Time to put my cap back on my head

for another year, anyway.

The JDRF walk in Victoria is over for this year and all the fund raising pressure at the family level is off for a few months. It isn’t fair, actually, to imply we are pressured to raise money - after all, what kind of parents would we be if we didn’t do whatever we could to help cure our children? The biggest benefit of the walk for a newly diagnosed family is to see just how many other people there are affected by the illness.

That’s one of the other things that never gets listed, just how isolating the experience is at first. You spend days with doctors and nurses, cloistered in a hospital and then spend months sleep deprived, working days in a twilight of worry while you spend nights waking every few hours to test blood sugars and calculating adjustments for insulin doses. Even when you go out, you are huddled with your child in the bathroom, trying to remember the current ratio of short acting and long acting insulins and getting the injections ready. People come in, people go out, they cast quick glances over at mother or father and child, the needles, cartridges, glucometer and can’t figure out what’s happening. The sight of the syringe is usually enough to drive the strangers away. They don’t want to know.

Then, after a few weeks or months of this you walk into a park filled with balloons, music, people dressed up, whole groups of people wearing the same coloured t-shirts declaring “Tommy’s Team” or “Mary’s Minders” or “Team Turbo Tess”…and different companies who have joined in the effort sponsoring tents giving away food or balloons or whatever they think kids would like. It’s a freaking festival in the middle of one of the crappiest moments in a parent’s life!

And you feel safe. You feel part of something rather than walled away from the world. I don’t know of many people who can get through the first hour of that walk without fogging up or crying outright. The demons of guilt, fear, “dear-God-why-me? I-hate-you. Please-don’t-let-my-baby-die-while-I-sleep-in-the-next-room” are chased away by realization there is a future; these people have survived those first horrible weeks and now you will too. After that the idea of raising money doesn’t seem such a bad thing.

And every year when we get our group together and show up it is the same feeling - that rush of finally finding something positive in all this, of not being the only one, of not being alone.

Even people of faith give thanks for a glimpse at God’s plan at some point during the morning. It’s a gift. And when the demons come back - because they will - you have something to cradle in your hand, hold to your heart and cling to in the dark, long nights ahead.

It’s a matter of continuing education

The JDRF teen council for Vancouver Island put together a video to go out on YouTube as a way of raising awareness among their peer group and anyone with sufficient tech savvy to operate the site about diabetes and the upcoming walk. Our daughter is one of the teens on there and Mark was asked to help with editing the final version.

It’s a fun thing for the kids, of course and Mark likes anything that involves technology. We’ve all posted the final product on our facebook accounts and forwarded it to anyone who isn’t connected otherwise. Seems pretty straightforward.

Maybe it’s ’cause we live with this so much, so constantly, we were pretty sure it covered the bases but there is still room for a few of the old misconceptions to creep in to what it’s all about. Since posting the video a friend of ours did a commentary on his podcast about it. This is a good thing as his podcast is far more popular than ours. This is the “any publicity is good publicity” school of thought. Anyway, somewhere in his meditation he started talking about the epidemic of diabetes and how we need to pay attention to nutrition and to exercise more.

I’m sure he didn’t realize it but it sounded a lot like he was speaking of diabetes as if it was all one illness. I’m sure that wasn’t his intention and that he was leading from one thought to another without necessarily drawing a line between them. So, with all due respect, I’m gonna spin a little on this one small issue that plagues diabetics.

Hands up anyone, how many types of diabetes are there? Anyone? Hello?

Who guessed 3? And how many can be traced to lifestyle? 1- unless you consider pregnancy a lifestyle.

There’s Type 1, aka Juvenile Diabetes or Insulin Dependent Diabetes. It is the result of an auto-immune reaction by the body towards the cells in the pancreas that manufacture insulin. So far there is no known reason for it, no cause, no detectable trigger. Of course there are a lot of theories - and I’m not talking about the dancing under a full moon without one’s foil helmet theories that seem to abound - some of which tie other auto-immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis as a possible family genetic link. Why it starts is still at the white mice and electron microscope stage.

Then there’s Type 2 or Adult Onset diabetes. This is the one that is causing all the fuss, grabbing all the headlines. It is becoming epidemic in our society and it is controllable by diet and exercise. To some extent it is inevitable because as we age our insulin production decreases and the cellular tendency to resist insulin increases. The scary thing is it is appearing in children and this is what grabs the headlines. Long story short, over fed, under exercised children are at risk of Type 2 diabetes BUT not all children who have diabetes are Type 2.

