It was a bright, crisp, sunny, beautiful day here on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. Our last clear day here this year. Tomorrow, it’s clean the place, pack, and get ready to leave on Tuesday morning. Back to Toronto. Where the doctors await. Where the pain and the trauma resume.
I know, if I was living here year-round, the doctors, pain, and trauma would be happening here instead.
Sure.
Tell that to my amygdala.
Not long ago, they told me, as I lay there in the emergency ward of one of the best, most respected hospitals in Canada, suffering from what I knew was an inflamed appendix (occurring, mind you, on the heels of a gall bladder removal just months prior), that an appendectomy, though obviously necessary to handle the immediate problem, was the very least of my worries. Scans revealed that my whole body was run through with cancer. Metastasizing. All through my guts. Very, very concerning. Quite probably into my lungs, actually, which would certainly be the death of me. More scans would settle it, but I had to prepare myself, because odds were, I had very little time left to live, and what little I had would be spent in hospice, half-conscious while they managed my pain and waited to pronounce.
I lay there in a hospital bed for two fretful days before they came to tell me, in an off-handed sort of way, that actually I was fine, except for the appendix thing. Cancer? Who said anything about cancer? Nothing in my various scans and tests indicated cancer. Geez, buddy, relax.
Being as I used to be a lawyer, I can tell you there’s a legal term for the experience: negligent infliction of emotional distress.
That, for me, is Toronto. The land of pain, trauma, and hospital stays. Don’t give me any of your fucking rationality, OK? When I’m there, I suffer, when I’m here, in Mahone Bay, I’m at peace. That’s it. Now I have to go back, I have more doctors to see, and it’s as if my furlough from the deadly front line has ended. Back to the trenches. Back to the horror show.
Back to where there’s no ocean, no night sky, no view to the horizon and the infinity beyond.
It’s past three in the morning, and I just went out onto the deck to look at the stars, the stars I can’t see when I’m back in the clutches of the doctors. This was the view:
The Moon, Jupiter, and Mars, so my planetarium software tells me:
You know what I’ll see when I look skyward from my place in Toronto? Nothing. The top of the apartment building across the street, and a sky washed out by light pollution, which vista I can happily enjoy while I wait to take my next CAT scan, so the fucking doctors can render their latest fucking verdict.
Fuck that. Fuck this. Fuck everything that comes next. Hey Toronto, here I come. Fuck you.
