Last summer, when a group of us were going through the last of Arta's papers and files, we were thinking about how to share and archive family stories/histories.
At one point, we had come across a picture of Arta's heart, back in 2017 when she had a stent put in during a heart attack.
Back then, we had promised to tell the stories around the image of Arta's heart attack. We recorded Catherine's story (on August 4, 2025), but I only just got the video uploaded. If you want 11 minutes of fun and mayhem (everything ended well, and we got an additional 4 years with our mom), then follow the link below.
September 30. National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Lots to think about. The day started off well enough. Steve and I took shopping trip to replenish the pretty much empty fridge (down to condiments, and that was about it). Given just how any groceries we had, Steve wanted to split it in half, so we could maximize points! His plan didn't work, since i didn't have my card on me (i don't think i mentioned that til we were cashing out, and realized he had to use his card for both purchases). Nonetheless, it was a remarkable moment. Or a moment of remark? The cashier brought it to our attention. We had split the groceries in half. Perfectly. Precisely. Each bill came to $283.88. What a lucky event!
Steve suggested we should take advantage of the moment to buy a lottery ticket. I told him that we had already HAD the lucky event! The fates had blessed us with this unexpected moment of perfect division. We should just sit back and enjoy it! I went to sleep reminding myself that it was Doral's birthday in the morning.
But it was stomach and back pain that woke me up in the middle of the night. Nausea sent me to the bathroom. I tried to manage the pain til I could't. When the whimpers finally woke Steve up and he asked if I was OK, I found myself acknowledging that I wasn't, and asking him to please take me to the hospital. He decided that it was looking more like a heart attack to him, and decided to 911 instead.
The fire/rescue folks were at the house within minutes. Steve alleges that there were 6 different firefolks in our bedroom, but i don't recall seeing any faces. Too busy curled into a writhing ball of pain. I do recall an oxygen mask, and a bloodpressure cuff, and some very impressive vomitting (from me), attempts (unsuccessful) to place an IV in my arm (i think i was trembling too much and do recall seeing a stream of blood tricking down my arm), and needles going into both my shoulders (anti-nausea and painrelief, I think?). Once some drugs started flowing in, they moved me out to ambulance and then off to hospital.
The people helping me out were so calm and helpful. One funny moment in the ambulance was so "typical Victoria". The driver suddenly slammed on the brakes, jolting us a bit forward: it was a deer on the road. :-) The person accompanying me said thsy they had already had to swerve 2 times earlier in the morning (for another deer, and to miss a racoon). Ah the joys of city wildlife.
The hospital is not 10 minutes from our house, but I haven't generally entered from the ambulance side, rather than the ambulatory side.
And thus, it was from the relative comfort of a stretcher that I got to experience them doing their triage magic.
I got an ECG, and then blood work, and then more drugs, and then got wrapped in a warm blanket, and was able to join Steve who was waiting for me 'on the other side', in the 'oh-so-familiar-emergency-room' at the Royal Jubilee Hospital!
And so we sat there together, waiting for the blood work to come in.
I was reminded that I could go out to the "myhealth app" on my phone, and I would be able to see the results of the bloodwork just as soon as the doctors would be able to see it.
And that is another piece of (technological) magic.
Of course, being able to "see" it does not necessarily mean being able to "make sense" of it.
Still.... it gave Steve and I something to do while sitting together in the waiting room (I was mostly dozing in and out of hydromorph sleep). Steve by this time was googling the various test results, and texting some to Catherine, and we were making guesses that pointed NOT to cancer, but to maybe a gall bladder problem (white blood cell counts, and liver stuff).
We made our way up the triage queue, and in to see Dr. Little (no, we did NOT ask if his name was Stuart). He poked around in my belly (ouch), and then told me he was going to do a bit of an ultrasound, to see if there were stones in my gallbladder. He said the symptoms and bloodwork pointed that way. He warned me that he was NOT an expert, just a generalist, but it might give him at least a preliminary idea of what was going on. He set the machine up, asked me to take some deep breaths (ouch), and confirmed that there were stones enough for him to get me folded into the queue for the trained tech to do the formal evaluation.
Yea! Gall bladder attack!
