Mia Turns Two! (A La Dr Seuss...)

My darling Mia, today you are two!

Just LOOK at all the wonderful things you can do!

You can climb up the stairs, dance, hop and sing

(But running around naked is by FAR your favourite thing)

You are busier than any other kid that I know

You do yoga, gymnastics, and swimming; Shelly in tow

To Daddys’ school you’ve gone every Wednesday this year

Ensuring that the “Roots of Empathy” curriculum is heard loud and clear

You have made friends with many of his students there

They read you books, play games and laugh at your crazy hair.

About that hair of yours, it needs to be said,

Went directly from me, with love, to your head

It is wild, it is crazy, (it likes nap-time the best)

You never KNOW what it will do to do but it’s ALWAYS a mess!

You speak many words and string lots of them together

But still have a few you refuse to surrender

Your blanket is “bee-da” your bottle a “Baba”

Grandma is “Namy” but Papa is still Papa

About him – you know- he’s your favourite of sorts

There’s a smile you reserve just for him and his cahorts

You don’t care that he forgets or walks with a cane

You go first to him, always running, hugs and kisses the game

Last weekend you two played Mr Potato Head together

It involved many giggles, dropped body parts – a total disaster

But you and Papa laughed your way through the worst

The smile on Grandma’s face, as she watched, I thought would burst!

And speaking of people you love, lets name a few

Shelly, Toby, Mommy, Daddy, Grandmas One and Two

You have friends galore – especially Jack, Jack and Anook

And of course to every dog you’ve ever met a fondness you took.

But your FAVOURITE animal of all, of course, is the Alpaca

Which we look for EVERY TIME we drive past it

I suspect by next year you’ll have a new fave…

Could I kindly suggest more rhyming options with IT’s name??

You’re a wonderful little sister to your loving big Brother

I can’t remember what he did before you – to him there is no other

You pull his hair, break his lego, steal his pillow and his cars

But he always forgives you because he loves you with all his heart

You’re not ALL evil, however, as you recently have shown

A great empathy for others with your inquisitive moan,

“O-KAY, Daddy?” you’ll ask if he’s in the garage for a time

Or to Toby if he falls, just to make sure he’s fine.

Yes, Mia, we know you’re tough, and always a hoot

But you’re a softie deep down, with a wicked humour to boot

These two years with you, my dear, have flown by

And I don’t really want you to grow any more, you know why?

Cause I love everything about you right now that makes you you

Your smile, your wild hair, your spunk and sweetness, too.

I fear one day you’ll be too old to cuddle,

Have a “baba” with your “beeda” in mama’s arms – our before bed snuggle.

You’re going great places I can tell that already

But don’t grow up too fast little girl, I’m really not ready!

Happy birthday to you, my shining star

Thank you for bringing us all so much joy thus far!!!

My Mentor

Do you have a mentor?

I do.

I did, I should say.

That’s the thing about mentors.  You are never as important to them as they are to you.  They can be the most influential people in your life; the person you think of when you are struggling; the person who gives you strength to keep on going; the person you subconsciously emulate in your day to day life; the person you feel so close to at times that you are embarrassed to tell them just how important they are to you.

And that’s the thing about being on the receiving end of a mentorship relationship; when they suddenly die no one notifies you.  Sometimes the way you end up finding out is in a by chance reading of an affiliated hospital’s monthly newsletter.  No one even asked me to sit down.

It was a few months ago, I must confess, that I heard about Dr. Latimer’s passing.  I haven’t managed to blog about it yet out of sheer weakness: I was daunted by the overwhelming task of summarizing my complex mix of feelings in one lowly blog post.  But I feel I can’t miss this opportunity to write about someone who was so important to me.

Liz Latimer was one of the pioneers of Palliative Care in Ontario – if not Canada.  It was during a 1 month elective in my 3^rd year of medical school that I was first privy to her passion for Palliative Care.  I was hooked.  I can honestly say that I chose my path in medicine based on that one month of my life.  I spent the first 4 months of my residency with the main Palliative Care doc  in Thunder Bay and followed that up with many other electives in that area.  After settling in Collingwood and establishing my own family medicine practice, I recently went back and retrained with her to hone up my skills in order to establish my own half time practice in Palliative Care in my own community.

