I killed my 15m and left. About 30m after I got my shot, the Ministry of Health sent me a confirmation email as my immunization record.

My mental / emotional reaction

I said to Andrea and Jacob that I might cry when I got it. So much stress, and here’s a small light at the end of the tunnel. And as I walked towards the hospital, I did feel quite emotional. All the way through it? Nada. Just process.

When I left the building, I let the experience flow into me, and while I felt like I *could* react more for a release, I wasn’t feeling like I needed it. I was fine. Ho hum even.

I found it a bit odd, actually. I wanted to ring a bell, smash a pinata, get doused in confetti, have someone solemnly say, “I now pronounce you vaccinated”.

But ten minutes after I left, I was back in my ongoing mindset. The NY Times had a great article this past week about the new term for those who are stuck between normalcy and not-quite-depression — it’s called languishing. And it almost precisely captures what I have been feeling for the last two months as I recovered from my leg wound and rebuilding my website.

Now that I’m done the rebuild, I feel almost out of sorts. There’s no fanfare for finishing THAT either. I feel like there should be a reward for myself, some milestone to celebrate somehow, and yet here is perhaps one of the biggest milestones of the last 14m, and I was already past it and thinking, “Hmm, what’s for dinner?”.

Right up until Andrea hugged me at home. Then I lost it. I could probably lose it again right now, while I am writing this, if I let myself. The built-up energy, the tension in my heart and mind. Yet it isn’t honestly about me, not really. Sure, I’m scared like everyone else, and with my health, there’s a good chance that long-term ventilator use would not end well if I was hospitalized.

But my biggest worry is about Jacob and Andrea. I am their biggest vector. Jacob has almost no other vectors BESIDES me, actually. And the thought of my getting sick and exposing them, or leaving them without my support, is scary AF.

The journey isn’t over

Earlier today, I received my feed from GoComics.com and I loved the post by Tim Campbell (here). In the comic, it shows a person running a race and crossing under a banner held up by two vaccine needles. The caption reads, “Keep Going. This is not a finish line.”.

And it’s not, in oh so many ways. But let’s cut it to two.

First, the obvious one, just because I have a single dose, or even if I had a double dose, I still have to keep social distancing and wearing a mask. It doesn’t change my life until we get closer to herd immunity.

Second, the bigger issue? It’s one dose of six that my household needs. I need another dose of course. Plus Andrea is consulting with one of her doctors on her best way forward, similar to my discussion above. In the meantime, she’ll take whoever offers her an appointment first, and she’s registered multiple places. With 2 doses needed for her.

But Jacob is turning 12 in May, and probably by the fall / early winter, there will be options for people down to the age of 12. I chatted with him recently about how he feels about it, and while he has no strong views about the vaccine or not, the abstract doesn’t really resonate with him vs. the practical issues of going to school or being virtual. The bigger issue for him is that he doesn’t like needles. I told him he needs to get comfortable with the idea because I don’t know of too many reasons we wouldn’t do the vaccine for him if it’s generally available. 🙂 Maybe he can race his cousins although a couple of them might have a leg up, having a doc for a mom. 🙂

So where does that leave me? A tad bit more hopeful than I was this morning. I’m still languishing.

But I’m at least languishing with a small hole in my left arm. I’ve taken my step towards joining the herd.