Indestructible? I Think Not

A very bold statement to have emblazoned on product packaging, right next to the “as seen on TV” logo, is “Indestructible”. This is a very bold statement indeed. It almost sounds like a challenge really. Indestructible? I don’t think so. How can they make this claim? This still means what I think it does right? What sort of rigorous testing transpired in grave effort to reach this world renowned indestructible status?

Visions flash through my mind with the thoughts of gorillas flinging luggage around the zoo enclosure, crash test dummies in cars being rammed into concrete walls, monster trucks driving over school buses, heavy machinery toppling trees with ease.

So I pick up the item to read the package in effort to find any form of justification for this ridiculous claim. And finding nothing but pictures and listed features on how this remarkable product will make all things related in my life much easier to deal with. How did we ever live without it before? And all of this can be yours for only $14.98?

Replacing the item on the rack I advance my position in the multi-feeder mouse maze to the express check out that many super stores are now implementing. Realizing that I am being navigated through a strategically placed barrage of impulse items while I patiently wait my turn, my mind returns to the stamped aluminum folding wallet that is indestructible. Yes, it’s a wallet. Not just any wallet, an indestructible aluminum one. And only $14.98 at that.

“I bet I could destroy it by driving over it with my pick-up truck” is my next thought, and I debate mentally over whether it’s worth spending the $14.98 just to find out. I have inadvertently stated this out loud and receive “that look” from my wife that makes purchasing it just to run it over a silly idea.

Now with our purchases made and returning to our vehicle I look over at my wife and state aloud, “I could soooo crush that with my truck”. There’s that look again. Silently we complete the walk to the truck, make eye contact climbing in and we both begin laughing out loud at the thought of it all.

Indestructible? The world may never know for sure.

Customer Served

Too much emphasis these days is placed on finding fault and pointing out errors in things or people and not enough attention is given to commending them for their efforts. Business and companies large or small should not be excluded. So when a company hires a “challenged” person, mentally or physically, to a front line position not only gives credit to the company for seeing a person and not their disability, but also to that employee for knowing they can do the job well. I wish more companies and customers would feel this way.

            Today while visiting a business office I found what would be the trifecta of commendations with this establishments customer service counter. Standing at an unoccupied side counter organizing my papers, I noticed a physically challenged customer service representative dealing with people at the front counter. Her disability not only affected her mobility but speech as well. I say this only to paint an accurate picture of the situation. Now, this is a reasonably busy office, not with long lines of people waiting, but a regular and constant flow of impatient customers not really wanting to be there in the first place. This representative dealt with every single person in a polite, professional and genuine caring manner rarely found in any customer service agent anywhere these days.

            While handling an issue for a customer, there was an unfortunate glitch in the computer system while imputing information for the newest person’s concern. With an explanation and heartfelt apologies, the inconvenience was being sorted out at a rate only the computer and software would allow. The customer expressed their understanding and patiently allowed the clerk to handle it without comment. Then it happened.

Two heavy sighs followed by impatient toe-tapping were heard from the “next in line” person which brought the attention of, well, everyone within earshot. This being a rather small office area, this meant everybody in the place.

The person being served then turned around, and without a word, gave a stern and disgusted look that silently portrayed the expression of “Seriously, Asshole?” that put an immediate end to the sighs and toe tapping. They then promptly returned their attention to the clerk where they shared a smile.

The “next in line” was looking around the room for some kind of support when they met my gaze. They must have read on my face the effort to contain my laughter because their eyes looked at nothing more than carpet until it was their turn at the counter.

To the obvious surprise of this beyond rude customer, they were greeted by the clerk with the same smile, courteous and professional manner as all who entered before. Now placed as “next in line”, I felt privileged to have been in attendance for this. And to think I wasn't even going to come here today.

The Drive-Thru Dilemma

            Drive-Thru behaviour, no matter how many times I have the opportunity to observe it in real time, is always a great source of entertainment. I wish that I had a video camera at times. The mission-like determination of the drivers gives way to all thought of, well, anything. They seem to forget that there are other things within a reasonable proximity like other vehicles and people. Their sheer focus alone is something that could be admired if not for the fact it was so laughable.

            On this particular day I was fortunate enough to be in attendance to witness a delivery to a coffee shop while working out of town. Due to the parking lot design the delivery truck was parked in such a way as to, not block access to the drive-thru entrance but make it so that the cars would have to, with plenty of room to do so, drive around the front of the truck to gain entry to the drive-thru itself.

