Mark & Otis's Open Salon Blog

My name is Mark and I'm a Celiac.

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:07:26 -0400

When I was born my mother became very sick. I don’t actually remember this but I’ve been told that she spent months in bed with excruciating stomach cramps that left her largely incapable of the usual tasks associated with caring for a newborn. Then, after dozens of tests and a handful of doctors, she got better overnight.

She was diagnosed with celiac disease. An auto-immune disease set off by the inability of the intestine to process gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye. In my mother’s case this was the cause of her stomach cramps and all those usual gastrointestinal complications. Her gastroenterologist discovered the celiac disease by inserting a small pod attached to a tube down her throat and taking a biopsy. A procedure she later mythologized as being one of the worst things she had gone through in her life. She immediate began a gluten-free diet and felt better just as fast. Thirty years ago this diet was far from what it is today. My mother survived on rice cakes – something she can no longer even look at without post-traumatic flashbacks.

I admit that while I grew-up, I was less than understanding of her situation. I would consume massive amounts of bread and cookies with a relish that must have been difficult for her to witness. And as you know, karma is a bitch.

That’s right. Twenty years after my mother was diagnosed, a bout of mononucleosis brought out my own latent celiac disease. I had a blood test followed by a colonoscopy and then the dreaded down-the-throat-pod-and-tube that confirmed the diagnosis.

I was able to adapt to a gluten free lifestyle fairly quickly thanks to the years of experience my mother had accumulated. I knew what was prohibited and what was OK to eat and while it wasn’t difficult it certainly wasn’t easy either. I’m asymptomatic – meaning I don’t manifest those brutal gastrointestinal problems most celiac suffers have to face – but in some ways that makes it more difficult. I have to rely on my notoriously faulty willpower to sustain the limiting diet and when I screw up I don’t even know it (the damage to my intestine is still done – increasing my risk for colon cancer exponentially).

Celiac disease is a pain in the ass for so many other reasons. It’s not a disease that is scary enough to garner much sympathy nor is it low-key enough that people I know aren’t impacted in some way. I’m “that guy” at a dinner party who has to let the host know that “no no it’s OK… really… I’ll just stick with the salad”. I don’t like to ask waiters if the kitchen uses flour to thicken sauces. We eat at the same places more often than my wife would prefer and I’m overly conscious of being a burden on her and my friends and my co-workers.

Celiac disease is also one of the only diseases that I know of that, by some trick of the English language, becomes definitional as well. I have celiac disease but I’m also “a Celiac”. I don’t know whose fault this is but I think I’ll blame my mother.

My City Stinks

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:07:34 -0400

My city stinks. You notice the smell about two feet from my front door but it dissipates as you walk down the front steps towards the street. I know that around my neighborhood the smell isn’t too bad and that there are other places in the city that are positively putrid. And it certainly looks like it would smell too. The public trash receptacles (oddly shaped bins for garbage and recycling) are overflowing with empty coffee cups and take out containers despite the shrink wrap protecting their openings that was supposed to signal their “out of order” status. People have taped extra garbage bags to the sides of the bins but those are overflowing too. This situation really shows how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go in our “enviro-consciousness” when people will carry their empty coffee cup some distance only to toss it onto a pile of other litter.

Toronto is in the midst of a garbage strike. It’s been 35 days of stockpiled trash bags, public dumps in parks and city recreation centers, and litter strewn streets. And while it appears that a deal was reached this morning between one of the two Unions involved in the massive strike (not just garbage collectors were out – so were city clerks, public daycare workers, building inspectors etc.) there will be a long legacy to this strike. You can gauge at least the mood of the city – and maybe a lot more – by listening to call-in shows even on our otherwise genteel public radio or by following comments on news sites. The vitriolic anti-Unionism has surpassed feverish pitch.

Union workers are apparently lazy and greedy. Everyone in this city knows what they get paid, what their benefits are and has an opinion that whatever it is, it’s too much. Everyone knows the intricacies and legal minutiae of their last collective bargaining agreement and that that agreement was too generous. There have been repeated calls for the Unions involved to be “squashed”, “killed”, “crushed”… you get the idea. Everything is their fault.

