Tag Archives: health

A home gym for the basement

The PolyBlog
September 9 2021

Okay, so let’s talk about my experience with various exercise machines. Let’s start with the basic reality that I’m fat and I’m not particularly enthused about working out around a bunch of fit people who know what they’re doing. It waxes and wanes in intensity, but it doesn’t completely go away. I also have trouble being motivated if I have to actually GO somewhere to work out.

Back in high school, I bought a small home gym, and I really liked it. It had a stack of weights that went up to about 150lbs as I recall, and I started using it. The downside is I had a small bedroom, with a desk already and a bookshelf, plus the bed of course and a wardrobe, and this weight machine. I had to move a bunch of stuff around to even use it. Plus, it was the old style that every time you wanted to switch from exercise x to exercise y, you generally had to reconfigure the pulleys. And, not for nothing, it was also a bit loud in the house when the weight stack came back down sometimes, particularly if I was doing leg lifts that had the most weight, and my father, in particular, found it noisy. They also found my exercise bike pretty noisy when I was riding it, but I didn’t have anywhere else in the house to do it. I tried reconfiguring my back porch (which was an enclosed area), to see if I could get it going out there, but it wasn’t much of a solution. In the end, I sold it off to a friend who could put it in his basement.

Fast-forward from 1988 or so to 1998. I was living in Sandy Hill, joined a Good Life centre, took some coaching to develop a good workout routine, and tried to get in the habit of going in the morning before work. I’m not enough of a morning person to really do that, unfortunately. Particularly with having workout clothes, and work clothes to change into, plus the time to actually work out and get to work on time. I was doing okay, and I liked the routines, but the location wasn’t really working for me.

I tried again with a Good Life over on Queensview, and had some hopes to get going there, got my playlist going, but again, having to GO to the location was bothering me, and I was also feeling really self-conscious about myself at the time. I stuck with it for a short while, then nada.

Somewhere in there, we bought a home exercise bike, one of the good recumbent designs to take the pressure off the jewels, a little less harsh for your back. And when we moved from Roundhay to Mattamy, I had to take it apart. Since we moved in, I’ve either had no place ready to re-assemble it and use it (until we redid the basement), or I’ve been missing the parts that have to go INTO the bike to make it work again. Or I’ve been missing the manual to tell me HOW to do it. Plus, I’m not very motivated as I’ve never really loved the cycle — I like bikes, but the tension on this one always seemed extra-vibrate-y and loud. Mostly excuses, but not very motivating to do it, particularly as I’m not very handy and I don’t know what I need to do. I’m hoping it’s a five-minute job, expecting it to take me at least an hour though. Andrea would like me to get it going again though too, i.e., set up so she can watch TV while she’s doing it, and Jacob might even be able to use it on lower settings.

Enter the home solution again

In the fall of 2018, I was feeling a bit more motivated to work on my body, and I even managed to drop 25 pounds with diet and some basic exercise. But as I tried to figure out WHAT I wanted to do, the idea of the home gym came back to me repeatedly. I’d love one of the big expensive ($5K) but compact home systems with multiple stations (usually three on angles) and easy switching between exercises. One of the challenges is those are often abnormally tall for upper clearance, and lots of basement rooms won’t fit them. And with the weight, I really feel like I want one on a hard basement floor rather than an upper house floor.

I looked around at some options, and was pleasantly surprised to see that Walmart had some massive deal on the Bowflex PR3000. For example, right now, you can still see it listed various places at $1300, although the price has gone up a bit since 2018 with availability, parts, shipping, etc. But back when I was looking, it ranged between $1000-$1200.

Walmart had it on sale one week for $599. Basically half-price.

I couldn’t say no, and apparently neither could Andrea. So I ordered it. It was NOVEMBER 2018. An important date to look back to because I expected to assemble it in January 2019. I had some other issues going on then, I decided to reconfigure part of the basement first to pack up some of Jacob’s things he had laid out like trains, train tables, etc. So it was around March when I thought I would finally get around to doing this. I was still naive and optimistic.