When you have an infant, however, that is diabetic you can be pretty sure it isn’t because mom was using chocolate milk for the 2:00 am feeding.

The 3rd type of diabetes is Gestational Diabetes. It can occur in the 2nd trimester of pregnancy but more often in the 3rd trimest. It looks a lot like Type 2 in that there is increased insulin resistance and an inability of the pancreas to produce sufficient insulin and may require insulin injections for the mom. The American Diabetes webpage has a decent amount of information on the subject; here’s a link to their page on gestational diabetes. I’ve used the American site because it seems the Canadian site is mostly concerned with Type 2 issues.

So, yes, it is important to eat right, exercise and take care of your body - eat leafy greens, take vitamins and cram in fibre. Every day another page gets written in the owner’s manual of this lump of mortal flesh and we really can’t afford to skip the few basics we know actually work. Eat right, get plenty of fresh air, look both ways before crossing the street and work together to keep learning as much as we can.

Oh, and to always say thank you.

Everybody else take one step back.

It’s been a long day and I’m wondering if maybe I’m getting in over my head. Mentoring Chair…me? you’ve got to be kidding. All these very serious women, all with good ideas and probably far better organizational skills looking at me to be the one to direct them out into the world. Okay. So, like I’ve been a parent of a newly diagnosed child too and we all go through the same range of emotions but we each handle it differently. And right now I’m wondering if I can manage to keep it all organized. I mean I don’t do such a shit hot job of that already, ya know. My house is a mess, some days it’s all I can do to sort the laundry and get supper cooked. And then work a couple of days. Maybe this will force organization on me, kind of the way bringing home yer first baby brings everything into focus…real quick.

And, like having a child, as soon as you hold the wee thing in your arms you realize that, ready or not, someone now trusts you completely. I hope I can measure up to the trust. I’ve never really had what you could call a serious approach to anything - it always seems so counter productive. It never solves anything to sit and feel full of woe - not that I haven’t, don’t get me wrong, otherwise why the hell am I taking all those different pills? Yeah, okay, so I do have a serious side but I don’t like it. Maybe it’s a matter of I just don’t want to grow up.

Cap in Hand

It’s getting to that time of year when fund raising activities start to focus on one specific event. The JDRF walk is next month and now we start going to friends and family asking them to sponsor us in this walk. It is a way to feel like we’re actually doing something.

To some degree it is symbolic but every penny adds up, y’know, and research is the only way - it is getting close - but even a million dollars here or there only pays for mouse chow, in the scheme of things. The real money comes from the pharmaceutical companies. JDRF lays the groundwork in terms of theoretical research and then big pharma steps in with money to refine it in terms of something useful to them, something marketable.

I remember way back in the late 60’s when these walk things began, the pledge was for so much per mile or per lap (when the swimathons started up). The first walkathon was 25 miles and it took place in one day and boy were my feet sore by the end of it. I was with my best friend, Mariane, we walked all over Edmonton, ate junk food and drank lots of pop. When we finally got to the end I phoned Dad for a ride home then went behind some hoarding and puked up what seemed like everything I’d eaten that day - grape, onion and garlic flavoured lumps of something formerly potato-like.

But I digress, nowadays, walkathons are everywhere for just about everything and are only a few kilometers. I’m much older, however, and find even a few klicks when going up and down and through bushes and in the middle of a big crowd just aren’t that much fun. Especially the crowd part. Being short I tend to get claustrophobic in crowds because I can’t really see where I’m going.

So, is it ethical to get people to donate money to an organization that supports desperately needed research based on the premise of walking a certain distance and then bail after walking a short way then back again? Bearing in mind one of my ankles is severely arthritic and I have mild asthma and the money is the same whether I walk 10 kilometers or 10 feet.

Now, if there was an actual relationship between the distance walked and the actual progress made on a specific research project, I’d go around that damn lake 10 times. But there isn’t. It takes a lot of pledges to feed those mice and they’re the ones that are going the distance in making change happen.

So this is the time of year to go around to friends and those family members who aren’t here and able to participate themselves in the walk, cap in hand, knuckle to forehead, asking for a few more pennies. It’s at this point in time I think to myself I hope they find the cure if only so I don’t have to go through this process anymore.