CT scan of my belly from 2023
Just gotta say it. Every time there is a stomach ache, it is hard not to have a little bit of fear on the pancreas front. And so, just like I was DELIGHTED to have a bowel obstruction back in 2023, I was DELIGHTED to be told my gall bladder was being a shit. That is so fixable!!!! What a relief! I did head back to the MyHealth App to look at my imaging results from that last bowel surgery in 2023, and yes, it was there! Though I felt a bit disappointed that it described my pancreas and spleen as "unremarkable", Catherine tells me that in this context, unremarkable is a good thing!
Dr. Little left for a few minutes, and then returned to tell me he had just run into one of the surgeons in the hall, talked about the file with her, and she said depending on what else came in through emerg, she might be able to get me into surgery that night (rather than trying to schedule me for gall bladder removal in the future). Still thinking about the nightmare that was the previous night's pain level 10, I said I was game! He said he would get the official ultrasound ordered. And so Steve and I returned to the waiting room. By this time, I was starting to feel like I knew many of the other faces who had been spending the day in the same space as me (the young, the old, and the middling).
And then the ultrasound (superquick). The results were as expected (stones, and thickened wall of gallbladder). Because both chairs and hospital beds were tight, Dr. Little moved me to a slightly more comfortable area to wait.
The surgeon stopped in, and said that she couldn't promise, but she might be able to get me in. We started going through the consent discussion. She started talking about the inside of my guts, and then looked around for a paper to draw things for me. She couldn't find one, but noticed a paper hospital mask close by and started drawing on it. OK. Maybe it is not the most accurate drawing out there, but she was using it to point, and to explain to me all the different risks of the surgery. It made sense to me!
Plus, it reminded me of spending time in the Emergency waiting room with Arta during the cancer years, when Arta would grab one of those cardboard vomit bowls to doodle on. Made me happy to remember that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlimgNkjso4
Catherine was not so impressed with the surgeon's drawing (I texted it to her), so she sent along one with better detail. It is that green little eggplant looking thing that needed to come out.
In any event, I was good to go, and sent Steve back home so he could get off his own legs (didn't want him to have a DVT!). They hooked me up to the IV, and started running the antibiotics through me, and getting the blood thinners ready. They were still waiting for confirmation on a surgical bed, so I just hung out there in my chair, wrapped in warm blankets and waiting. Again, it was a bit of a 'memories' affair for me, since I had also spent many hours sitting in precisely the same cubical with Arta.
It wasn't too much later that the surgeon stopped by to tell me that she was not going to be able to fit me in tonight, but that one of her colleagues could put me on the list for the morning. They had also found me a bed in on the 3rd floor in the North Tower, which meant I could get a good night's sleep first. And so, off I went.
A selfie with Celia
Because this is Victoria, 30 seconds of conversation with the nurse assigned to me confirmed that we had good friends in common (indeed, that she was one of Jess Asch's close friends). Close enough to merit (with her permission) a selfie to send to Jess. It is a funny world.
Again, a strange thing rolling back into one of those rooms that looks exactly like the one (on 8 South) we sibs spent so much time in with Arta. This time, the view was out towards the parkade rather than towards Richmond. I had both the tops of PKOLS and Mt. Tolmie in view, but by the time I was thinking about slipping out of bed to take a photo, I was asleep.
And I slept like a log (yea to pain relief). The morning nurse warned me that people were running pedal to the metal, and that while I was scheduled for surgery, she couldn't give me a precise time. I let her know that I didn't care. That is, I was happily in a bed, and would trust that they would fit me in when the time was right. No worries.
And really, there were no worries. Someone came in to take me down to surgery before my nurse had even been told I had a time. Steve was on his way to the hospital to visit, so there was just enough time to tell him to stand down.... and off I went. Leaving him to take a photo of my now empty hospital room. I didn't even have enough time to write down 'my plans' or add other commentary to the white board!
Again, it was bizarre being in pre-op a second time this year. I am starting to feel like I should get a surgical visits punch card. :-). Again, I enjoyed filling out all the consent forms (such lovely lawyerly texts), agreeing to blood products, etc. I did ask the Dr. if it was common for people to ask for their gall stones. He told me, "Yes" it was common for people to ask, and then with a smile added, "and absolutely not. You can't have them.". :-). Ah well..... my hopes for jewellry to mark the event were dashed.