Then COVID hit. And while that SHOULD have given me lots of time and energy to set it up and get it going, well, it didn’t. Most of my basement has been in turmoil for a good portion of that time, with stuff piled everywhere to allow me to do some stuff at one end while ignoring the other. I feel zero motivation for some really big clean-ups that I need to do.

Fast-forward through 18 more months of laziness and motivational ennui, and the thing was still sitting in a box in my basement. Unassembled, and of course, unused. Taunting me. Stressing me.

Heck, Andrea bought a trampoline in June and the assembly just about killed us. It was brutal. Did I really want to try assembling the Bowflex? Don’t get me wrong, there is a VERY serious question in there for mental health. There are literally videos on the internet about all the things the instructions for Bowflex systems, including this one, have wrong and how to overcome the errors. You don’t just take this on willy nilly and expect no challenges, particularly if your experience with home tasks generally leads to frustration more so than celebration.

Hippety hop, hippety hop

About two weeks ago, I was looking for some shelving for the basement to get my office completely set up and working the way it should be (again, hello, ennui?) and ended up ordering some basic stuff from IKEA. I need functional, not chic. Anyway, I get all the way to the end, and it asks me if I want someone to come to assemble it. I’ve never noticed this before when ordering, and I was curious how much they charge. It’s not like a Billy bookcase is hard, we’ve done lots over the years, but what could it hurt to look?

IKEA has farmed out their assembly for years, but now route it all through TaskRabbit. If you don’t know the TaskRabbit site, it is basically a freelancer’s gig-economy site where people can post their job and choose a contractor who works on those type of tasks, including in this case, furniture assembly. For reference, the average cost is about $45 an hour for the labourer, plus the overhead for TaskRabbit. It wasn’t worth it for the bookcases, we can do those ourselves as I said, but it got me thinking.

Could they assemble a Bowflex that’s known to be a royal pain-in-the-ass and that I haven’t gotten to in 2.5 years? It couldn’t hurt to pose it, could it?

I went on TaskRabbit, described the project, did a quick search through the contractors, chose one that had the most previous experience with decent ratings, and selected him. There’s a 2-hr minimum charge for a booking, and you can cancel anytime. I sent him a follow-up message through the website, he said he could do it (not exactly ringing endorsement and enthusiasm, just “yes”, but I’m trying not to stress about things I don’t need to stress about). I confirmed he was double-vaccinated in the sense that I asked him, he was good to go, I booked him for today (Thursday), and he showed up at 11 with his tools.

I started to explain to him the two main errors I had found online and warned him the instructions were supposedly terrible, to which he replied, “Oh, I know, I put one together for a lawyer in town a few months ago.”

Well, why didn’t you say so, buddy? Two and a quarter hours later, he was done. I helped him put in a bolt that was a bit tall for him to reach AND hard to do while holding the other piece in place, and I helped move it into place, but otherwise? It was all him.

I have a full Bowflex up and ready to go, and I wish I had this option back when I first bought it. Best $100+ that I have spent in a LONG time. Admittedly, TaskRabbit threw in some sneaky hidden fees I hadn’t been expecting, but hey, still came out fine. He got $90, I got a Bowflex assembled with no stress. He also hangs pictures, assembles other furniture, does basic home repair, whatever we need. I wish he could clean and sort my garage, but that’s more on me, unfortunately. Still, it is a major project DONE and DONE.

Bowflex machine

Now I have to figure out all the exercises to do, adjust the seat and benches to the right heights, figure out reps and sets, set a schedule, show Andrea and Jacob how to use it, and re-assemble the exercise bike too. Plus, you know, actually work out.

But we’re a major step closer, thanks to a rabbit. I’ll definitely call that a win.

Blowing the dust off the last 16 months

The PolyBlog
June 23 2021

So, today was the day. I got my first vaccine shot, Astra Zeneca, back at the end of April. Two months later, today, I got my second shot, this time Moderna. I’m doubly vaccinated.