How have we come to a place where Unions are society’s economic boogey men? Is it that everyone has become an armchair Economist? I’ve heard countless comments from your average Torontonian saying that because we’re in a recession, these workers should not expect to maintain the same pay and benefits (I’m sure this is a mantra repeated everywhere). The economic downturn has been blamed for everything even though most employees in our city have been unaffected. In fact, last week the Bank of Canada (equivalent to the US Treasury) said that the Recession was over in this country. This announcement effectively cut out one of the arguments corporations around the world have been using – often duplicitously – as a strong arm tactics in their negotiations with Unions.

But this has done little to abate the anti-Union virus that’s spread across the country (and has been years in the making). It appears that the economy has little to do with the sense that the Unions are a scourge that need to be wiped-out. It appears to be something far more sinister and fundamental to 21^st century culture.

We’ve come to a point where a great many people have embraced an individualism that not only shuns collective efforts but jettisons rational financial arguments as well. Corporations are no longer the enemy of the working person. Corporations have become benign institutions that benefit society at large and it’s the working person – and their exaggerated pay and benefits – that have become the enemy. Everyone’s assessment of everyone else’s compensation for their work has become legitimate in this climate and it’s made ravenous wolves out of us. We’re all ready to say that garbage collection (or teaching in a high school… or driving a public bus) is easy and overpaid and that we would do it for less. What we are no longer willing to do is acknowledge that the employees who work for a corporation are responsible for its financial success and should benefit accordingly. We’ve decided that a corporation no longer needs its employees, our neighbours, when it could outsource their jobs for less. We’ve decided that this is somehow better for us and that this is our neighbour’s fault and the fault of their Unions.

What we have yet to admit though is that turning on our neighbours in this fashion stinks.

Dear America: You're Embarrassing Yourself

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:07:12 -0400

Hi America. This is my first Open Salon post and I thought I’d start off with bang. And as a preface let me say that there’s nothing I dislike more than Canada’s obsession with the difference between our two countries (it’s a one way obsession – like Otis’ love for the neighborhood tabby).

Having said that, let me be frank with you: you’re embarrassing yourself over health care reform.

A few years ago Canada’s persistent navel gazing produced a mini-series on public television that was an American Idol-like contest to proclaim “The Greatest Canadian”. Advocates each week pitched to the public various reasons why so and so deserved the title. You know who won? A prairie Baptist minister and social democratic politician from the 1950’s whose major claim to fame was the formation of the socialized (gasp!) Canadian health care system.

With this in mind, needless to say we as a nation feel pretty strongly about public health care. It’s one of those things we hold up with pride to differentiate ourselves from our neighbours to the south. Which is why, in the last few weeks, the outcry from the Right over Obama’s proposed reforms to your health care system has left us a little confused. And honestly it’s not just us. The British, who have a similar system (with slight differences) to ours, appear to be equally dumbfounded.

I get that you may not want reform (especially if you make more than $250K a year) or just don’t want the Obama version of reform. This may because you genuinely believe it’s not in your interest (which is a weak reason) or because you just really hate Obama (which is a pathology you should probably get checked out).

OR you may just be ill informed. There are lots of places you can go to get simplified facts about the proposal. Many of them are bi-partisan and impartial and I assure you, Fox News is not one of them.

But if you would like me to clear the air about the dreaded “socialized medicine” that British or Canadian systems would bring you, I can tell you a few things for certain. First, there is no bureaucrat standing between you and your doctor. I have had everything from a CAT scan to a colonoscopy (I’ll post that video soon). I’ve had sports injuries and head injuries (a mild concussion). I’ve seen specialists galore, been diagnosed with a common auto-immune disease (celiac disease) and have even started getting annual physicals. There is no man or woman in a suit deciding whether any of these tests or procedures are necessary. That’s what the doctors are for and they’ll all tell you that they don’t check in with a bureaucrat either. You can thank the Hippocratic Oath for that.

Secondly, please stop pimping this one Canadian woman who went to the Mayo Clinic for treatment instead of her local Hospital. She’s become a bit of a public oddity in this country as one of the few Canadians who would suggest that taking out a mortgage to finance her Mayo trip was a better decision than what may have happened had she listened to her Canadian doctors.

And finally: shit happens. I assure this happens as often in an expensive American hospital as a public Canadian one. This system is far from perfect but when your system sucks so bad why are you so intent on using, as a boogey man, one that works so well?

The reality is it’s more tedious and expensive to get a check-up for Otis. Just one more reason he’s a pain in my ass.