Now this seems a simple enough solution to such a dilemma. Yet as I watched the traffic flow for close to 15 minutes there were six drivers that could not make the initial adjustment. One driver after another would drive up within two feet of the side of the truck and stop. As if expecting the unoccupied truck to move out of the way. They would then leer at the truck and at the driver who was too busy unloading to notice them. Next came a quick look around the area for anyone who may sympathize with such a plight. Now is when it becomes a little more frantic as they look behind them, voice their displeasure to their passenger whether there is one or not, look around again, grimace, attempt a comment out of the closed driver side window, look behind them again then exhale and then slump in utter defeat.

Finding no alternative they would reverse their vehicle and begrudgingly drive around the nose of the truck while repeatedly shooting stern looks in the direction of the truck driver. One driver looked as if they had taken a pen and wrote down the truck identification information as well as the licence plate number.

I literally laughed out loud a couple of times and considered the idea of setting up hidden cameras at various locations. I’m positive that I could easily retrieve enough footage for a weekly half hour reality show episode.

            Find a coffee shop drive-thru and perch yourself with a cup of Joe in full view of the cars entering and just watch. You will be quite surprised at what you see. For added entertainment, go to one that has two lanes that merge to one lane just before the “order here” speaker. This takes on a whole new set of issues. It is now a competition of who was here first.

Unexplainable Pain Explained - Part 2

To continue where I left off I feel I need to refer to Part 1 and bring things to speed. I may be wrong, but it’s my blog, I’m doing it anyway.

          So I had just finished giving the build up of a lifetime and left you hanging right? Good.

          Well fret none because this is where we get to the meat and potatoes of it all and give you all of the gruesome details, no, wait, descriptive details that will, with a bit of luck, convey what it actually feels like to experience extreme and almost unbearable pain.

          So we’ll continue on from where I left off and carry on with the post surgery pain. I want to talk about the initial surgery first, not the second surgery, which is a completely different experience all together. K? Thanks.

          Because this first surgery was considered a day surgery I was sent home that same afternoon which was, we were told, the appropriate two hour recovery time after waking up from the anesthetic. Two hours, really?  

Major throat surgery and all I get is two hours to wake up enough to hail a cab home? Wow. It really doesn’t seem like a long enough time to convalesce unless you just want the hell out of there real bad. And the drugs you are fed kind of make you want to hang around for at least a little bit longer so you can score more of them.

          Getting to the whole pain business, which is the point of this entry, and the after first surgery experience, I feel I need to advance to the point where the drugs wear off. After all it is about the pain right?

          So now I have found my way home with the help of my beautiful wife. I’m pretty sure it was a taxi because my truck was still in the parking space at home. If I’m remembering the actual ride home and not a drug induced haze, it took no time at all.

I never realized just how bumpy and fun the roads in this city really are. Roller coaster-like enjoy ability. I don’t know if I should chalk that up to just the drugs I was pumped full of or give the cab driver credit for hitting every speed bump and corner at break neck speed to make it truly memorable.

So jumping ahead just a bit, I’m now home for a while and have been in and out of consciousness for a few hours. I love how the hospital loads you up with the good drugs to send you home and never gives you spares.

Then, all of a sudden, at least it felt that way, the painkillers that I were given out so freely at the hospital as if they were Skittles, wear off, and I attempt to have a glass of water. This was a normal reaction, or so I thought, because my throat feels extremely dry and the dryness makes it hard to swallow. Go ahead and have drink of something wet I thought.

 It turns out that it’s not hard to swallow because my throat is dry, but because I just had major throat surgery…duh.

So I reach for a glass of water. Not ice water, noooo. Not warm water either but a little bit above room temperature water. It was just a tad on the cool side as not to provoke an experience, but less painful. Or so I thought. I was thinking warn. Warm is never wrong but I was wrong. After all I just had major throat surgery right? Warm is soothing.

My shock and surprise to this experience, no person on earth could possibly have prepared themselves or, actually trained themselves for.

It was like swallowing a mouthful of molten pre chewed broken shards of glass while simultaneously having a red hot 3 inch diameter knitting needle forced though the side of your neck slowly, and I do mean slowly, at the same time a noose tightens around your neck with every small sip of cool soothing liquid that you happen to force down your burning, dry, raw throat. How’s that for pain?

