Sing and remember…

2021-01-13

Lately there have been way too many reasons to be disappointed in humanity…. way too many failed opportunities offering the ability to prove goodness exists and that what really matters is intangible. It’s heart breaking and depressing.

And too often, heart broken, depressed people make really bad choices. Stupid choices. Choices that can never be undone. Choices that have the potential to destroy themselves, their families, their friends, their communities, sometimes their whole world… our whole world.

If you are someone on the edge – I urge you to find someone to speak to, to look for beauty somewhere… it exists if you can find the strength to look.
If you know someone on the edge – I urge you to reach out, lend an ear or a smile…. you never know when people will need it most.
And if you are neither…. please pray and/or send positive energy into the world. Because no matter what you believe, we need help to get through these dark days.

Namaste everyone!

ps – new song from Tim and Tyler!! soooooo good!

Have I mentioned I hate hospitals….?

2021-01-07

What a week….
So I have been in and out of hospital/dr clinics for the last few weeks again, and am a bit muzzy when it comes to what day it is, let alone what date it is… resulting in being a bit discombobulated…
and then B ended up being non-weight bearing in her hind end Monday (she got injured playing with her Newfie/malamute boyfriend – he love-tapped/shoulder-checked her into the fence). With tramadol and opioids she is back to walking, but now is annoyingly sucky and needy.

Anyway, stress continues to affect my hormones… which then affects my ability to absorb calcium and magnesium. This means I keep going low.
And that means I have been having facial spasms (irritating and uncomfortable), muscle contractures (super painful), and cardiac issues (tachycardic and erratically arrhthymic… and I already have an arrhythmia).
So my “doctor” (ie the sweet guy on Babylon Health because the “actual” doctor that I supposedly now have never gets back to anyone including the pharmacist – so I ran out of calcitriol… which exacerbated the issues) decided I needed to go “get checked out and have tests run” faster than if we just tried to go through the normal referral procedure because the specialist he spoke with was concerned if I just went into urgent care in Cochrane if something was seriously wrong they’d have to ship me to Calgary anyway

thankfully I only had to wait in the triage waiting room for a couple of hours
and then they moved me to a bed
Instead I sat/lay there for forever… having multiple sets of heart and serological tests
and despite it all the …. doctor … decided not to go with an infusion… 
I told everyone it was just my calcium, that there was nothing wrong with my heart
but no one listens… this is why I don’t talk to doctors 

Then the ER doc also had the nerve to read me the riot act about following up with my “family doctor” because he ordered tests but then didn’t wait for results before sending me home.
But of course the tests were ordered on HIS licence, so if there is an issue… it’s him on the hook.
The annoyed rambunctious “I hate hospitals” me, felt like saying
“the other tests aren’t going to say something different… my calcium is low and my magnesium is borderline, and you’ve already told me that my heart is healthy… I have been through this umpteen times and I can tell from the symptoms I am showing… but no worries – you don’t want to infuse me … fine. But that is YOUR call – after making me wait all this time to make a decision… so you SHOULD be on the hook 🤬”….
Of course I just smiled and gritted my teeth. To which the nursing staff remarked “she’s sweet but getting impatient” and laughed.

Yes I have been in health care for the last 25 years…. so I should be more patient.
But REALLY????
ok… rant over… sometimes you just need to blow off steam. 🙂

Another gotcha day for B-girl

2021-01-06
It is so hard to believe that this crazy girl has been with me for 9 years now…
Though she drives me nuts (especially those days she corners 5-point bucks or decides to chase down skunks), I have been so lucky and so grateful to have her around.
She makes me laugh when I’m sad or stressed, gets me out when I am feeling lazy or tired, and loves me even when I am annoyed or impatient.

How many times do you think it will take to wash away the skunk? Good luck!

She keeps me sane, keeps me safe (in her mind), and makes me slow down.
So happy 9th “gotcha” day girlie…. I wish we had 9 more coming.

Finding the light…

2020-12-31

Fire is a force of nature, and was believed to be like the sun, moon, and other natural phenomena… basically a bridge linking the elements. Traditionally, candles and fire have great meaning for both sides of my cultural heritage.