Quick overview of the process

My wife booked me in through the provincial system, and with lots of bookings coming available in the last week, she found me a spot in August, then July, then two in June. We adjusted the schedules slightly and I went in at 4:30 this afternoon. The site was a local sportsplex, and I know it pretty well. My wife has played curling there as well as taken some courses, my son has had multiple summer camps, we’ve done a few expos there, swimming lessons, even attended a friend’s wedding vow renewal ceremony. Best of all? Lots of free parking. But overall, my greatest “sense” of the place was volunteers out the wazoo.

I pulled into the lot, and there were three people near my entrance directing traffic, checking timing, etc. with another three on the other side managing another entrance. They directed me to the best place to park, someone directed me at the main door to the right hall (a curling rink area in normal times that I’ve been in lots of times previously for various functions), someone at the main door directed me to another greeter, and the greeter directed me to a specific registrar in a long line of registration booths with nobody at them at the time I arrived. I spoke to six different volunteers before I even spoke to the person who registered me.

They checked my health card and did my symptom screening, all simple, and then directed me to follow a series of dots that took me down a long line only to double back and come back about half way to meet another greeter. It’s set up to deal with a lot of people at the same time, but there was only me. As I walked by the ultimate greeter spot, and she was directing me down this long unused corridor, I joked, “See you soon!”. Once I went down and back, I was like, “Long time no see!”. She directed me to another traffic director who took me down a corridor of booths lined with see-through vinyl/plastic, like a trade fair, except in each booth there was just two chairs. One for you, one for a guest. And you wait.

A nurse comes along eventually with a cart with her tablet on it, any supplies she needs, etc., and then she goes back and gets her ergo chair and wheels it along the corridor too. When she’s done a row, she goes back to the first booth and starts over. There were about 12 “corridors” / rows I would say, and all of them double-sided, so call it 24 rows of booths with about 6 kiosks per row, about 144 in total. But 24 nurses doing the shots.

I didn’t have to wait long, we chatted briefly while she got set up, and found out they’re doing about 1900 a day, and yes, it does feel like an assembly line to her. Not surprising.

Pfizer shots were what was booked, but we’re low on supply in the province right now, so everyone is getting Moderna. Fine with me, no real difference so far in outcome.

What did surprise me was the feeling as it went in. I know it goes into the muscle and I made sure I relaxed the arm in advance. But the whole time it was “in” the arm, I could feel the sting. I’ve had that with multiple things recently. Bloodwork that I did about a month ago was the same…normally you feel it going in, but once “in”, it kind of stops stinging until it comes out. I mean, you know it’s there, but it doesn’t “sting”, usually. However, for me, the bloodwork stung the whole time the needle was in. I thought it was something unique to the bloodwork but today was the same. The needle was in my arm maybe 15 seconds in total, but I felt it sting the entire 15 seconds. Nothing problematic, just made me nervous for Jacob. He hates needles and I’m hoping he doesn’t experience the same when he gets his second shot.

After it was over, I had to do the standard 15 minute wait, so over I go to the waiting area. Which is also an extra registration area? A little confusing, but whatever. Anyway, I finish my 15 minutes, walk up expecting to just show my form and leave, but no, I have to basically be “deregistered” and for them to complete the receipt process etc. Another two volunteers had pointed me to the waiting room, and then two more were directing “deregistration traffic”.

The first one told me to go to booth 1…I took about ten steps, passed volunteer 2 who told me to go to booth 4. Umm, okay, whatever. The guy at booth 4 heard both and was kind of shaking his head, and said, “No problem, I’ll take you here.” Except he couldn’t find me on his list. I gave him my health card thinking it might be a misheard name or something, but no, my file wasn’t “closed”. So he tells me to sit back down, and he’ll go check, but his question to me is, “Do you know where you got your vaccine?”. I swear to god, my first reaction was to say, “umm…here?”. But I over-rode it and told him which booth I had been in so off he want to find the nurse to get her to properly close my file, etc. He’s gone about 10 minutes. He comes back, I’m sitting about 10 feet in front of his desk, and he says in a pretty loud voice, “Okay, Paul, I’ve got you set up and you can come over now and we’ll finish this.”

