And The Band Played On

One of my all time favourite movies was produced and shown by HBO in 1993 and starred Matthew Modine, Alan Alda and Saul Rubinek to name just a few. It was based on the book of the same name, And The Band Played On, which had been written and published by Randy Shilts in 1987. Unfortunately, he was found to be HIV positive in March 1987 and died from AIDS in early 1994. This book is an extremely carefully detailed account of the first five years of the AIDS epidemic and all of its major, and minor, players and their struggle to be heard and taken seriously by the government, press and public at large. At the book's initial publication, its author was widely regarded as America's most expert journalist on the AIDS epidemic primarily due to the fact that he had been the only reporter in the world to have worked full-time covering AIDS as the story developed having joined the San Francisco Chronicle in 1982. Thanks to the enlightenment of his employer, he was able to devote himself almost exclusively to reporting on AIDS and it is this reporting that ended up providing the core of his book. The book itself is utterly riveting and is so much more than simply a history of the early years of AIDS. It is beyond majestic. It's about politics, people, and institutions and their responses of fear, denial and indifference, courage and determination. It is also easily my favourite book of all time. It is also a book that I have just recently finished after having finally located a copy after years and years and some more years of searching for it! Not only did I actually manage to find a used copy in mint condition, the entire cost of the book, plus its shipping and handling from the UK to Canada, cost me less than $8.00 Canadian after calculating the currency exchange. Is that not utterly insane? The second I had located this book, I transferred the required funds from my PayPal account along with all my particulars. Within a week's time, the book had arrived in my mailbox all safe and sound!

Five Years and the Spiders From Mars

I can't believe that I almost let January go without so much as a backward glance, a good sign that I am finding it easier to look forward rather than backward. Progress. Two days ago was the fifth anniversary of starting Methadone Maintenance Treatment - MMT from this point. I am now also at a lower dose than the initial dose they started me on - 18mg instead of 20mg. I've been finding it frighteningly easy adjusting to each dosage decrease which has been a huge change from earlier efforts. The moment I managed to break through the 30mg barrier seemed to be when everything started to change for the better. I had begun to feel pretty beaten and battered and discouraged before this time as I struggled for months bouncing back and forth between 30 and 40mg fearful that I might have ended up stuck there indefinitely! I remember mentally preparing myself for the long haul just in case... Of the last 12 months, a good nine of them were spent stuck at the higher dose, while in less than three I have managed to decrease my dose successfully from 30 to18mg!

Five years - half a decade - is a pretty significant amount of time so I suppose I should really take a moment. I remember that first day so very vividly especially seeing how it just happened to coincide with my first day in my new position at work! Not only was I returning, literally, to the land of the living after having spent near three years in semi seclusion working in the office from 7pm until 2am, but I was going to have to leave less than an hour after having arrived to make it to my first doctor's appointment. At least I had more than enough time to prepare my superiors of this as I had been put on a wait list for MMT, and this wait was going to be just over five weeks!

Actually, was a damn near miracle that I even ended up showing considering the lengthy wait to start treatment. Its a wonder any addicts manage to start treatment at all sometimes. The way that this particular aspect of addiction treatment is handled has always been one of my complaints with the system. I find that as it has been my experience that once an addict decides to seek any form of treatment, having to turn them away to start at a later date generally ensures nothing but failure. Normally by their start date, something else has usually distracted the addict and they are nowhere to be found.

Ironically, when I had gone to my initial appointment, I wasn't really planning on starting any sort of treatment. A friend wanted me to accompany her to her appointment and while I was there with her, the attending nurse convinced me to have my blood work and physical done just in case. Obviously in hindsight, I am glad that I did go through the motions. Starting MMT was exactly what I desperately needed in the end and through a series of related plus unrelated events over this five week wait, I did manage to show up that Monday morning at the clinic bright and early, hoping and praying for change.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Sweet Sara

One of my daughter's friends is a bit of a budding photographer and she often will use Sara as her subject. These are some of the most recent photos that were taken. Isn't she lovely? Of course, I am one very proud Mom!

"I'm pretty sure my cat's reading my diary"

"I thought [adultery] meant being stupid. Like being a dolt."

“If we lose, we should throw possums.”

''I was pretty sure Dr. Pepper was a dentist.''

“So, Hairography. It works best when you pretend like you're getting tasered. It's like cool epilepsy. “

“Did you know that dolphins are just gay sharks?”

“People think I went on vacation, but actually I spent all summer lost in the sewers.”

“Mr. Schue taught me the second half of the alphabet. I stopped after M and N. I thought they sounded too similar and got frustrated.”

“Finn can fly?”

“I did a book report on heart attacks if you want to give it to the doctor. I got knocked down an entire letter grade because it was written in crayon.”

“Is God an evil dwarf?”

AND MY ABSOLUTE FAVOURITE BRITTANY QUOTE SO FAR:

“Just like I know that the cricket that reads to me at night is totally stealing my jewelery.”

If you are also a GLEE or BRITTANY fan, you can check out more Brittany quotes right HERE.

No Longer A Pain I’m Used To…

Finally, there is an end in sight to what I hope to be one of our final legal matters relating to our attack of a couple of years ago. The wheels of justice do indeed turn slowly at times. If anyone needs a refresher on circumstances and events relating to this, you can read my initial entry from August 2008 and then this one from October 2010.

Although, I am somewhat reluctant to call ourselves victors, we did receive word about two weeks ago that our employer had decided to settle this matter now rather than take the next step which would have been a proper hearing initially scheduled for June 2011. Thank goodness we didn’t have to wait another eight months to have our day and say in court, although we were fully prepared to go the distance if that’s what it ended up taking. Whew.

