How I Joined the Elite 1% and Why it's Not All it's Cracked Up To Be - Part 1
Why the local taxi company only takes me to one destination
This is not a post about wealth.
I take that back. It’s about the wealth of gratitude I have.
As a Canadian, I’ll start by apologising. Subscribers impatiently waiting for the next installment of the 12-part series on hospitality will have to wait a little longer.
If it helps, this multi-episode post will mention the word hospitality at least once.
Regular programming will resume shortly. Thank you!
As I was hunched over, trying to puke into bushes surrounding the parking lot the taxi had pulled into, I thought this post might become Canada Makes Me Sick, Part Deux. Nothing came out. Pukey, yet pukeless Paul returned to the cab. My wife buckled me in and we were off to our intended destination again. The cabbie looked at the road once or twice, but his fearful yet compassionate eyes were fixated on me. Fortunately, his cab was still in pristine condition when he dropped us off at the entrance to the Emergency department of our local hospital
I decided against that title about 12 hours later. Again, I was in the back seat of a taxi. After a nice dinner and a relaxing evening at home, we hit the hay early. Shortly after midnight, I woke up. I felt a bit chilly. Fifteen minutes later, I was shivering like a naked fur trapper during a wild winter storm in Whitehorse. My wife generously withheld her laughter as I frantically tried to activate the taxi app on my phone. I hit the right app on the 87th try. Then, we were off again. This time, it was non-stop to Emergency.
But wait. Let’s back up. How did I become a hypochondriac? Had I been partying like I was with my brother at a PS Production Services Christmas party? (long story involving a large ham, a sharp knife, and me who lacks even the simplest DIY skills) Why did I like regular rides in the cabs to the ER?
Friday the 13th = Unlucky Day for Routine Medical Procedures
If you read Canada Makes Me Sick (Customer Service is my priority so I linked again for those who forgot whether they clicked the link the first time), you would know I recently had a TURP. The turp link takes you to John Hopkins page describing the procedure. Our family doctor said, “The urologist will just laser off the bits blocking your urinary tract.” She’s a straight talker. The best kind of doctor.
The lasered bits were tested. There was no sign of cancer.
The urologist doesn’t do half-assed and suggested I have a proper biopsy, just to be sure.
Friday the 13th was to be my lucky day.
The pre-procedure nurse sounded like an American TV commercial that briefly mentions how medication can become your cure-all before telling you all the ways the product can kill you.
“I feel like an infomercial”, the nurse said. We laughed about it at the time.
The procedure itself took less than ten minutes. An ultrasound probe up the butt to measure the size of the gland they were targeting, ten clicks of a staple gun. OK, maybe it wasn’t a staple gun. My back was turned for obvious reasons, and unlike colonoscopies and cystoscopies, I wasn’t offered the opportunity to watch on a monitor. Perhaps I should have left the popcorn in the waiting room.
The procedure proved that the old saying “no pain, no gain” is a specific measurement of manure emitted from a bull’s behind. There was no pain.
Saturday, September 14th - the downturn begins
September is one of those months that can’t make up its mind. Is it summer? Is it fall? Is it winter? The answer is often yes, depending on the time of day. It can be one, two, or all three. It’s usually just different from what you thought it would be.
Saturday morning was chilly. We both felt it. By noon, the sun had come out, and things were warming up. Suddenly, my fingers and toes disagreed. They were telling my brain that it was actually quite chilly. Twenty minutes later my whole body agreed to the point where I was shaking like that weird uncle on the dance floor at your wedding.
After the failed parking lot puke, we registered at Emergency and were triaged into priority one. Turns out post-prostate biopsy infections are serious. The advice of the infomercial nurse was spot on.
Once we cleared triage, antibiotics were administered, and 27 litres of blood were extracted for testing. I peed in a cup, too.
Five hours later, I was feeling right as rain. (Who made that stupid statement up? Who cares, maybe the statement is true, and I was right as rain on a beautiful summer day.) The ER doctor explained he’d made an appointment for me to get more IV antibiotics on Sunday. He said I could stay over if I wanted to. I went home after solemnly swearing to return if I felt the slightest fever.
Sunday, September 15th - from downturn to drop off
When I awoke three hours after hitting the hay, I thought it was my regular nightly pee time. My penis disagreed and said, “Don’t blame me, this is something completely different.”
Trip two to the ER was imminent.
Triage worked a treat again, although my wife and I disagree on why.
My memory is very clear. We sat at the registration desk. I calmly and eloquently explained my symptoms and the previous two days’ history of events to the diligent nurse. She was so impressed that she decided I could skip the queue. I rose in gentlemanly fashion and was ready to walk with confident strides to wherever they decided I would be treated.
My wife says I was an incoherent, sweaty mess, swaying from side to side, ready to keel over. I’m certain she’s confusing this with a twenty-four-year-old episode at a bar the day she met my best friend Bjørn.
You be the judge if you wish, but I’m the one telling the story so let’s go with my version for now.
Kelowna General Hospital treats guests like royalty. The nurse insisted I was to be chauffeur-driven to my destination. It was a thirty-two-second ride. It is with genuine remorse that I admit I failed to tip my driver.
Upon arrival and without delay, my gracious hosts stuck an IV in each of my hands, hooked me up to an ECG and a machine that monitored every vital sign and started extracting blood again. I caught a glimpse of the version of a machine that goes ping before the doctor arrived. It said my blood pressure was 80/55 and falling.
“Yay!”, I thought, “I can save money on my BP meds.”
The doctor had obviously flunked out of the police academy, settling instead for a simpler career as a doctor in the ER ICU. Her first words to me were:
“We’re bringing you in!”
“I’m already here.”, was my initial thought. I always respect law enforcement doctors.
The next doctor had been more ambitious when deciding on a career. Alas, he flunked out of law school and ended up as an ICU doctor. I call him Dr. Liability.
“If your heart stops, do we have your express permission to resuscitate you? May we use CPR? May we use defibrillators? May we do whatever it takes with whatever we have to revive you?”
Maybe Dr. Doom is a better name for him. Hardly optimistic on a September Saturday night.
Lying there in my state with doctors telling me that I might soon be lying in state was peaceful but surreal. Fortunately, Kirsten was by my side. The only pain I felt was for her. She sat in a chair all night. She watched me sleep. She listened to the machine that went “PING”. She was content to be disturbed by the pings as long as they didn’t turn into one long, ominous beeeeeeeeeeeep.
When morning rolled around, my BP was closer to what it looks like for a healthy person. I felt great. I was ready to leave for home.
The doctors and nurses were horrible listeners.
This is Part 1 of a three-part series called “How I Joined the Elite 1% and Why it's Not All it's Cracked Up To Be”.
Written with the clarity of hindsight, the accuracy of a faded memory, and countless creative liberties, 87 Stories is a journal of how my gap year lasted four decades, made me an emigrant, an immigrant and gave me a life I never dreamed of.
In addition to my love for writing, I’m an educator and a consultant passionate about hotels, hospitality, and keeping people safe during their travels.
Thanks for being part of the Always Care Community. Your support is my motivation and I’m genuinely grateful that you’re here. Please share, subscribe, and connect with me.
Only you could make this very serious story have a funny undertone, Paul. Well-done on both your resurrection and your storytelling.
Oh no! So all of this just happened, I'm assuming from the dates? Hope you are better and get a clean bill of health.