I join him at the desk, and about 10 seconds later, one of the two traffic volunteers comes over and says in a big embarrassing voice, “You knowwwwww, we have a line here.” The registration volunteer helping me is like, “Umm, yeah, we know. He already went through it. Thanks.” Anyway, he is able to close the file, all good, I pick up my paperwork, about to leave, and he says kind of jokingly, “Don’t forget…we apparently have a line.” He thought the other guy was hilarious.

I pass four more volunteers to get out to the parking lot, and three more as I exit the lot. Wow, that is a LOT of volunteers.

My emotional reaction

When I had dose 1, I wrote about the fact that it seemed anti-climactic in some ways. I thought I might be super emotional, and then convinced myself it was more about dose 2. I also hoped that they would have one of those little kiosks set up where you could take a selfie to say, “I got dose 2!”.

There was nothing set up, and I had no overt emotional reaction at all. But as I walked out of the hall, I did have a physical one.

I got a bounce in my step. And I suddenly had a craving for something to “mark” the change. Something to blow the dust off the last 16 months, something memorable that I would recall in years to come. Something different, but not some ritual or anything. And then it hit me.

I wanted accompanying music. I wanted fanfare. I wanted a song that was not something cheesy like “Celebration” by Kool and the Gang or “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves, although the sentiment would work. I wanted something rarer. Something a bit more like “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor. Something I wouldn’t necessarily hear on the radio very often but maybe in the future I’d hear it and think about this as a watershed moment. A turning of a corner, so to speak.

I wanted something that I could crank loud in the car, would get my toes tapping, and honestly, something with a bit of a harder rock feel, not pop. Out of the blue, I had a craving for a very specific song.

I like the song. I think somewhere in my old CD collection I even had the album it came on just for that song. But it is a song from ’73, from Scottish rock band Nazareth. It is not a song I came to myself, it is very much a product of having a much older brother who had all the 70s music there was in album and, yes, even 8-track. I think I even heard this for the first time on 8-track.

There was only one song that would suit my mood and meet my need. It’s Razamanaz.

Since 4:00 p.m. today, I’ve probably listened to the ’73 version over 20 times. Each time, it jazzes me up. It is my “end of COVID isolation” anthem. I know, I know, we’re not there yet, but I needed a song, and this one is mine. I will never hear it again in my life and not think of how I’m using it to blow the dust off my life.

Even my wife noticed, wondering where this upbeat, energetic, finger-snapping, shoulder and head-bobbing husband came from when we were running errands afterwards.

I’m fully vaccinated. Willingly stabbed twice. If that isn’t a reason to turn the stereo up to 11, I don’t know what is.

Feeling lost about feeling lost

The PolyBlog
June 21 2021

As I’ve blogged about a few weeks ago, I’m really hitting a wall these days. The lack of social release has been messing up my brain, as has my continued impersonation of a rabbit living in a subterranean burrow. The physical health stuff for my leg wound is behind me, thankfully. We have no financial pressures. Nothing looming on the horizon, at least nothing we aren’t prepared for already mostly.

Yet I’m struggling.

I have always prided myself on my ability to carry a fairly high degree of stress. No matter what, I can get most jobs done if I’m physically, emotionally and mentally capable of doing them. Build a house? No. Rewire the basement? No. Write a guide to astronomy? Sure. And most of the time I am pretty clear about my limitations. I don’t usually take on something that I can’t handle. Occasionally, I overcommit on some stuff, scheduling things as an introvert that I really shouldn’t, but that’s not really what I’m talking about. I’m thinking more like a taking on a project.