I don’t know HOW, with all that she does and everyone that she has taught, she remembered me, but she did.  Or at least, she pretended to.  


On my first day back with her she even reminded me of an event I had actually forgotten.  I had been a  3^rd year medical student just having completed a one month elective in Palliative Care.  It was Christmas time and I was on my Internal Medicine rotation.  The details of the exact circumstances escape me right now but the gist of it is that a patient I was following on Internal Medicine was dying and the Palliative Care team, who had only recently been asked to be involved, were out at their Christmas luncheon.  It was Dec 24^th.  For SOME reason I was the only one at the hospital and I remember Liz calling me from the restaurant and running through the impending conversation out loud with me.  “Are you SURE you’re OK explaining to this family what is happening?”  I didn’t appreciate at the time what a daunting, and somewhat inappropriate duty it was; to be the one to break the penultimate bad news to a grieving family, and to be a lowly 3^rd year medicine STUDENT.

Having students of my own now, I can’t even IMAGINE putting one of them into this scenario.  I also appreciate, now, how much she must have thought of me to do so...

As I enetered that patient's room that day, my white coat costume billowing behind me, I didn’t feel like a 3^rd year medical student.  As all of the grieving eyes of his family members looked expectantly to me to give them the information they so desperately searched for, I didn’t feel nervous from inexperience.

I answered their questions honestly.  I told them, almost verbatim, in the words of my mentor, what to expect, what we could and couldn’t do for them and how we would do our best to relieve all suffering and walk the journey with them from here on out.

The relief that was reflected back to me solidified for me that feeling of satisfaction.

Liz remembered that Christmas Eve that I delivered, for that family, the worst news imaginable.  She probably remembered it out of guilt.  I remember it now because it was one clairvoyant moment that changed my life. I had spent most of medical school feeling a little lost and disenchanted with the politics and “game” of medicine.  I’d like to THINK it happened slowly over the course of my month with her, but my confidence didn't actually blossom until that moment that she entrusted me with her gift.

I think of Liz almost every day.  I have quotes that she has written on my desk.  I have a file folder of her articles in my desk drawer which I photocopy and give to all of my own students.  Sometimes, when I talk to patients, I still hear myself echoing her in the questions and words I choose in our conversations.  I email Liz every 6 months or so to update her on Palliative Care in Collingwood.  She always replied with her usual familiar exhuberance that made me feel like I was just as important to her as she was to me.

Liz Latimer died fairly quickly in April of this year.  I found out quite suddenly, while casually perusing a Mc Master newsletter, in June of this year.  The loss is not only a huge one for our Palliative Care community, but also for our Province, our Country and for all of the many patients who need someone to advocate for them.  And for me.

I never told Liz how much she meant to me, but I wish I had.  I wish I had known sooner about her passing so I could have been there to share my overwhelming respect for her with her family at her funeral.  And I wish I knew that she had died peacefully, with someone (not a 3^rd year medical student) holding her hand, reassuring her and her family, as she has done for thousands of others, that all would be well in the end.

The Temperamental Artist

After finishing a long and drawn out dinner that culminated in numerous “dessert” courses (yoghurt, berries AND a Christmas cookie), Toby was well satiated, reenergized and cheerful.  So cheerful, in fact, that he burst into song as I cleaned up the dinner dishes.

“I’m a lucky boooooooy” he sang in his atonal, eurhythmic, off pitch voice while slowly sashaying his head from side to side, “I got THREEEEEE treats after dinner and Mia only got TWOOOOOOOO”

I interrupted his creative composure to remind him that pointing out the unequal distribution of desserts wasn’t very kind.

The sashaying immediately stopped.

“WHY?” He asked in astonishment. “It’s the TRUTH, isn’t it?”

(Sometimes it catches me off guard, the little things that seem OBVIOUS to me but have yet to be learned by my kids).