This is not limited to water. This is swallowing anything in general, and I mean anything. Like painkillers. Yup, the stuff that makes this type of pain go away so you can swallow? Yeah, that stuff.

It, at times, also includes air. You guessed it, breathing. I never thought that it would ever be this painful to breathe. Take my word for it, it is. See above pain description.

So before going to bed, like anyone would, I dose up for the night in an attempt to try and get as much of a full night sleep as I can. So I’m good right? The meds knock me out and I drift off into what I hope to be a night of sound sleep.

All of a sudden somewhere in the middle of the night the pain meds wear off and I wake up in tears and screaming. Not regular blood curdling screaming like you hear in movies but the kind of screaming that can only be described as raspy and garbled as if you just had a portion of you throat removed, or at least scraped raw.

 Yet I try to avoid screaming or expressing anything vocally because that too causes its own new experience in severity.

This is where my internal debate begins as to which pain is worse or at least more tolerable for the time being.

Do I endure the tears for the next undetermined amount of time from the excruciating pain that I am feeling at this moment? Or do I bite the bullet and swallow the 3 doctor prescribed Codeine laden pills one at a time? Or is it the Morphine’s turn? Such a dilemma. It was either that or the morphine, depending on whose turn it was. I was told to alternate every 4 hours or as needed. 4 hours my ass. Turns out no matter what I took it only lasted 2 hours at best. Go figure.

I feel I need to refer back to the description of swallowing broken glass here as a quick reminder about swallowing. We now have added a solid object which feels like a razor blade encrusted jagged edged rock the size of a golf ball, to the liquid.

So now after what seemed like an eternity of internal debate, which in reality was only about 15 seconds, I reach for the Codeine pills. It was their turn so I grab three of the buggers, a glass of tepid water and work up the courage to swallow them one at a time.

That’s right, one at a time because the thought of doing all three at once, well, I may as well put a bullet in my brain because right now I think the bullet would hurt less. This every two hours. Then the pain kicks in again and I get to do it all over.

Set an alarm clock to go off every two hours for no reason whatsoever one weekend. That in itself is an extremely annoying experience and yet pain free, unless you have small children. They tend to jump on your in bed, which is fun in itself and not relative to this situation at all.

I hope that this gives you a little better insight into what I have attempted to portray. This could easily turn into a three or four part mini-series but I will end it here.

Please let me know your thoughts and leave a comment.

Thanks.

It Was a Sign

I have always been a hockey fan since my childhood years when I actually was learning how to play the game. My talent and love of the game grew as I did like every devoted kid in my era. Hockey was the Game.

Many an evening in my younger years watching the Ottawa 67’s while the thoughts in my head dreamt of being as good a player as Denis Potvin. Yes, as a matter of fact I was in attendance at many games for his former Ottawa team, and yes I am that old.

My love of watching live hockey was instilled at an early age. Any live hockey really. I always felt that the “Junior” league games were a better game to watch because the players are trying to prove themselves in an attempt to make it to the big league. But that is not my point here. I just wanted to give you insight on why I was where I was when this happened.

As luck would have it, I happened upon a pair of tickets to a Kingston Frontenacs game. If you don’t know, they are a team in the OHL who have the talent to vie for a National championship, known as the Memorial Cup. Ok, call me bias.

As I said, I happened upon tickets to the home game on November 7, 2014 which turned out to be more than just tickets to the game. This is an “Oh my god” moment people. I suggest you fasten your chinstraps right now because I can’t be responsible for any injuries incurred from reading this. I’m not kidding. Put on your helmet and fasten it.

While in attendance at the game, we (my wife and I) were aware that there was going to be a special ceremony for the fallen soldiers of the Canadian military. Also on display and presented on the ice for the ceremony, was a mobile monument, for lack of a better term, had been fabricated from assorted salvaged parts and pieces of an armored combat vehicle that had sustained a bombing attack and rendered immobile. This particular vehicle, I was told, burned for 12 hours before they actually buried it with dirt to smother the fire.

To get more to the point of the matter, while we were in our seat prior to the game we noticed that a number of soldiers were going through the crowd at random within the lower bowl area, where we happened to be sitting. People were being asked if they would like to hold up a cardboard sign that depicted the name, photo and date of unfortunate demise of one of our fallen. We saw them within the crowd but were unaware of their request until they came upon us. When asked we responded “Of course we will. It would be an honor”. And sincerely felt honored just to be asked.