Like biweekly trivia, for example. I started running a game back in the late winter / early spring, and it was an opportunity for 10-12 people to play online trivia against each other, mainly for my wife and son plus friends and family. I expected the crew to grow, and it has slightly, but also waxed and waned. I like trivia, it seemed like a good social connector, and I was happy to do it. Until I wasn’t. It’s actual “work” for me to organize the questions, and as much fun as the initial part can be in some ways, the actual running of the game was producing very little payoff for me. The people playing would go off to their breakout rooms, joke, guess, compare answers, submit answers and come back to the main room, while I sat in the main room by myself and waited. It’s not fun doing that part as I’m not interacting with anyone much, unlike previous iterations I’ve done as trivia master. I didn’t expect that, I confess.

And it was getting to feel like a chore. One that I couldn’t emotionally or mentally commit to consistently. I found myself realizing on Tuesday night that I hadn’t prepared the questions, and trivia was set for Wednesday. Or I would go to host the game on Wed and suddenly realize I hadn’t created the draft answer sheets yet (it’s only a few minutes work, but it IS work that I had to do at the last minute before the game started). I found myself regretting running it or more pointedly, regretting having committed to it.

So I did something I almost never do. I backed out of my commitment. I announced no more trivia until at least September. That was REALLY hard for me to do. Yet it was also self-care. Letting myself off the hook with the same advice I would give a friend if they were in the same boat. “Heal thyself first, everyone will understand, and it isn’t a ‘must do’, it’s a ‘nice to do’ at most”. I feel like I let Jacob and Andrea down, but I couldn’t carry the load.

Dropping another major ball

Today I dropped another major ball. I am part of a local astronomy group, and an idea came up for a project. It is something I had considered doing in part for some time, potentially on my own, potentially as PolyWogg or with the astronomy group, or even another astronomy org. It came up, I volunteered to do it with someone else, and I even signed out some materials from one of our partners to do it. That was February.

Since then, I’ve worked on it piecemeal here and there. Writing, testing, researching. I tried some setup previously, worked okay, I thought I was good to go. Timing was an issue, as was the weather, but I thought, “No problem, by the end of March”. Then April. May.

I’ve been getting super stressed. Stuff I tried wasn’t working the way it should have. The editing wasn’t coming together. But I stuck with it, I’m stubborn.

But then I hit another wall yesterday. I tried to assemble the telescope to get the last bit down, and two of the things I needed to do, I couldn’t remember how to do them or figure it out. It was like I’d never seen a telescope before. Yet I need the steps to work to complete the filming. It was a no-go. And in the current COVID world, it’s not like I can have someone simply pop over and help me over whatever mental block is happening.

It has been feeling like a weight around my neck pulling me down. No longer a project I was excited about but one I’ve been dreading. And as I said, some of the pieces were done, but when I went to assemble them as a draft, the video quality is not up to standards. It looks terrible. Almost like image stabilization wasn’t on (comes standard) or my quality settings were at the minimum (they weren’t).

In a different world, I would blast through. I might even take time off work to just “get ‘er done”.

Except I don’t actually feel right now like I CAN get ‘er done. I have no gas in the tank, emotionally, physically or mentally.

As unprofessional as I feel having to tell the organization I can’t do what I started to do, and that most of what I created so far is unusable, it would be even more unprofessional of me to continue trying to make it work when I have no confidence it will.

So I returned all the materials today and wrote my organizers to say “Sorry, I’m out.” I feel more ashamed than relieved. Maybe relief will come later. For now, I feel like I let myself down, as much as them. Sure, they’ll say “We understand”, and say all the right things about mental health, etc. But it doesn’t change the reality for me which is I committed to something that I feel I should normally be able to deliver. And instead? I’m flaking out. More like tapping out, but it feels like flaking out.

Feeling lost as I turn 53

On a larger scale, I’m feeling lost. Confused. Languishing as they say in the New York Times and elsewhere. Overall, mentally, I like the newer metaphor that we have a preset limit for our mental bandwidth. We can put through only so much, and as the noise of COVID and isolation grows, it reduces the usable bandwidth further.

Mine feels like I’m operating at 50%. I’ve had some recent social outings, one to some friends for an afternoon by the water, one on the weekend with Jacob and Andrea to Pinhey’s Point and then eating on a local patio. But it’s not replenishing me, not filling up my bucket as rapidly as previously, nor diminishing the noise that reduces mental bandwidth. It’s refreshing, but it doesn’t feel sustaining.