It hurts other places too

direct costs for aproximately 1 month:

Pump supplies - infusion sets - $318

- syringes - $118.

test strips $ 75.00

insulin $135.00

Pharmacare is an interesting system. It covers some things but not others, lancets but not test strips, for instance or one type of insulin but not another. It was also ‘improved’ so that it doesn’t start covering drugs until a you’ve paid out a certain amount on your drugs. At that point it starts at a scaled percentage of the cost, gradually increasing the amount it covers.

It resets every January 1 and despite paying in over $1,200 a month with all our different prescriptions, we still haven’t hit the pharmacare threshold and it is the end of March.

A good extended medical plan helps a whole bunch, fer sure and I can’t imagine how families without one manage to cope with all the costs. Yes, it is evenutally, tax deductible but between refund time and the next year, most folk like to eat and maybe pay the rent and, believe it or not, go to the odd movie. Yes, poor folk deserve a movie now and then too.

If it wasn’t for our socialized health care system, we’d have gone under a long time ago. That is why, next to Dr. Banting, my big hero is

But more about him later.

wrestle a bear

This was a column I wrote for the Esquimalt News, May 2005 and later used as a podcast on Babas Beach.

There is a long list of things I hate about my daughter’s diabetes. I mean things above and beyond the obvious ones of her having to puncture herself several times a day to measure blood sugars or administer insulin. Or all the things the future holds if my angel doesn’t keep her blood sugars in a reasonable range: blindness, kidney failure and limb amputation, to name a few.

Nope, there are a few other things, admittedly a little further down the list of concerns and irritations this pancreatic spanner caused when it was tossed into the general works of my life. Yes, I said “my life”. Sometimes, believe it or not, it really is all about me. If I can take on all the guilt and blame that goes along with the price of admission to parenthood, surely I can also lay claim to some sympathy time for those moments when my little bundles of joy bring home injured birds, weird friends, contagious diseases for which I have no immunity and the odd chronic illnesses for which there is no cure.

Yes, I know, she is the one with the insulin pump keeping her alive by means of a thin tube of plastic and a wicked long needle she has to re-insert every three days into another place on her tummy. She is the one who has to do the finger pokes and take insulin and get paraded in front of a series of medical professionals on a regular basis, every one of which asks the same questions and stress the same need to be vigilant about her blood sugars. Not only does she get the standard haranguing from parents about her homework, the current bio-hazard rating of her bedroom and “who was that boy you were talking to?”; she also has to put up with being reminded several times a day to do finger pokes, what was your last blood sugar, is it time to change your pump site, how many carbs are in that cookie and did you increase your insulin enough to take care of it?

Here is the true evil of this particular illness: it hits kids. From babies to teenagers it robs them of their childhood and burdens them with the dark truth of their mortality. If there is one thing I hate the most about this wretched disease it is that my daughter was robbed of those precious years of her childhood dreams of immortality. When she was 10 she had to grow up overnight and realize life could end for her in an instant.

How can this be about me, I hear you ask. Well, let me put it this way; ask any mother if she’d stand in front of a gun to save her child or face down any threat to her baby. I’m pretty sure most fathers would gladly arm themselves with a butter knife and fight a bear if it would save their little girls from one broken heart. Now, ask which will hurt more, a bullet, a bear or the knowledge there isn’t anything you can do to keep the hurt and the broken heart out of your baby’s life?

Being a parent of a child with diabetes means knowing he or she has to physically hurt themselves repeatedly throughout the day in order to stay alive. It means dealing with the emotional fallout when a well meaning adult- who doesn’t know there are three types of diabetes, two of which have nothing to do with the current catch phrase of “lifestyle choices” – teaches your daughter’s class that diabetes is caused by being fat, lazy and eating too much junk food.

Then there are those dear folk who insist on taking her or me or her grannie aside to tell us insulin only makes diabetes worse, she should be taking this vitamin or going to that naturopath or eat a diet of tofu and groats. Fortunately, my daughter has more sense than a lot of adults.

I guess it is more accurate to say we are a family with diabetes because it affects every single one of us. Even the dreaded big sister, who will smother me in my sleep for what I am about to reveal, knows she can’t protect her rotten little sister from this one cowardly bully. Hard to believe, I know but it’s true. One day at school her class was lined up for a vaccination against one of the many Ite-esses starting with the letter H. A girl in the line kept whining about why do they torture kids this way, gawd, like, the size of the needle, the pain, how sick she was last time…the usual things. My first born fixed this classmate with her patented dead fish stare and said “quit your complaining, friend, my sister has to do this four times a day. Be grateful.” She may have used a fewer words and slightly more pithy language but that was the gist of it. Now I have to go into the parent protection program.

