Canada Moms Blog

America's Health Care Reform - One Step Forward

Last Sunday in the United States, the government signed into a law a bill that facilitated sweeping changes to the country’s current healthcare system.

Last week in Toronto, I had to rush my two-year-old to the hospital after she suddenly, alarmingly, clutched her neck and stopped moving. She was ok, but man did she give me a scare.

Both events got me thinking.

I got thinking about how very polarizing, controversial and hotly debated the former has been. And I got thinking about how very devastating the latter might have been – that is, if I had to actually deal with the former and not just write about it.

Admittedly, I do not know the minutiae of the health care reform issues on the table, but I do know and understand the big picture issues – I know and understand that millions of people in the United States cannot afford or qualify for health insurance, and therefore, must pay out of pocket when in need of medical assistance. I know that even when you can qualify for and afford health insurance, that insurance can easily be denied by a medical centre or practitioner because they are allowed to say that they don’t like the insurance you are probably paying a whole lot for. I know that my father needed FOUR different insurance policies just to be able to die, broke, in his hometown.

My Olympic Hangover

Well, the games are over. I had a good time watching from my front-row living room seats every night for 17 nights. I laughed, I cried, I cringed and I cheered. I jumped up and down like a crazy person. I screamed. I yelled. Did I mention I cried? I had more mood swings in those 17 days than I did when I was pregnant and I thought my husband ate all the chips.

 

Names like Joannie, Alexandre, Heil, Jacey Jay, Hamelin, Virtue and Moir are now etched in our collective consciousnesses. Sid became everybody’s kid, and that last gold will shine on in our hearts and our history books. I’m quite sure I’ll be relaying the event to my children – who didn’t realize they were witnessing history and not just their mother freaking out 7 minutes into overtime in the gold medal game – in decades to come.

 

We waved our red and white mittens at each other, a hundred thousand little flags greeting the world and welcoming them to a country we were for once, outspokenly, proud to say was ours. For the first time, maybe in forever, I felt like Vancouverites didn’t hate me because I was from Toronto, and that it might not be hazardous to sit in the first row in front of Ashley McIsaac. We experienced a patriotism that the blurred the lines between provinces and in the memory of urine-soaked indignities. It was magical.

Sign Me Up! School and Volunteerism

My daughter started school this year, and as a mother, this is a whole new ballgame. Where we live, Jr. Kindergarten is ½ day, everyday, so my daughter is out the door by 8:40 am, five mornings a week.

Our kids were never in daycare, so just getting my daughter out the door at a set time every morning sometimes feels like a Herculean effort – one that begins the night before, as I lay out clothes and pack healthy, sugar-free, nut-free, mess-free snacks (Labels! Don’t forget to label everything! Thank goodness for Mabel.) into her little owl backpack.

As a mother, having a school-aged child means staying on top of special pizza days and scientist days and gymnastics days and music days and dance days and holidays and P.A. days and birthdays, and all the little forms and slips and notes and instructions that go along with so many special days that I am left in a daze.

But as a working mother, I realize that all that stuff – all that administrative, organizational stuff – is actually the easy part. The easy part is integrating my daughter into the school system and ensuring that she gets the most out of her experience. The easy part is making sure that she becomes a member of the school community and thoroughly enjoys the little world she will inhabit for the next 7 years. The easy part is making sure she knows what’s going on.

The hard part is making sure that I do.

Taking Chances - Early Cancer Diagnosis

If I play the lottery, there’s a very good chance I won’t win it. Still, sometimes I play it anyway.

If I take the subway during flu season, there’s a very good chance I might pick up a bug. But I take the subway anyway.

Going anywhere in a car is risky, very risky, but I will chance it, spending a few hours of every week sitting behind the wheel.

There is a decent chance that I carry a gene that puts me at an up to 70 per cent chance of developing a life-threatening cancer.

And unlike winning the lottery, getting the flu, or having a fender-bender, I have the unique opportunity of being able tolook into a crystal ball to find out if I have this gene.

Ok, it’s not a crystal ball. More like a petri-dish. Or a cotton swab. And the person telling my fortune will not be a mysterious Roma dripping in fake gems. It will be someone in a lab coat, and my fortune-telling surroundings will not be a veil-draped caravan, it will be a stark, decidedly unromantic clinic. But the question is not, can I have my future told, can I find out what my chances are? The question is, should I?

Should I find out if I, like 1 in 10 Jewish women in Ontario, carry the BRCA 1/ BRCA 2 genetic mutation?
I have already signed up for the study. I did that much, and I did it immediately. You may think this means that I want to find out if I carry the gene. But I’m not sure.

So I Think I Can... Um...