Not much more to say. Dr. MacPherson and the team were great, and it was pretty much painless. Sucking back the gas (that they described as smelling like a Canadian Tire store), and waiting for oblivion. I managed to count my breaths (using my fingers) up to 20. And that was it. Waking up in the recovery room again. And again, really enjoying the swirl of noise around me. I think that has something to do with growing up in a house of 10 people: I find the background noise relaxing/comforting rather than disorienting.
trigger warning!
It is something of a miracle really. You fall asleep, and wake up with 4 little laproscopic holes in your belly. Yes, I can say that those 4 puncture sites hurt a bit, and that I do feel really tired, and need a couple of weeks of rest, but I don't have to wait for a big incision to heal. I have to wait a couple of days before bathing, and take some 'overdoses' of tylenol and advil, and have to make some changes in diet going forward, but somehow they have managed to slice up and suck out that very irritating organ! No more gall for me!
Once I felt stable enough to want to go to the bathroom, I was stable enough to head back home. Steve met me in a wheelchair down at the entrance. So, 36 hours after entering the hospital, I was leaving again, minus one persnickety gallbladder. Steve said he would get one last photo of me to send to sibs and kids. While Richard suggested I was doing the "Ice in my Veins" pose that features in some of the kid's memes, I am only pointing at the absent gall bladder. And then, shuffling back into the house to crawl into bed for more sleep.
the moon in the trees
In hindsight, I will admit that I had been having some unexpected stomach pain over the past months. And I have been increasingly telling Steve not to put his hand on my stomach if he puts his arm around me during the night. But if you just ignore pain, it goes away, right? So, while the idea of a 'bad gallbladder' never even occured to me, I have probably had several attacks. One time (when Steve was out of the country a few months back), I had pain in my back and stomach that left me curled up on the floor. When I finally decided I had had enough, I determined to call Gillian (who lives a few blocks away) to take me to the hospital. But as I was crawling to get some clothes on, the pain started to subside, and so I just crawled back to bed and went to sleep. No point going to the hospital once the pain is gone, right?
...the moon out from the trees
And then the same thing happened last week, when I out at Sun Peakes for a workshop. Again, I wondered about the hospital, but I was way out in a ski resort, and couldn't imagine trying to get an ambulance all the way back to Kamloops, so again I just waited it out. And... after 3 hours and a bunch of vomitting, it seemed to subside. I was cautious the following week, and just thought I would monitor things. So, I did have two moments (probably both gall bladder attacks) where I THOUGHT about going to the hospital, but I managed to ride the pain out. This time? Well.... Steve took the reins, and the rest is history.
And of course, this song has been running through my head since the ultrasound results!
Arta is in hospital recovering from a bowel obstruction caused by a tumour on her pancreas. They were able to do a special procedure called a gastrojejunostomy (yes, of course, had this word memorized with only two tries of saying it out loud) to bypass the obstruction and allow her to continue to eat. Post-operation she has continued to have a lot of nausea and little appetite. The hosptial team looking after he is amazing and working on finding the right combination of meds to alleviate her pain and her nausea. We are getting close to that sweet spot. In the meantime we decided part of her lack of appetite had to do with the hosptial food she was getting -- too bland, or too sweet. And so, Sunday we brainstormed some ideas for food that sounded delicious to her that could still be mashed or purred to meet the dietary restrictions of her gastrojejunostomy recovery period.
If you know Arta, you know she looooooves vegetables. If anyone could convince through example that eating vegetables is joyful, it is Arta. I reminded her of how much she loves a soup thick with vegetables and we decided to make some and puree it and see if she would be interested in eating it. Here is the soup I made today to try and tempt her -- onions, celery, garlic, carrots, zucchini, spinach, fresh basil, pureed tomatoes and vegetable broth. I blended up a cup and brought it to the hospital.
I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say she was in heaven (on earth). She wasn't able to eat the amount she would usually have eaten in the past, but she did have about 6 tablespoons and licked out the bowl.
The Vegetable Soup (before being pureed)
Eating soup with napkins handmade by Hebe
But also, if you know Arta, you know she also loves dessert. And dessert can happen anytime of the day. This morning she thought she'd be able to eat a couple of tablespons of ice cream if we could track down a little orange pop to make it into a float. Perfect breakfast.
She was also open to a trying two slices of banana and a spoonful of chocolate fondue.
Overall, it was a great day convincing her body and stomach to try out some food again. What will tomorrow's food adventures bring?