Okay, there are a whole of things I really don’t like about juvenile diabetes. At this time of year, however, I’m supposed to be upbeat and talk about how close medical research is to actually sending this particular demon back to the seventh level of hell where it belongs. And it is; it really is getting closer every day. But close only counts in horse-shoes and hand grenades, as the old saying goes. And lab rats don’t work for free, y’know.

So, when it comes to my daughter I’ll swallow my pride, brow beat my co-workers, friends and family to pledge me in the June Walk to Cure Diabetes. Whether I like doing it or not, at least it is one way I have of actually doing something. And it is a little less painful than wrestling with a bear.

If you want more information, go to the website www.jdrf.ca . If you don’t have a computer, call the foundation, toll free, at 1-877-287-3533.

It’s no longer “because I said so”

How old where you when you realized that people die? And then how long did it take to sink in how permanent that change in status really is? Finally, how old were you when the penny dropped that if granny died, granpa died, your dog died and all those guppies died, then you also had an expiry date?

One of the problems with Type I is that it tends to affect kids before they’re old enough to have, in their own natural time, reached that stage of coming to grips with the concept of being mortal. This means when your child is diagnosed you have to speed the process by making it clear to them they either control their illness or they die. And exactly what that means.

Of course when they are still infants - and some are diagnosed at the tender age of 12 months and younger - you cannot make this clear to them. No, instead you must carry the fear for two. And then when they are old enough to start taking a little control over what they eat and maybe even do an injection or two themselves, then you have to, as gently as possible, as clearly as possible and as emphatically as possible impress upon them the nature of mortality to whatever limit their understanding is at the time.

For months after coming home, our daughter had trouble going to sleep. She kept asking me to lie down with her until she had dozed off. I knew the reason why but it still took time to get over the moment she told me she was afraid if she went to sleep, she wouldn’t wake up. Okay, I’ll never get over the moment: every morning when I go into to wake her, to tell it’s time to get ready for school, I hold my breath until I hear her sigh, rustle and make those sounds of waking complaint every teenager makes before putting feet to the floor.

Good night nurse

I learned of Trudeau’s death when taking a few minutes to grab a coffee in the parents’ lounge on the Pediatric Ward. It was my third day there - I’d been sleeping on the floor by R.’s bed each night until, finally, one of the nurses suggested I see if a bed was available in the parents’ quarters just down the hall. I suppose they’d hoped I’d go home each night but that wasn’t going to happen until I was sure she was out of the woods.

It was something I had to do. The thought of her waking up in the night - and she was being woken up two or three times a night for blood work at this point - surrounded by strangers was not a good one. After all she’d been through, the least I could do was be there when the nurse came around to take a little blood.

Once R stabilized on the insulin and her fluids were back up, they took out the IV. It had been very handy for all the blood tests needed to keep up on her metabolic state of affairs but IV sites are notorious for infections. So, for some blood work they could get enough by warming up her fingers and using a large lancet, milking the blood into small vials. For most of it, though, the quantity needed really called for getting it from the arm. The inside of her elbows were getting pretty chewed up from all the needles the blood work required.

On the third night it was a new nurse who came around with the tray. She seemed a bit put out at having to come to the ward - maybe she’d planned a nice quiest night, maybe she’d been held over on her shift, I don’t know but there was an attitude I hadn’t seen in any of the other blood-letters.

She grabbed R.’s arm, looked at it, snuffed. Went to the other side and grabbed that arm, snuffed again. With a heavy sigh she took up her needle and started the tie-off. She inserted the needle, muttered - she’d missed, pulled it back a bit and pushed again, muttered, pulled it back and angled another way. By now R was getting distinctly uncomfortable and was whimpering. I was appalled at what I was seeing and gripped the bed rail to keep from leaping across the bed to grab the woman by her throat.

She clumped over to the other arm and started again. Same thing, pulling back and angling another way, pulling back, angling. R was in tears now. The nurse just tossed her gear on the tray and said someone else would have to give it a try, she wasn’t getting anywhere and off she went. I was shaking by this point, followed her out and went to the nurse station.