For Celts and Gaels, lanterns provided light associated with both blessings and good fortunes, as well as delivering warnings from the corners of darkness. During Diwali, the lighting of candles shows the triumph of good over evil, and provides a way to light up the path home in the dark.

This year, as a way to meld these two halves, and to encourage the sun to shine and rid us of 2020, I embraced the concept of fire fully… Ice lanterns are a way to bring light into the darkness of winter; the space where the worlds of fire and ice meet becomes a place of creation, a place of light, air and warmth.

With winter solstice behind us, and the sun on its slow return, the start of a new year is itself among the ways we celebrate light.

And so… let’s welcome the light… and create a path through the darkness we’ve been living in.

The last minutes of 2020 charitable giving….

2020-12-31

There may only be a few hours left of 2020, but that means there is still time to get in your last charitable donations for the year!! All of those funds go towards capacity building workshops and clinics in the environmental-disaster torn developing countries that we work in.

Just a reminder that anyone donating $25 or more to V.A.S.T. will not only have our undying gratitude, but also be sent one of these super sexy VAST masks – so that you can be the proud recipient of all kinds of questions about our “really important and interesting work”. 😉

Check us out at Jeff’s newly beautified and updated website – www.vetsabroad.org….

Masks will be going into the mail next week – so donate now! Of course you can always donate at a later time as well…. but masks are first come first served….

Reminiscing at the close…

2020-12-30

4 years ago at this time I was just arriving in Ottawa to start my “new” job with the CFIA… it was a chaotic and incredibly hard and emotional time.
Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s I had…
1. gone into the hospital for 2 calcium-magnesium infusions… (due to the damage to my parathyroids from the thyroidectomy 6 months prior)…
2. taken a “forced” 10 day trip to PEI with Tyra as a celebration to “relax” before defending my PhD… (apparently my anxiety – which started in August – was stressing EVERYONE out…)…
3. packed up my entire house to get it ready to sell – shipping some stuff, selling some stuff, donating most stuff…(only finishing because of Elaine, Michelle, Jo-Anne, Ashley, and all of their spouses)…
4. defended my PhD… (probably the easiest part of that entire period)…
5. published the first article from said PhD…
6. held 3 VAST fundraisers in 3 provinces to fund the 2 weeks of activities we were holding in Nepal… (thanks to help from Amanda, Hillary, Luke, Rhonda, and Jeff, amongst others)…
7. conducted 2 workshops and held 3 clinics in Nepal, and taught a short course at one of the vet colleges… (with some assistance from Sunisha, Sudarshan, and Rabindra)…
8. completed a 5 week internship in New Zealand analysing antimicrobial usage in livestock, and likelihood of there being a correlation in antimicrobial resistance… (fyi – there was none…)
9. gotten stuck in Beijing for 30 hours because of volcanic eruptions in the Pacific creating an inability for planes to fly…
10. gotten dumped by the guy I thought was going to be my “forever”…
11. and driven across the country through a crazy number of storms, narrowly avoiding an insane number of accidents (wildlife, black ice, white outs, out-of-control other vehicles…)…

It just goes to show… you absolutely never know what is going to happen next.

So keep your eyes wide open, and don’t be so busy planning for tomorrow that you forget to savour today. Challenges can be gateways, complications can be blessings, and obstacles can be beginnings, but if you miss the opportunities you may not get to experience those joys – we don’t always get a second chance.

And sometimes…. like 2020… the new pathways can create hardship and devastation – during which the memories of the good times are needed in order to maintain hope.

So Happy New Year everyone…
May your troubles be less, and your blessings be more. And nothing but happiness come through your door.

CoVID chaos and public perception

2020-12-17

People assume as an epidemiologist, statistics are just “numbers”… faceless entities that are just a means to an end. For some, that may be true. But for most of us, it is exactly the opposite – we know and feel every number, because every single one has value and meaning… they tell a story, and change our outcomes, risk assessments and predictions.