As an analytical introvert, I get an energy boost from reading, and I am binging like crazy this month. I read about 20 books a year over the last few years, plus or minus 10 or so, mostly fiction. Since June 1st? I’ve finished 21 already and half-way through my 22nd. It’s keeping me going, but it ain’t replenishing things either.

I have huge projects outstanding, and I have a way forward, to rebuild what I have lost, to find myself so to speak, but that is a post for another day. What has been interesting to me is a combination of three feelings.

First and foremost, I’ve been wondering about the nature of being lost. If you think of being “physically lost”, say in the woods, when exactly do you reach the stage of “lost”? Most people think of metaphorical “lost” as being without a destination or more aptly a plan to get there, while physical “lost” as being more about not knowing where you are or how to get anywhere necessarily. For me, I think it is a combination of not knowing where you are, not having a plan to get you somewhere else, and not necessarily having a “somewhere else” in mind as your destination.

But at what stage, as you lose your location, your route or your destination, do you become officially lost? I have always had a pretty good idea of my current location, the “id” as my sense of self and my capabilities. As my mental bandwidth takes a beating, I don’t know that I know my current capabilities exactly. I don’t know that my destination has changed much, I feel relatively confident on that, but I have no confidence that my previous “route” so to speak would get me there. I have doubts.

Secondly, one of the series’ I’ve been binging is the Jane Whitefield series. The premise is simple…she’s a one-person Witness Relocation Service to help someone disappear when people are trying to kill or hurt them. While I don’t want to disappear, the series does bring up lots of questions about the relationship between “self” and “identity”, “habit” and “character”. For example, her primary advice to her clients in the stories is that everything is about simple incrementalism. If people know you like to read, don’t go to the local library in your new life. You can read, but altering your habits slightly will make it harder for them to find you. Small steps that move you from your “old life” to your “new life”. Equally, there is a lot of discussion of how much of “you” is from your “nature” side and how much is learned from your “nurture” side over the course of your life. What can you easily change, what can’t you change?

Finally, I’m also binging the Robert B. Parker series called Spenser for Hire (or at least on TV, that is what it was called). In it, Spenser is the intrepid private detective. He has a best friend, Hawk, who is a top-level thug, a mercenary free-lancer doing whatever he is paid to do and not worrying about the metaphysical nature of it all. Spenser, by contrast, thinks all the time. It is not uncommon in the books for other characters to treat him a bit like he’s some wannabe throwback to the Knights of the Roundtable, rescuing fair maidens and young men in distress, including his brilliant psychologist girlfriend. He lives by a code, he does what he says he’ll do and never quits even if it hurts him; he’s quite thoughtful in general, neighbouring on philosophical; thuggish in his physical behaviour; and the renaissance man who likes to cook good meals, drink good spirits, and read voraciously. While he sounds impossible, he’s also rather down to earth in his wants and desires, eschewing dress up clothes, etc.

Yet what entices me to the series of late is the sense of “completeness” that he has created. Like most characters, you can see the “self-reliance”, that’s inherit in most protagonists I think. But what sets Spenser apart to a great deal is much of his life is also relatively “autonomous”. He knows what “completes” him. And in the early days of the series, what completes him is simply him. I’ll come back to this in a later post, as it seems misleading and disingenuous to try and discuss it in detail here.

But between the feeling of being lost, wondering about identity, and the ideas of autonomy vs. self-reliance, I feel somewhere in there is a nugget of wisdom I need to find.

Each year, on New Year’s and my birthday in June, I take stock of where I’m at, where I’m going, and how I’m doing at getting there. This birthday seems more like a crapfest, not feeling like I’m in control at the moment. I’ve got some ideas of how to get back on track, but I’m not there yet.

Tune in tomorrow for another episode of the weird mind of PolyWogg…

Simple medical appointment, complex reaction

The PolyBlog
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.

Vaccine reactions

The PolyBlog
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?