An Open Letter to the Parents of Seattle

There is a word for it. Gobsmacked. It means to be utterly astonished or astounded and there is speculation that it refers to that inherent motion of covering one`s mouth - gob being a slang term for mouth back in the middle ages - in shock at hearing something unimaginable. And gobsmacked was what I experienced when I read that `Seattle Kids Have A Lower Polio Vaccination Rate than Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Sudan, Yemen, Mongolia.`

Stop and think about this for just one moment...There is a whack of parents in Seattle who are quite comfortable gambling with their children`s future because they are suspicious of  the government and or medical community's  reassurances about the safety of the polio vaccine or who have suspicions that scientists don`t understand what they are talking about when it comes to the rate and range of vaccines that should be administered in a child`s development. So these smarter than the average doctor, virologist or public health official individual parents have supposedly thought this through and put off vaccinating their child against polio, and I suspect some other vicious diseases as well.

I maybe gobsmacked, but I am not speechless and in that vein:

An Open Letter to Parents in Seattle (you know who you are)

Hi,

We haven't met but I feel the need to speak with you about this very strange, very risky strategy you've adopted where you don't vaccinate your child against polio because you have no plans to travel to anywhere where the polio virus is still a threat. I would have thought that a hip cool with-it city like Seattle would understand that when the World Health Organization says as long as one child has polio all children are at risk they really aren't kidding. They are talking basic science, globalization, the way people and diseases travel now: by plane at the speed of sound, undetected and pretty much everywhere. You don't have to take your unvaccinated kid to Afghanistan. Someone just needs to travel from Afghanistan carrying the virus and wham...your kid comes down with polio. Know anyone that's been to Afghanistan?

Polio used to have a much more frightening name....infantile paralysis. They called it that for a reason. The majority of the victims were infants. And those who got polio didn't have an easy ride. See children have relatively undeveloped immune systems anyway and polio is a pretty nasty virus. And the paralysis part is no picnic. If you are 'lucky' the paralysis just means a life of misshaped limbs, difficulty walking and a fair amount of pain. The less lucky die.

60 years ago, parents begged for a miracle, a vaccine that might mean their kids could be spared. But you think they were just fools, dupes of the medical establishment, ignoramuses who didn't understand how the world really works. Nothing like you, right?

So here's hoping your gamble with your kid's future works out. By the way, if it doesn't I wouldn't tell them you had a choice a chance to prevent them from coming down with polio. It might make for some very awkward silences, some extremely uncomfortable family dinners.

So you have a good day, you sleep soundly knowing you are doing everything you can to protect your children. Oh that's right, you aren't. Well sleep soundly anyway. P

Standing is Sometimes Harder than Walking

This is a photo of me taken not too long after my surgery. In it I am standing `tall`and `straight`. I am quite proud of that picture, that pose. Being able to stand `straight`has been a life long goal and a hard stance to accomplish. We may not give much thought to walking but for the most part we give even less to standing. Or at least that was true up until about a year ago.

Sitting is the new smoking, standing is the remedy, well actually movement is the remedy but standing is apparently better than sitting but not as good as moving. But standing can be hard. Especially if you are like me and have a default stance of resting my wight on my right leg, which has always been the longer stronger leg. And if your weight is to one side, things can go awry, can get painful, can be wearing. Ask my physio therapist, ask the woman who gives me massages.

When I walk, as I have mentioned, I pay attention to my walking and I am getting pretty good about paying attention and thinking about other things at the same time, which is being on the road to walking 'normally' if I can ever figure that out. But when I stand, I admit I seldom pay attention to my standing and that lack of attention is troublesome,

Yesterday, we went on a garden tour, a marvelous fun-filled exploration of 13 relatively magnificent gardens scattered around the 'old-town' of Niagara-on-the-Lake. In addition to a multitude of different walking surfaces - sand, gravel, uneven grass, slight dips, uneven paving stones - there was much standing and looking. As a consequence, by the end of the day I was worn out. Physically and mentally. Physically because the muscles in my legs were throbbing. Mentally because we are going to India in 6 months and the challenges of walking about in India are significantly more complex and I was getting irritated with myself that a garden tour was wearing me out.