Maybe for me, the cases glare at me… because before becoming a vet I was an EMT, and the day I quit I watched a baby die from shaken baby syndrome. And in my Master’s degree I was madly trying to prevent a plague epidemic in black-footed ferrets on the brink of extinction – but couldn’t find a single positive animal (ferret or their rodent prey)… and very few fleas (the insect vector transmitting the disease). With my PhD I lived and breathed every single dog bite and aggressive attack for 4 years, as I desperately tried to find positive ways to prevent negative situations. Every event, every wound, every little detail was scrutinised, every factor was weighed carefully.

And now? Now my job is to provide guidance and recommendations to prevent, mitigate and terminate incursions, mass epidemics and pandemics of foreign animal disease, especially zoonoses… So during tuberculosis outbreaks, every single farm matters… every single case matters… every affected producer eats away at me.

And these days… these are really, really hard days. Because all of these severely ill CoVID patients and casualties aren’t just names… they aren’t just faceless entities. They are loved, they are missed, they are/were someone’s whole life. And the symptoms they suffer are horrendous. Every person matters… And everyone has a global responsibility to keep themselves and the people around them safe and healthy.

So please remember – we all need to do our part. We all need to remember the people around us. And we need to make sure that those who have died don’t just fade into a series of numbers. They still have much to teach us.

Happy 25th Shimms!

2020-12-14

When I was 25 I had a bit of a “mini-breakdown” in the lounge area of my flat in London… it was triggered by two things:
1. the realisation that my “baby” sister was turning 21 and finally “legal” and able to do EVERYTHING regardless of where she was in the world. Which meant that I was “almost 30″… and had done “absolutely nothing with my life”… or at least that was how it felt because…
2. my mother sent me a small box of things that she had found while clearing out my old bedroom. In the box was a “list” of things that I had written for an assignment in 10th grade where we had to write down 10 things we hoped to do by the time we were 30. Being the “overachiever” that I am, I had a list of close to 100 things… NONE of which I had yet accomplished… 😒
Of course the fact it included things like “travel to every country”, “learn to play the sax”, “speak 8 languages fluently” (I have NO idea how I came up with the number 8… apparently the 5 I did speak was inadequate... 🙄) – actually everything on the list was somewhat “ambitiously lofty” – this fact didn’t actually register with me. Instead I had a complete meltdown because I felt like a complete, abject failure who was never going to amount to anything at all. Since then I have of course burnt the list to free myself from unrealistic expectations… 😂

Ironically, while two things sent me into the funk, it was two things that pulled me out. The first was these two beautiful girls (my flatmates), who dragged me down to our local for a good pint and a couple of games of pool, before sending me packing for the weekend “home” to family for some munchkin cuddles. 🥰


Interestingly, this “munchkin” who saved my mental sanity is herself turning 25 TODAY!! 😃
And so I wish her a most fantabulous birthday, full of love and joy and happiness.
I wish I could be there to help you celebrate your amazingness – and never forget you are a gift to all of us. Love you!! 😘

Socially conscious spending

2020-12-12

With the weight of everything CoVID has done and meant to everyone, it is important to consider the attitude and “behaviour” of the corporations we are supporting. Those companies/organisations/businesses that have strived to make sure employees are supported and taken care of deserve our support. Those who have laid people off, or cut salaries and hours, or essentially turned their backs on the very people who made them successful, and yet earned a profit over the last fiscal year? They have shown what is important and valuable to them… so show what YOU feel is valuable.

So dear multi-million/billion dollar companies, I have a very clear suggestion for you. In this day and age of concern regarding bullying and negativity in the media, a positive ad campaign is like a breath of fresh air. Show us that you are environmentally aware, or socially conscious, or building sustainable futures, or active in the community, or even that you are cheap, effective or socially-conscious (at whatever it is that you are trying to do). Do this WITHOUT trash talking your competitors, or denigrating them, or ridiculing them. When you run a negative ad, it simply strengthens resolve not to buy your product (even when you think that the message has been minimised). Start helping society by making the messages you send positive ones by improving YOUR public appearance. There are ways to gain market share (and get your message across) without ever needing to mention the competition.

Support local, support strength, support empathy.