Then the soldier laid down his particular small stack of signs on the seats in front of us, as each soldier had their own small stack to distribute throughout the crowd. This was truly random in the dispersing of the signs. No pattern whatsoever. Yes, at this juncture I need to emphasize this point. It was totally random. Kind of like lottery tickets. What are the odds of this kind of stuff?

So he sets down his signs to hand out a couple of them to us a few people around us before he moves on,  from off of the top of his designated pile, when I look down to see the picture of the soldier looking back at me. My heart skipped a beat and I immediately became emotional to the point of tears. I was almost frozen and rendered speechless. And I do not cry easily.

I was looking back at the face of a fallen soldier that I knew. Trooper Brian Richard Good was unfortunately taken from this world on January 7, 2009. I had worked with Brian some years earlier and, from what I have been told, felt a very strong commitment to serve.

I have never taken Remembrance Day services lightly over the years nor have I dismissed the sacrifice that our military choose to take in our stead. Maybe over the years we all seem to recognize it less for whatever reasons we may have.

Regardless, this was my reality check for no other reason than I need to continue to recognize that certain people in this country are willing to sacrifice everything in their lives for what they believe in.

My good friend Randy, after I told him this story, said to me that “it was Brian’s way of letting you know he still has your back”.

No truer words have ever been heard by my ears and it still brings tears to my eyes when I think about it.

Thank you to all who serve.

Thank you Brian.

Unexplainable Pain Explained – Part 1

I have always had a rather noticeably high tolerance to pain. Throughout my so called growing years I played a variety of full contact sports and had my fair share of injuries because of it. But, as I grew older, not all of my injuries were sports related.

Let’s just say that I was a bit of an asshole and some of it was self inflicted, or at least caused by me, due to an influence that may or may not have been inflicted by a substance…or two…sometimes three…at a time. But that’s not the point here.

Just to give an example or two, of injury not substance, I vividly remember playing football in my youth as an offensive lineman and taking a direct helmet hit to the chest. I broke two ribs. Sure I had a bit of trouble breathing, but got patched up on the sidelines and went back into the game.

Actually they wrapped a piece of foam around my ribs and just taped it really tight and I was good to go. Try pulling that off with the parents today coach. Yeah it’s what you did then. Suck it up princess.

How about the time in my adult years when I was playing softball for a bar sponsored team. Raise your hand if you can relate. Just about everybody who has played a sport as an adult has at one time or another been sponsored by a bar or aspired to be sponsored by a bar. Après game beers. You did so.

Anyway, while playing first base for my provincial championship team, which I must say I was pretty awesome at, I took a line drive in the inside of my shin. Which any ball player will tell you that you need to put your body in front of the ball as well as your glove so that the ball does not get past you even if it gets past your glove.

Well it got past my glove. Needless to say that my leg got there faster than my hand and the impact caused not just muscle bruising but damage to the membrane that is between the muscle and the bone. Oh yeah, I failed to mention the hairline fracture to my shin bone or Tibia as doctors like to call it. I went to work the next day.

I was not trying to impress anyone or prove anything. I had bills to pay and that’s what you did, you continued to earn a living, and should do, but people don’t anymore.

But let’s get to the real topic here. All of this explanation was an attempt to give perspective to the topic. I have a rather high pain tolerance. Or so I thought until now.

Anyone close to me knows what I went though for my Cancer treatment. I have met some fantastic people because of it and many of them experienced what I did and much, much more. I am the fortunate one of what I call “the original six”. No I won’t tell you the names, they know who they are.

Without going into complete detail and doing some finger pointing, let’s just say that I found out who my friends really are and which of my family members showed their true colours.

I had two surgeries prior to my doing any form of Chemotherapy or Radiation treatment. The first surgery was to remove the source Cancer from my throat which the doctor called a Tonsillectomy plus. This really meant that he removed my tonsils and excavated a portion of my throat to ensure that the source Cancer was removed.

 The 31 Rounds of Chemotherapy and the 35 Radiation treatments that happened over the course of 7 weeks, yes I was pounded with both treatments daily, was to eliminate the secondary tumor in my neck that they could not remove surgically due to the location, which was wrapped around my jugular vein and 4 centimeters long.

Now this took longer than I wanted getting to the point and I feel I should cut this into two parts.

The second part will contain the after surgery effects and the lack of swallowing ability as well as a rather descriptive attempt at portraying the experience of intense pain.

To be continued.