I told him that what he was doing was called “gloating” and asked him how he would feel if he had been the one with fewer dessert treats and a sister who emphasized that to him.

He thought about this for a bit and then apologized.

A few moments later his sashaying resumed and he again broke into song.

“I love my mommmy……she gave me treats after dinnnnnnnnerrrrrr…..she gave me THREEEEEE and Mia only had TWOOO but that’s OK, Mia, because it doesn’t MAAAAAAAAter how many you get….”

“Is that better, Mommy?” he asked. 

I couldn’t expect perfection; it was, after all, only his first lesson in writing non-gloating-lyrics, so I reassured him that his second draft was acceptable and went back to cleaning up the dishes.

After another round or two of the song Toby let out an exasperated sigh.  When I asked him what was wrong he rolled his eyes, got down from the dinner table and excused himself in a huff suggestive of a temperamental artist.

“I get what you said, Mommy, but I just can’t keep singing.  I really liked the first version the best.”

I thought it only fair to highlight my budding musician singing a song he actually KNOWS.  He sings Oh Canada on a daily basis at school and for a while it was his favourite song.  Here he is singing it into the vacuum cleaner.  I think it quite accurately reflects the description in paragraph 2.  Without the sashaying, of course.

And while I'm at it...here's a glimpse of take #22 b).  Life as a musician is tough...

Things you don’t want to hear while enjoying your lunch...

Toby made a spontaneous and rather sudden escape from the lunch table today while rest of us sat there quietly eating our sandwhiches.  About 5 minutes later we were privy to the “private” conversation he had with himself in the bathroom mirror.  Toby, going through a bit of a- there-are-monsters-everywhere-so-I-never-venture-more-than-10-meters-away-from-my-parents-at-all-times-and-I-CERTAINLY-never-shut-the-door-to-the-bathroom phase, has a loud voice that carries.  The combination of his constant proximity and vociferous mouth ensures that we are ALWAYS subject to his unrelenting stream of consciousness.

“OH, NO!  I think I have pooh on my nose!” 

(brief pause as he climbed up the step stool to have a look in the mirror)

“Hmmm I don’t THINK I see any…but I can sure smell it.  I really MIGHT have pooh on my nose.  I was just smelling my pooh and then I got worried that I got some on my nose.”

We waited with baited breath for the verdict.

“Nope!” he said and the whole family we let out a collective sigh of relief, “No pooh  on my nose!”

There was one more another pause before the inevitable,

“Mommy, can you come wipe my bum??”

As if my lunch hadn’t ALREADY been ruined by the image of a pooh smeared nose…I got to ruin it even further with a bum inspection and final cleaning. 

Mia's Babies

Mia is super into babies.  And by super into babies I mean mildly OBSESSED with them.  Today I had a rare opportunity to give her some quality one-on-one time without her bossy big brother being around and the activity she chose to do involved sitting on the couch and reading Toby’s LEGO brochure to “big baby”.  I played along.  Every now and then during the story, Mia would spontaneously grab “big baby” and give her a hug, rocking her gently and saying, “Awww…Baby…Aww…” before putting her back on the couch and asking her to listen attentively as we continued to leaf through the brochure.

A few minutes into the game Mia decided to spice it up by introducing baby #2 ,“little baby”, to story time.  (Note to readers: Mia is not very creative OR accurate when it comes to naming her babies. Little baby is TWICE as big as big baby, but she has a hat.  I can only infer that having a hat makes you smaller than any other babies around.   The only other baby she owns is sort of medium sized and has a ripped off ponytail.  Her name appears to be simply “baby”.)

It was a rather spontaneous decision to involve little baby in our engrossing game of “reading Toby’s LEGO brochure to big baby”; we were mid sentence on page 3 at the “next assemble the wheels to the base of the car” part when Mia hopped off the couch announcing that she’d be “Right back!”  Initially I wasn’t sure WHAT she was getting but I waited patiently on the couch, one arm still around big baby, as I listened to her huffing and puffing all the way down the steps, one by one, to the basement.  After a minute or so I heard her start the arduous trek back UP the stairs and a minute later she triumphantly appeared, dragging little baby by the string of her hat behind her.

