On my first birthday, I put out my candle with my fingers ... ouch! My 20th birthday brought tears, when I realized I was no longer a teenager ... silly girl! I threw a potluck get-together at home, with all my favourite ladies in attendance, to mark my 50th birthday milestone ... a real treat!
This year, I guessed my birthday would be not much different than an ordinary day; after all, I'm not really celebrating a significant year. It's been my experience that birthdays rarely go as planned when high expectations get in the way, so I've been trying to keep this one low-key.
To begin with, I've baked my own cupcakes … chocolate amaretto cake with chocolate cherry butter-cream icing. Add to that, some well wishes from family and friends, a simple dinner and a Scene Points movie with my honey, and this lady will be a happy birthday girl.
I would like to say a special thank you to my husband for the surprise bouquet of lovely flowers, and for renewing my license sticker for me: He's a keeper, as are all my friends and family who helped to make my birthday special, in a low-key-birthday kind of way.
This week, I read an article published in my local newspaper, about an appalling experience a woman endured during an investigative medical appointment. The polio survivor who'd found a lump in her breast, was treated more as a curiosity than a frightened patient.
Susan Turner related a heart wrenching tale of an x-ray technician, a nurse and a doctor who ignored her fear and anxiety about the current condition of her breast: Rather than allay her fears, they peppered her with insensitive questions about the polio she’d acquired as a child, and chastised her for having not received a polio vaccine, something that wasn’t even available until two years after she’d already been stricken.
Though Turner had lived most of her life valiantly rising above the challenges and visible reminders her polio left behind, she refused to allow her disability to keep her from fulfilling her potential and helping others along the way. That said, her recent personal fear was real: She had watched her own mother endure 14 years of cancer, chemotherapy, nausea, and hair loss.
Mammograms can be traumatic and painful at the best of times. I personally had an unfortunate experience that left me marked and bruised at the hands of an insensitive technician. I cannot imagine how much worse the experience might have been if I’d already been worried about a possible diagnosis of cancer.
Turner, showed great courage and tenacity in coming forward about the unprofessional treatment she received during what should have been a compassionate and competent breast cancer screening and diagnosis. Her straight forward condemnation of the doctor’s inappropriately timed curiosity about her childhood illness – “Stop with the unnecessary questions. What about my breast?” – had me cheering, Bravo!
Susan Turner states, “Polio is in my history but it’s not who I am”. She is, as the Washington Post credits, an advocate who has, “Spent her career working with disenfranchised groups, including people with physical disabilities and those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS."
Too often, people are judged by their outward appearance rather than on their abilities or their accomplishments. Three self-absorbed health care professionals made this mistake with Susan Turner. I thank her for bringing this failure to provide compassionate medical care to the attention of medical professionals and lay people everywhere.
We all needed to know.
Link to - The Washington Post article
Link to - The Hamilton Spectator article
Link to - Pulse - Voices from the Heart of Medicine article
New Year's Eve is often a time when people worry about making resolutions or unrealistic goals that they'll struggle to keep in the coming weeks and months. It's also a time when the hoopla can overtake the actual significance of the occasion.
My husband is a DJ, so he is usually booked to work on New Year's Eve. His gigs since I've known him have mostly been dinner dance affairs at Retirement Villages, and I've always been welcome to accompany him each year that we've been together. I'm
usually enlisted to assist with spot dances, meandering through the
crowd on the dance floor, and gifting couples with their prizes; but, while it's nice that we get to spend New Year's Eve together, even though Doug must work, I’ll admit that sometimes I get a little bored.
This year, we got to experience the best of both worlds. The week before the 31st, I received an invitation to join friends at their rousing Rummoli game house party. I was able to spend the early part of the evening with my husband, eat dinner and assist with the spot dance before joining the Rummoli game, already in progress.
I had a great time at both parties, and, I think Doug probably felt more relaxed working his retirement village gig, relieved of the worry of sharing time with me. I did lose $7 playing Rummoli, but I felt very welcome at the game and enjoyed the casual ambiance.
Doug and I don't really make New Year's resolutions, as such; they’re a custom in which we've never really put a lot of stock. Rather, we try to remain flexible about how we go about living life together, from ringing in the new year to how we face the challenges ahead. It’s our way of making sure the hoopla of just one day won’t overtake the significance of the rest of the year ahead.