“I don’t ever want that woman to touch my child again.” The nurses looked up in total surprise. They had grown used to my being there, sleepy at times, encouraging always and making little humorous comments to keep spirits up but this time I was white. “If she comes near R., I will put her through the wall.” One of the nurses came with me and took a look at my dear’s little arms which were actually swollen to the point she couldn’t bend them anymore. I described what I had seen. The nurse said that I could have told her to stop at anytime and that protocol is if the needle misses on the first try, it is to be removed completely and the other arm used.

She called up another phlebotomist - a sweet, obviously gay male nurse. He took a look and was shaking his head. They’d have to use finger vials because there was no way any of her arm veins could be used with all the swelling there. He apologized profusely and said he would make sure to take care of R. himself from now on for any night time blood work.

The ward nurse confided to me that the other leech, the night butcher, as I took to calling her, had a reputation for being impatient with children. She wasn’t usually called out to the ped’s ward. All I knew is she wasn’t going to be allowed within sight of me for a very long time.

Kinda like rodeo round-up in the spring

The triage nurse at emerg directed me to take my limp child to the waiting room, even after I said Dr, Sidhu was supposed to have phoned ahead. I went back, filled out the paperwork and suddenly,  a couple of nurses materialized to whisk my baby into the trauma room. I guess someone finally got the message from the doctor.

M. had parked the car and came in to find us in a big bright room. At first it was a matter of waiting for the I.V. nurse to show up and put a line in. M.’s aunt actually was an I.V. nurse at the hospital but not on that shift. Besides, she always made it pretty clear none of the nurses liked ‘doing’ kids because of the tiny veins they had to work with. Bricklayers and weightlifters, nice big veins are the preferred patients for the intravenous needle specialists.

M. and I stood at the side of the bed looking at our little girl, a pale bundle of love in the middle of a great big hospital bed. She wasn’t aware of us anymore, finally able to slide in to the pool of unconsciousness. Then the party began. A nurse took us aside and sort of kept us herded into one corner of the room. She kept us pinned against the wall and softly explained everything that was happening. There was a bit of a cry and both of us looked over - ‘our’ nurse put her hands out to make sure we weren’t going to charge the bed.

“They’ve just put in the i.v. needle - it’s okay, it’s a good sign, actually, that she’s reacting…We’ve got to get some fluids into her and, once the doctor approves the order, we’ll start her on insulin. First we need to get a base reading in order to see what we need to do. “

At least that’s the gist of what she said. We really did try to focus on nurse but there’s a gut instinct, part of the lizard-early -mammal brain that kicks in when your child is in jeopardy. Another part of my brain, the savior, that sense of humour that keeps everything in perspective when the floor has fallen out from under foot, had a sudden snapshot of us in one small circle and everyone else over there.

Ever watched films about branding time in the spring? When the cattle get herded in from winter grazing and the new calves are cut out for branding and the yearling males also get the honour of providing prairie oysters for the round-up crew’s dinner. There’s usually a couple of guys on horse back cutting out and herding the calves and keeping the adult cattle away. Then there’s a large group of men gathered around each calf as it comes their way, roping, throwing, branding and, ah, cutting, as required. A honkin big vaccination for good measure and the poor wee thing is released.

The point here is that while this is going on, the cows are continually milling around, nosing the air and calling to their calves. When one of the wee critters comes trotting back to the herd, the mother knows it’s her baby, she calls to it, sniffs it all over then pushes it back into the main herd with her nose. M and I were like those cows, milling about, sniffing the air and making worried parent sounds in the direction of a very large group of people huddled over our child. Without the dust, the heat and the smell of cow poop but otherwise, operating at much the same basic level.

A side note:  in Victoria the road to the Vic General winds around the far side of the parking lot and the main building. As we drove past the back of the hospital, we saw a medi-vac helicoptor flight taking off. It’s kinda hard to miss it as the heli-pad is fairly close to the road. Later we learned it was a child who had been brought in after three days of being in diabetic coma. The parents thought it was the flu.

A nurse told me this to explain why there were so many people working on R. and why the tension seemed so high. It is a serious condition, of course but by the time boy was brought in, he had no body fat left - the nurse kept talking about how big his joints seemed because there was so little muscle left. He was medi-vac’d to Sick Kids in Vancouver but didn’t survive the day.

What’s the difference between a diabetic coma and insulin shock? Well, the first one takes longer to kill you. Diabetic coma is the result of too much sugar in the blood - no insulin or too low insulin levels means the glucose stays in circulation and your brain can’t use it and begins to shut down. Insulin shock means the no sugar in the blood because the insulin levels are too high and all glucose has been metabolized. The brain has no sugar to use and begins to shut down - rapidly.