Although I acknowledge the great feat it was for Mia, with her chubby little legs, to make the journey to the basement to get her, I have to say, it was likely a much more perilous journey for little baby whose head I heard thump up each step as she came upstairs.  And all of that was rewarded by a gentle pat on the back, “Aww….baby…aww..” and then the monotonous version #17 of Toby’s fascinating LEGO brochure novel.

      Sometimes being a baby is hard work.  Sometimes being the 2-year-old mom to the baby is even harder.  But I presume it is worth it because one day it will all pay off and you will eventually get the pleasure of an uninterrupted hour watching the marvels of compassion, motherhood and play through the innocent eyes of your own "baby" unfold.

(Grandma, Mia and "Big baby" on Christmas Day)

A Little Christmas Reminder...

This weekend I made a fairly last minute decision to go to Toronto to a Christmas party with some of my oldest and dearest high school friends.  Each year I worry that I won’t be able to make the party- you never know when it’s going to be or what conflicts I’ll have with the date, but I am proud to say I have not EVER even ONCE missed it.  This year my attendance was ALMOST thwarted by a late afternoon pirate birthday party and one of my patients generous gift of laryngitis, but my thoughtful husband shooed me out the door, generously agreeing to care for the kids so I could pop down on my own.

It is SO refreshing to reconnect with people who you have known and loved all of your life. It is even MORE refreshing to hang out with non-medical, childless people and have a little reminder of how the rest of the world lives.

But I think perhaps the BEST part of this short trip to Toronto was my unexpected golden moment I had with my dad this morning.

My father has dementia.  It has been in the works for years, but we got the official A-diagnosis a few months ago and it has made it seem surprisingly worse.  I know it’s a clinical diagnosis and one we have suspected for years, but somehow giving this beast a name has accentuated its cruelty to me.  When someone you love has dementia - in whatever form or name it is given – you grieve slowly as the unrelenting process unfolds and you slowly watch your loved one wither away, piece by piece.  When you stop to reflect on them you see them as a progressive accumulation of things they can no longer do – my dad hasn’t read a book in years, he no longer contributes to dinner time conversation, he NEVER knows where my mother is and, saddest of all, often forgets the names of his own grandchildren.

Some things haven’t changed, though. I got home from my party last night just after midnight and was unsurprised to see his bedroom light still on.  He has ALWAYS waited up for me.  Sure enough, there he was sitting in the kitchen in his tattered old pajamas drinking cranberry juice all by himself eagerly awaiting my return.  He asked where I’d been and then announced that he was off to bed just before he made me PROMISE that I would come say goodbye to him in the morning before I drove home.

This morning I slept until after 8, enjoyed a uniquely peaceful kid-free conversation with my mother and was ready to go by 9am.   I always hesitate to wake my dad up at such an ungodly hour (he usually sleeps until well past ten – what a life!!!) but my mom convinced me to go in anyways.  I found him upstairs fast asleep and quietly kissed him on the cheek and whispered that I was leaving.  My dad went from fast asleep to loudly moaning in sadness, “Oh, NO!  I get so sad when you go, Lyssie,” he said, “I miss you so much…”  I gave him a hug and reassured him that I WAS returning in just 2 days and responded to his puzzled look by reminding him that it was Dec 23^rd and that we’d be here on Christmas day to celebrate with him.

It was as if I’d told him it was Christmas.  (Wait a minute- - I HAD told him it was Christmas!)  He was SO happy to hear the SHOCKING news that he took my hand, thanked me profusely, and then snuggled back into his pillow to sleep.  Based on the smile on his face I have no doubt he had some visions of sugarplums dancing around in there…

I kissed him again and smiled but it wasn’t until I was driving home that I realized with more clarity why I felt so invigorated.  Here I have been these past few years focusing on all of the pieces of my dad I’ve lost, when this morning I got the gift of clearly seeing all that I still have.  In such a short moment our brief exchange left me happy and fulfilled, knowing how loved I am by my father.  He’s still here this year and just showing up with the kids is going to make his day on Christmas.  What a gift it is to be able to have and share love so easily with family.