On Sunday night, Tara Jean Popowich of Lethbridge, Alberta won the title of Canada’s favourite dancer on So You Think You Can Dance. Almost 3 million votes were cast, which is pretty rad for our sparsely populated country (permafrost will do that to a place), and I thought, Wow. That’s pretty rad.

I started to wonder what it would be like to be Canada’s favourite at something, and I figured it would be pretty cool. In fact, I’d like to be Canada’s favourite at something, but first, I’d have to figure out what, and then I’d have to compete against a whole bunch of other people who also thought they were the favourite at something, so that when I rightly took my title, Canada would know that I earned it fair and square.

But what could I enter and become Canada’s favourite at? I have few marketable skills, and even if there were a show called So You Think You Can Write a Blurb or, So You Think You Can Cross-Stitch, I probably wouldn’t win either one. I mean, I know I can write a blurb, and I know I can cross-stitch, but the stuff I do is fairly pedestrian or laced with bad words, so I doubt I would become Canada’s favourite. I’ve already took part in a spelling bee and proved my hoserness with lackluster results. I usually beat my husband at Scrabble or Yahtzee, but I doubt 3 million ballots would be cast in my favour simply for rolling dice. 

No Gifts, Please

My younger daughter’s second birthday is in a couple of weeks, and rightly so, I am feeling a little, well, verklempt. Okay, I can be downright weepy about it, but that’s not what this post is about. (Fine, a little melancholic flair may be added, but that’s it.) No, this post is about how much I love my child, and why, because of that love, I’ve asked everybody attending her birthday party not to bring her a gift.

You’re probably thinking that I asked everybody attending her birthday party not to bring her a gift because the last thing we need is more plastic and battery-operated crap lying on the playroom floor. Well, yes, you’re right, we don’t need more of that, but no, that’s not why. And also, I must point out, our friends and family are generally incredibly thoughtful of both our values and the environment when picking out gifts for our girls, so the plastic, battery-operated crap is actually, at our house, at a minimum.

So… I must just be a total ogre, determined to keep (material) happiness out of my child’s grubby little hands, right? Nope, that’s not it either. I’m not trying to neglect, punish or otherwise ill-treat my child. But I am trying to teach her – both my kids – a gentle, wonderful lesson.

Not On The Guest List

This past summer, my two daughters were flower girls at my brother-in-law’s wedding. Adorable and excited, they danced the night away with their equally excited and adorable cousins, plus a whole host of other children under 10. The children offered a wonderful contrast to the evening – an energy to the elegance; a realness to the ritual, and overall, an increase to the joy and smiles and fun and celebration. They were welcomed and well behaved, and we so appreciated our family and friends including our kids in their good time that evening.

But if they, and the other children, hadn’t been invited?

Well, that would have been ok, too.

Spell, Check

So, last night I was just about to get up off the couch and get a snack go clean my kitchen, when a new show on the CBC compelled me to stay where I was.

It was Canada’s Super Spellers, and ohmynerdygawd, I knew I had to watch.

Now, I know that watching 12 preteens in various states of camera-readiness face off against each other for spelling supremacy is not everybody’s cup of tea, but I loved it. Of course, I am a 1986 Regional Spelling Bee participant (and a huge nerd). Plus, my sleep-deprived brain is totally fuzzy with motherhood these days, so any chance I get to flex my intellectual prowess is welcome. And right now my intellectual prowess is on par with 11 year olds, who I can mostly beat. I also really like the Jeopardy Teen Tournament, but those nerds are sometimes way smarter than me, so when I know I can't answer,  I just pretend I didnt' hear the question correctly.

Navigating Stormy Waters - My Thoughts on the U.S. Health Care System

When my 20-month old daughter was sick with croup, I made good use of our medical system. First, I called Telehealth. It was late at night, and I needed to get some advice on what we should do. The nurse on the line listened to me, listened to her, and suggested that we go to the hospital. Straight to the hospital. Do not pass go, do not put on clean underwear. My baby was in respiratory distress. She was calling ahead to let them know I was on my way.

Under the Influence

When my daughter came home with a fat lip last week, I winced. But when I found out how she got it, I cringed.

Apparently, Mischa had walked right into a fist wielding an imaginary light saber. The fist belonged to my daughter’s three-year-old playmate; the light saber, to an imaginary Luke Skywalker battling his nemesis, an imaginary Darth Vader, in the guise of another playground friend.

I know that popping Mischa in the kisser was an accident, but both my husband and I were shocked that a three-year-old’s knowledge of Star Wars was so complete that he was even able to role-play in the first place.

Since when is Star Wars a movie for the toddler set?