I know I’ve been quiet since coming back from my vacation in August. I’ve had a lot of things going on and I really wanted to do a good job on my vacatio posts. Oh well, I managed one. I willl write about the UOAA conference and meeting the people from the discussion forum another time – I wanted to include pictures and it always takes a while. This time I just thought I’d give an update.
When I last wrote, I was participating in the ECF campaign at work. I was so glad I was able to do that and IBMers raised over $3 million for charities across Canada. The campaign ended 2 months ago so imagine my surprise when 3 weeks ago, I got asked to present at my director’s Q4 All Hands Meeting on January 17 and it said “ECF – Ostomy.” I figured 5 minutes, but it sounds like they want much more so debating now what to include/not include and how to talk to my first audience without any connection whatsoever to the ostomy community. I’m going to reuse some of Carolyn’s slides from our June event and go from there. It’s a fine line when you start talking about medical issues – particularly bowel issues, so got some ideas banging around in my head, but not at point I can just sit and write and write. Hopefully that happens soon as I have to have this done on January 11 plus all my national reports need to be organized/written by the 15th along with a donor update. And to add to my not liking public speaking, I agreed to do a one hour presentation on social media for the February Ostomy Toronto meeting – yep, in a moment of weakness 
, I volunteered myself to speak in February .
So what else has been up? Well I’m struggling with some health issues that started earlier this year and came to a head at end of September. I’m on meds that aren’t working very well but are keeping me out of emergency while I wait for a specialist appointment. I’m fine, but frustrated and angry over repeated delays that resulted in my being forced to go to a community hospital 25km from my house instead of to Mt Sinai and that doctor said you don’t belong here, you belong at Mt Sinai and refused to examine me. He is arranging CAT scan and ultrasound though, so that’s a start and he’s referred me to Mt Sinai but it sounds like I may wait up to another 6 months when this could have been done in October and I’d have a February appointment. To add to my frustration, my wound, which has been healed over for several months, suddenly reopened and is now 3.5cm deep, .3cm deeper than September 2009. That’s the third regression in a year and my wound specialist and I are now believing it’s connected to the other issues I’m having, if only it happened the week before so I could have told the specialist and had it included in my Mt Sinai referral. At this point, I think I need to go back and see my surgeon, which I was hoping to avoid. All of this is annoying, frustrating and discouraging as this wound is nearly 5 years old and it keeps healing/regressing and driving me nuts. Good thing it doesn’t hurt.
I had a lovely Christmas brunch with my cousin and received some beautiful towels. She also drove me the 25 km to my specialist appointment, kept me calm and talked to the doctor afterwards, which I really appreciate as she’s a very busy executive director in an accounting firm. I’m so glad I have her nearby as even though we don’t see each other very often, she’s always there if I need her.
I think I will end here, I just wanted to give an update on what’s happening. I just don’t feel much like writing right now as I do so much writing for other reasons. I’ve also had some stuff going on at work and my role has been changing and evolving – I’m doing some new stuff and it’s going well, but I’m not sure where I’m going next. It’s all good, I’m learning and making a difference with the work I’m doing. We’ve had lots of good things happening at Ostomy Toronto including the addition of two new board members and a 20-40 group that’s starting in January.
I am going to try going back to more regular updates. At least by writing this update, I’ve taken the first step.
Belated Merry Christmas and all the best in 2012!