We had been hoping that they’d end up settling after what had happened during our initial meeting with the Judge from Small Claims, although we half expected them to dig in their heels even though they were so in the wrong in this case. Have to admit, though, that our initial mediation hearing almost ended up disastrously for us. Their Statement of Defense was riddled throughout with outright lies although they didn’t remotely seem to care – in the end the burden of proof would have ultimately been up to us and until this mediation they had been very cavalier about the whole thing arrogantly thinking we had nothing – they were so wrong.

We ended up being very lucky with the Judge we happened to draw for that initial mediation as the courts only allocated a half an hour of time to hear both of the sides. Our employer initially took the lead as the first words out of the Judge’s mouth to us were how frivolous our claim appeared to be with no apparent merit. Jim and I looked at each other in near panic and despair. WTF?

Thank heavens we had legal representation not to mention that Jim managed to quickly pick up on the fact that their lawyer had been presenting this matter as some sort of landlord tenant issue when in fact it was nothing of the sort. When it dawned on Jim what they were doing he instinctively blurted out his disgust and after we all recovered from our initial shock, you could actually see the Judge’s whole demeanour completely change. By the end of those thirty minutes, he had been completely won over to our side – mostly because we had a very legitimate and valid complaint against our employer. Whew!

Even after their legal representative was duly chastised by the Judge for his and the company’s appalling behaviour in light of the seriousness of our injuries while performing our normal job duties, he was incapable of making a counter offer to us that day. We had been prepared to settle for half of our original claim if we could wrap it up then and there. The Judge gave 30 days for their response to our offer and strongly suggested that the matter should really be settled then and there as if we proceeded to court, he felt they didn’t have a hope of winning even if we failed to come up with an ounce of proof of our claim. He said we’d win on the sympathy vote alone! Of course, they managed to wait the full thirty days before they responded to our offer.

We still haven’t received payment yet although we signed the paperwork 12 days ago – I guess they have 14 days to issue the cheque from that date. We never imagined we were going to get it any earlier than this anyway – certainly not based on their previous treatment! Still, it will be nice to have that bit of extra money as we enter the Christmas season that’s for sure, so regardless of when it arrives, I’ll certainly be happy!

peace, love and happiness…

P.S. I am now down to a daily dose of 22mg methadone. How cool is that? No ill effects either!

Holiday

I know that it has been such a long time since I’ve been able to do any proper updates and as a result, I really should try to let everyone know what has been going on in my life since I was last active here. Unfortunately, this will simply have to wait for another day as I’d much rather write about what I’ve spent most of my night doing, which has been trying to locate a nice hotel in downtown Toronto for Jim and I to stay at for a couple of nights in January.

Seems like an eternity since we went on any sort of vacation, and it most likely has been that long! So many things conspiring against us in years past, but now, it would seem, we’ve got none! Feels bloody fantastic also. We're actually only going on a few days getaway, but right now, even that sounds like a slice of paradise.

Jim really wanted to go to the local boat show last year and the year before that, and for whatever reason, we missed both of them and never ended up getting to go. Not this year. In fact, we’ve decided that we’d rather go to the upcoming Toronto International Boat Show which is being held from January 8 to 16, 2011 at the Direct Energy Center. Its been over a decade since we last went so we’re pretty excited. When we were first talking about going to it, we’d thought we’d go up one of the Saturdays or Sundays and come home the same day.

While I was looking up the event information, I noticed that they had a two day pass available which would only cost an additional $8 more than the normal admission price of $17. I then remembered how crazy crowded these weekends tended to be for this event – crushed in like sardines and then some! I wasn’t all that keen on these crowds way back then when I was a whole lot younger, so I imagine I wouldn’t be any fonder of them now!  Plus, after all that has happened to us these past couple of years, there was a great potential that this overcrowding could turn into an issue for either one of us, or even both. Conundrum!!

I thought that the best thing for us would be to avoid the weekends entirely, and consider attending the event midweek. Certainly the crowds would still be there, but if we spread the event out over a couple of days, we’d be able to leisurely stroll through the site rather than try to cram it all into a much smaller amount of time. Plus, during the week, the event closed 2hrs later than it did on Sundays and one hour later than Saturdays. Brilliant. 

Now, that was the easy part. We’ve decided to go to Toronto from Tuesday, January 11 to Thursday, January 13, and will be taking the train there and back. I think I’ve also managed to finally settle on where we’ll be staying.This was by far, the hardest part as there are so many hotels in the downtown area of Toronto alone, never mind within a 15km radius of the event’s location! After spending hours and hours at hotels.ca and expedia.ca and Travelocity, I know where we’ll be staying.

It’s kind of funny but the hotel I ended up going with is one that I used to stay at years ago whenever I was in Toronto for business – the company I worked for  had a corporate account with them so that is where they sent their employees whenever one was in TO. Even after I left this company, I used to be able to get their corporate rate whenever I stayed there when I was in Toronto, but this perk has long since disappeared now – the hotel is no longer owned by their original owners either. No worries.

The Toronto hotel is now owned by Metropolitan Hotels which is a collection of independent luxury Canadian hotels. I can’t wait cause I decided to go all out so we are getting one of their one bedroom suites which has a King size bed in the bedroom area, and a double sofa bed in the separate sitting area. There are two full bathrooms as well as in room coffee/tea and high speed internet and wireless access. The suite measures 460 square feet with the total cost for the two nights only $445.00 (taxes et al included).