After a rest, I went to our back yard where I did some raking.  After mowing comes raking. Raking has its own challenges but one of the rewards of raking is that it actually makes me confront a number of my nemeses. Our yard, like most yards, is uneven. It is not a parking lot or a lawn-bowling green; it is simply a yard with sometimes almost imperceptible dips and rises. So our yard forces me to attend to unevenness and unevenness forces me to think about how I am standing. Thinking about how I am standing forces me to stand straight, standing straight forces me to balance my weight across both legs which makes everything slightly better, slightly, because there are no miracles here.

No miracles, just one constant reminder after another. Stand straight, pay attention and be in the moment. But the other thing that paying attention teaches me is to be kinder to myself. Getting tired, getting worn out are things that simply happen to us all. Navigating all the different obstacles in 13 vastly different gardens wouldn't wear out everyone but it can wear me out. I just need to pay more attention to what is wearing me out and why. I can manage the physical wearing out much better if I learn to manage the mental wearing out. And I can learn to manage the mental strain if I keep in mind that I am learning to overcome 5 decades of ingrained behaviour. It takes time, and I need to cut myself some slack.

Trying to stay balanced...it is harder then we think...

The other day, in our kitchen, I stepped back from the granite island towards the stove. In doing so, my legs moved in order, right leg first followed by left leg and I was now in a significantly different spot and I turned to open a drawer filled with spatulas and ladles. As I picked up the slotted long handled spoon that I often use to scoop out rice and beans from a pot, I suddenly froze as I remembered that I had just stepped back from the granite island, without using the cane I normally have nearby, without any mobility aid at all.  Stepping back, not looking at the direction I am moving in, trusting my brain-body combo to get me there in one piece and upright. I had to chalk that one up in the win column.

Yesterday, on a streetcar travelling south on Broadview heading to a wedding, I ring the bell and stand, with my cane in hand, to head for the door, one leg moving confidently ahead, the second leg not quite finding a firm footing in the sliding shift movement of the street car and there I am almost tumbling down into the lap of a small child. Her look of terror at what might be about to happen and my sense of chagrin and embarrassment at not being able to stand steady on a moving streetcar resulted in me silently adding one to the loss column. But then I thought, well, maybe a tie...I didn't actually fall and no small children were injured in the construction of this life lesson.

Another week in my seemingly never-ending effort to conquer a very particular part of walking, maintaining my balance. Balance is about more than not falling though not falling is a big plus.

Trying to stay balanced is almost like using a yo-yo...it's harder than it looks and easier if you don't think about what you are trying to do. Sometimes, when I am walking, I catch myself in a stumble and when I do, I try and understand why I almost fell, why I almost lost my balance. Balance is about much more than a single activity, it is more like a process. It involves muscles and nerves in the legs and feet, eye and ear coordination, a highly tuned sense of space, some very complicated, very fast calculations by the brain with extensive feedback between the brain, the nervous system and the entire musculoskeletal system.

Balance is actually much more than a mere physical activity; it is a vital indicator of health and prospect. There is a reason the notion of balance gets used in so many contexts. It is about keeping things (mental, social, physical ) on track, on an even keel, so to speak. If you lose your sense of balance, in any one or all of the senses of the word, bad things can and do happen. As you can imagine, and as I have learned, there are all kinds of ways that balance can go wrong. But there is some very encouraging news about how balance can be improved through exercising and challenges.

This is something I learned in physio. Almost from day one Vaiva had me standing on foam, wood, and plastic boards, mats and beams. Some were pivoted on balls, some on half balls, sometimes she put me on trampolines. The idea was, learn to walk,step, balance and move back and forth by challenging the mind and body to conquer all of this. Improving balance is like most exercises; you get better through the doing.

Alex Hutchinson is a writer and a runner and he had a fantastic column in the New York Times a few days ago where he laid out his own experience and some of the fascinating new research going on in the science/medicine of balance. It is a fascinating read and as is true of much of scientific research, the news is good, change is possible.

I know that is true because a few days ago, I stepped back without thinking from the granite island in our kitchen....

The Man Who Mows The Lawn While Using a Cane

Not long after we moved to Niagara On The Lake, dear friends from Toronto mentioned to us that they had an acquaintance who knew our house and knew the previous owners. In a conversation with our friends, he mentioned how he had driven by and noticed a man moving the lawn while using a cane. I will confess, that would be me.

Before we moved, before my surgery and the lengthening of the my leg, I didn't mow lawns; we didn't have a lawn. We had a magnificent rock garden, a hill of trees, several beds of plants and a big deck. No lawn, no lawn mover. Our new house has even more astounding gardens but huge amounts of grass. So we have a mover (electric re-chargeable) and I mow the lawn. One of the reasons I mow the lawn is because Debi does so much else and besides, I should be able to mow a lawn right?

