This past November, I found myself alone in the ER, in worse pain than I had ever felt before, praying to be sedated, surrounded by people who, like me, thought their pain was paramount. The air hung heavy with disinfectants and frustration as everyone waited for the attention they felt they deserved. Being alone, having just moved to Toronto, with no family or friends there to carry me through the pain and the paperwork, all I wished for was someone to recognize my suffering.
I moved to Toronto to attend UofT, transferring from a small school in Winnipeg. I’d lived in Winnipeg my whole life, always in the same neighbourhood, always within walking distance of my closest friends. Before leaving, my life moved with a beautiful ease. I would spend countless late nights with my wonderful friends bouncing between cafés, apartments, and bars—laughing, drinking, and dissecting our personal dramas together. When I was with those friends I felt seen. With them, I had no hesitation about being genuine. I was known in Winnipeg. In moving away, I lost that.
I came to UofT to study life sciences. Aware of the social alienation that came with moving to a new school, I loaded up my first semester course load. I thought: I’m not going to have friends to spend my free time with, so why have free time? This, I later realized, was a comical oversight.
My first semester at UofT rattled my world. My colossal course load tag-teamed with my fear of failure to give me a deeper understanding of anxiety. Along with school woes, Toronto’s welcome party came with a piling of misfortunes. A friend back home had died only weeks after my departure, my living situation was unstable, I had been in several bike accidents and dangerous near misses—eventually tearing ligaments in my left ankle and then having two bikes stolen within three weeks of each other. I would spend most of my time cooped up in my Moss Park apartment, ruled by my to do list, isolated in Toronto’s foreign urban expanse, too busy to go out or indulge my creative impulses. A buzz of frustration crept in. My work kept me distracted but alone. With this accumulation of unfortunate events and my social isolation, the city became a grind against my psyche.
With each passing day that I spent hunched over my desk, I began to feel disconnected from the world around me. I felt a jadedness begin to creep into my mental rhetoric. Everyone I met seemed a little sharper, a little more unfriendly. I couldn’t tell if this edge was inherent to the big city, or if I was just losing my ability to see the good in people. I was afraid that the boisterous and obsessive prairie boy that I used to be was falling away. I felt like my light was beginning to diminish. I missed home, craving the friendship and connection that I’d left there. So when fall reading week arrived, I was more than excited to escape Toronto and return home.
Once home I still spent my days hunched over a desk, but I spent my nights bouncing between the same cafés, apartments, and bars with the friends I had left and missed so dearly. I rejoined the ballet of the small city and reunited with all the people and places that had framed my life before I left. Back in the place that I had grown, I started to discover little points of goodness I’d become too comfortable with to appreciate—seeing a new life in my home. I was again with the people I loved; seen by people who reminded me of who I am. The weight of isolation and depersonalization began to fall away. I felt grounded within myself again. I was reminded of why I had transferred to UofT: to be pushed out of my comfort zone, to be challenged by a new environment, and to expand my worldview beyond my prairie experience. It took returning to Winnipeg to remind me of that.
Saying goodbye after only a week was almost tougher than first moving away. I found myself becoming emotional anytime someone in Toronto asked me about my reading week. Even saying the word “Winnipeg” would make me tear up. As much as it hurt to leave, I was returning with a renewed energy. I no longer felt small. Reminded of why I was there, I landed and braced for my upcoming wave of midterms. My sense of renewal fed me with a drive to do well. In my first days back, I hit the books hard—pushing myself deep into the night and getting up early for my 9 am classes. I felt resilient, believing that all the hardship thus far was opening up to a new and bright future.
Two days after returning, I woke up at 4 am with a pain just below my sternum. I slammed back a handful of painkillers and antacids and went back to sleep. I biked to class in the morning, later returning home to realize that the growing pain had to be more than just indigestion.
Two hours later, I was doubled over in the campus health services waiting room. I was ushered into the office of a doctor with a discerning aunt vibe. After examining me, the doctor bore a concerned look. It was noon, and laying on the presenting table, I asked if she thought I would miss my two o’clock genetics lab. “You’re going to miss a lot more than that, hun.” She broke the news—appendicitis.
Barely able to stand, I was wheeled to an Uber and rushed to the hospital. The pain and pressure in my abdomen were growing quickly. I walked in and folded over the admitting nurse’s desk, holding a paper with my doctor’s diagnosis, assuming I would be sedated and operated on within minutes. Instead all momentum fell away, and I was left to wait alone, thinking that this would be the latest bullet point in my list of unhappy anecdotes that I’d call home with.
The attending nursing staff was clearly overwhelmed by the constant current of patients, without the professional or emotional resources to properly attend to each individual’s needs. Working in a constant state of emergency, wading through a thick broth of medical bureaucracy—for them to recognize the humanity of every patient and attend to them fully would require a superhuman capacity for emotional labour. I knew this, yet still I was shocked by the lack of empathy for my writhing and vomiting. I tried to crack jokes between dry heaves, hoping that getting a laugh would buy me some sympathy.
Two couples sat across from me, chatting after recognizing each other from their birthing class. They were bonding over their delivery stories from days before—discussing the idiosyncrasies of breastfeeding and the small reasons they were there that day. I vomited passively into a baby blue receptacle, illuminated by the neon lights impatiently flickering overhead. Paramedics filled the halls, restlessly waiting for their patients to be admitted, talking about their weekends and joking about their jobs. A woman lay on a gurney next to them, moaning and contorted in pain. Their laughter grated against the sounds of her suffering. Their positivity seemed pointed and cruel—out of place in a room that smelled like it was where one was meant to die. I sat alone and half conscious, wondering if my doctor’s note expressing my need for immediate medical attention was doing me any good.
It took nine hours before I was operated on. Just before I went under the knife, my cousin Olivia appeared at my bedside. She brought me some much-needed distractions and a much-needed familiar face. She was the first person to bring me outside of myself, who knew me beyond my pain, who was able to listen and laugh through it with me. Seeing her was small, but it oriented my attitude going into the OR to something closer to gratitude. I was thankful to receive this subtle care and recognized that in a less fortunate situation this illness could be fatal. Aside from the pain and isolation in the sea of sick faces, the medical system still did its job, and for that I owe my life.
I am alive now: down an organ, but alive. I began writing this story on my phone the night after my operation. That story was a morphine fueled mess, but it ended like this:
I don’t know what this experience has taught me yet. I’m writing this while still laying in the post-op. I’m in pain, but less than before. I have three little scars in my belly where they sucked out the poisonous tissue. Three buttons on my sash, and a little story to tell. That’s what I have from this.
Reading that over again, I started thinking about this story as a parable, trying to discern what lesson it was trying to teach me.
This not-so-near miss with death now feels like a cruel cosmic wink. I felt like the world needed to drag me down to point out all that I’d been held up by. Coming from home, finding a renewed direction and appreciation for the ones that I loved, then leaving to be again swallowed by pain and isolation, I was reminded once more to be thankful for the things that I’m too comfortable to recognize—this time extending to a functioning body, accessible healthcare, and someone to push my wheelchair. Happenstance was teaching me this lesson a second time, urging me not to forget.
My hospitalization brought me outside of my fixation on academic perfection, knowing that I’m not in control of my destiny. It was the world’s playful way of telling me that no matter how good or bad things may be, no matter how things are presenting at that moment, whether beautiful or painful, I must know that the currents controlling my life aren’t up to me. Knowing that things can always be worse, being thankful for what I have, and surrendering to circumstances while trying to move gracefully through them, is often the best you can do.
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