Ah, all the technical stuff we got to learn. Once things calmed down to the point where we were just waiting for the pediatrician to issue orders, the nurse took both of us by the hand, looked us in the eyes and said, “you’ve got a steep learning curve ahead of you, guys. You’re going to learn more in the next week then you ever thought possible.”

You know it’s bad when the doctor looks scared

I’ve never dragged my children anywhere but when the cab arrived, I had to physically drag R. outside. She didn’t want to move and was barely conscious. Even at 10 and having lost weight overnight, she was too heavy for me to actually hoist over my shoulder or anything as heroic looking as that. I suppose that’s what the made for tv movie would have for directions…

Maureen:

come on, sweetie, you’ve got to get up, the cab is here

(pulls child to sitting position, turns to get shoes as child flops back on couch)….

no, sweetheart don’t lie down again…here, let’s get your shoes on…

(takes deep breath, grits teeth, steely glint appear in eyes)

Oh, the hell with it,

(reaches down, puts arms under child’s arms)

come to momma!

(grunts and in one swift move pulls child up and then over left shoulder)

if the doctor wants you to wear shoes, she can damn well put them on you herself…

(grabs coat, purse and in one swift motion pulls the door open and then slams it behind her. scene shift: pov: through a car window - background sound, car engine idling, cab dispatch radio and a local country music station weave together - camera focuses on front door of house as woman emerges with child slung over shoulder. The door slams and she runs down the steps towards the cab)

I see either Jodie Foster or Sigourney Weaver playing me.

Anyway, repeat process of dragging, sweet talking and coaxing the semi-comatose child out of the cab, into the elevator and into the doctor’s office. At this point the hard edged receptionist didn’t even wait till we sat down - she grabbed the other arm and helped me guide my baby into an examining room.

There are two things Dr. Sidhu can be counted on: if you have the first appointment in the morning, she will be there at least 10 minutes after you arrive. The other thing is that once she is in the examining room with you, you have her total attention. No one ever complains about waiting an extra half hour or more past the scheduled appointment time before finally seeing her because you know when you need that extra time, she’ll be there for you.

So, in comes the good doctor, smiling and apologizing for being late. She stops in mid-sentence, takes one look at the patient, then at me and asks, “how long has she been like this?” I start with the camping trip and she stops me before I get more than a few words out…”No, I mean like this…” I’ve never heard her use that voice before, no nonsense, give me straight information right now and only the vital details type of George Clooney on ER voice.

She grabs a glucose meter, and a lancet, takes R.’s hand and pokes a finger to get a drop of blood (this is the first time I’ve seen this done anywhere outside of a blood donor clinic; now it is a four/five times a day routine sort of thing). We look at each other in surprise when the test strip fails to soak up the drop of blood. Dr. Sidhu looks closer… it can’t take a reading, she says, because the blood is too thick to be absorbed. I look closer. It’s like syrup. Suddenly the doctor is holding out a sample bottle and pulling us both down the hall to the private bathroom.

So there I squated, attempting to hold my daughter upright on the toilet with one arm and holding the sample jar between her legs, patiently cooing like when she was much younger, still in toilet training. “Can you pee a bit for me, sweetie?…come on, just a bit…thats a good girl. Do you want a drink of water? will that help? Here, let me put a warm cloth on your hand…finally she manages a dribble and fortunately I’m able to catch it in the jar. It’s amazing what constitutes a victory some days.

As I pull her clothes back on and drag her back to the examining room, the doctor takes the jar, stirs it with a stick.

You need to get her to the hospital right now. I’ll call an ambulance if you don’t have a car here.

Mark just gets to the waiting room as we are discussing this - he couldn’t concentrate at work and drove to the doctor’s office.

The doctor stressed the importance of going directly to the hospital. She will phone ahead but don’t wait. If for any reason the emerg desk hasn’t gotten the message tell them this is not a fuck around situation and get her inside. Okay, that’s the screen play version, I don’t think the good doctor would drop the f-bomb regardless of the situation. (Dr. Sidhu would be played by Archie Panjabi - the older sister in “Bend it Like Beckham” because she’s the only Indian actress I can think of who is anywhere near as tall as my doctor - she’s a big girl…like a lot of Indian women, actually)