This is likely to be my last post of the year and I want to close by thanking you, as always, for following my blog and encouraging my indulgent blogging hobby with your generous comments.  I want to wish you all a wonderful Christmas season/holiday with your friends and family.  And I want to ask you to, at some point this holiday, take a moment – just a brief one – and look around at all that you have and everyone who is there with you.  And be thankful.  I know I am this year.

Merry Christmas!

My New Hairdresser

A long time ago I gave Toby his very first Doctor’s kit to play with and was amused by the fact that he immediately gravitated to the plastic scissors so he could set up a Hair Salon and play the role of “Toby the Hairdresser”.  It was not exactly how I had envisioned this doctor’s kit to be used but I wanted to foster an open carefree approach to creative play and non-gender-biased-career selections.  I also prefer having my hair done than playing monster trucks, so I went with it.

I still get regular check ups by a very thorough “Dr Henry”. Tonight, for example, he found a piece of “Black sushi” in my left ear and he KNOW S it was black sushi because he TASTED it.    (I know it ruins the story to point this out but THIS WAS TOTALLY IMAGINARY.  On the off chance that someone ACTUALLY thinks I had a piece of black sushi trapped in my ear that my son discovered with his plastic otosope; I don’t want any phone calls from CAS.  Dr Henry Jr. has a wild imagination…)

Last spring we had a family wedding and I took Toby with me to a REAL hair salon so we could have our hair done together.  This impressed him FAR more than any trip to the doctor’s had and his interest in the game of hairdresser was rekindled.   I have to say that it has lost some of its relaxing charm as Toby now insists on small talking to me while he brushes my hair, rubs various stuff into it and then aggressively combs it out. 

Tonight, I had a particularly bothersome time of it.  First off, he had me all positioned in the chair and then announced, (with a very professionally, albeit) that he had to go to the washroom.  “Are you comfortable?” he asked me, as I lay cramped sideways in the lazy-boy with my head dangling over the armrest,  “Because I have to go have a poo. "I will be RIGHT back to cut your hair after I’m done.”

I told him he should make a sign saying “The hairdresser will attend to you after his poo” and laughed to myself as he carried on with his business. Toby didn’t see the humour in it.  He takes the hairdresser role (and his nightly bowel movements) very seriously.

He emerged from the bathroom with various “hairdressing objects” in his hand and his loud-mouthed sister behind him.  When she tried to climb onto my lap Toby immediately attended to his customer with the greatest of concern,  “This is my kid sister.  You can take care of her while I cut your hair.”

I pointed out to him that it wasn’t a great business idea to ask your customers to babysit your little sister while you cut their hair so Toby corrected himself and told me that she was actually his assistant.

You didn’t have to tell Mia twice!  She LEAPED out of my lap, and ran to get her OWN hair cutting supplies and before I knew it I had both the bossy-small-talking-hairdresser and his CRAZY assistant at work on my hair.

Might I remind you that I am still contorted sideways in the lazy-boy chair with my head dangling over the edge?  I had no way of seeing WHAT objects they had both grabbed.  I didn’t worry about this at first because, in typical Toby-hairdressing-fashion, I was being asked the myriad of questions that Hairdressers ask, “So…what’s your name?” he started with.  I told him. “OH, that’s a nice name.  How old are you?” I told him my age and he said, “Wow.  That’s QUITE old.  I am MUCH younger than you.”  Then he asked me my address and how many kids I had.  All of a sudden I felt a sharp pain around my left temple and there was an abrupt cessation to the questioning.

In fact, the whole hairdressing experience became suddenly quite subdued as Toby worked away.  Even his maniacal assistant stopped her frenetic brushing with an eerie silence.

Finally my hairdresser spoke again but this time without his usual professional tone,

“Uh…mommy…” he said hesitantly, “You have a cement truck stuck in your hair.”

And so I did.

One day, when my child becomes a successful and well-adjusted gay hairdresser, I hope that SOMEONE will remind him of how accepting I was of this endeavour.