One the things you learn when you learn how to walk is that walking involves muscles, tendons, bone, joints, coordination and balance. In a way walking is physical, mental, conceptual and complex and no where is this more true than when it comes to maintaining one's balance. It is all about your brain-nerve interface sense of where you are at any moment in relation to the ground and what needs to be adjusted to stay upright. It is done faster than you can think and involves a steady series of adjustments, shifts and tweaking of direction, position and poise. So if you are on an even flat surface, staying upright and steady is relatively simple. If you are on an uneven surface, well not so much. And if you think about a lawn, despite its appearance from a distance, a lawn is some distance from the idea of flat or even. So on a flat surface, I can walk without a cane. On an uneven surface, it is more complicated.

So when I mow a lawn, I keep a cane handy. Yes, it is awkward, and ungainly and to a certain extent ludicrous but it works. It helps me maintain my balance while I mow and yes I know that people stare at me as they walk or drive by and I am sure some of them think, why is that guy mowing a lawn if he needs to use a cane to mow a lawn.

I had dinner with a couple of old friends the other night and one was talking about what life was like after a truly epic service at the CBC and after commenting on a number of aspects of his new life he observed with great delight that he found himself taking huge pleasure in the most ordinary of life's activities. I understood completely. After my surgery, after my stint in a rehab hospital, after learning to move about more confidently, one of the household tasks I took back was emptying the dishwasher. Filling up a dishwasher with dirty dishes and then taking out the clean ones and putting them away may sound close to mundane, boring and mindless but I found and find the process liberating and affirming.

For most of us, doing the ordinary necessary things of life is often truly a chore. But sometimes you learn that ordinary necessary things of life are as much a part of the moments that stitch together to form a life as are the adventures, ecstasies and thrills that we enjoy so deeply. You learn in mindfulness meditation that life is moments in sequence and the moment spent stacking a plate is as much a part of life as breathing. Being able to empty the dishwasher was and is a sign to me that my life is on track, that I can and do help maintain the web of connections that makes me human.

So too with mowing the lawn. It isn`t a `big`thing, but it is a thing that needs to be done and if I don`t do it, someone else has to. If you have a lawn it needs to be mowed. And the reality is that mowing a lawn is good for me. It forces my body to move in ways it may not want to. It forces my brain to pay attention to balance. It shows me things about moving and walking that I need to attend to.

Learning to walk again has taught me many things, learning to walk and mow a lawn is teaching me other things, some different, some just variations on a theme. A wise person once said you can find the essence of life in a drop of water, I am learning you can find the meaning of life in mowing a lawn and sometimes the meaning of life comes with a cane.  

Being Reminded What Polio Means Today

This morning there was a news alert from the New York Times reporting that the UN was once again taking up polio and measles vaccinations in Liberia now that the country was free of Ebola. It is one of those real good news bad news days when the absence of one extremely deadly disease allows you to continue to work eradicating other less deadly but nearly as devastating diseases. As I have mentioned many times before, I have an ear tuned and an eye pealed for each and every reference to polio. It is that obsessive compulsive reflex that everyone who has ever been touched by a disease or disaster harbours for the rest of their lives.

During the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto, late at night, after talking for two days about my book, I went to see the new documentary, Every Last Child. It is a fascinating film, funded by the United Arab Emirates and the Gates Foundation of the twists and turns, deaths and delays, hardship and hazards of trying to vaccinate every last child of Pakistan against polio. For a variety of reasons sections of Pakistani society are opposed to vaccinating children against polio, in particular elements of the Pakistani Taliban. In the documentary we are taken through various efforts to get the kids inoculated.

Two segments in particular struck chords in me and at times left me nearly in tears.

One involved a man in his late twenties, early thirties perhaps, who had little movement in or control of his legs. His efforts to move about, to take a shower, to find any employment, any community were heartbreaking. Years ago we visited India and numerous encounters with individuals crippled by disease, many probably by polio, left me at the time numb and understanding that all that separated me from them was truly dumb luck. I was fortunate to be born here; they were not. I lucked out, so to speak, in having access to a world-class health care system; they did not. Watching this man navigate the world left me strangely grateful for the opportunity to learn to walk three times. As hard as it has been to do so it pales in comparison to that man's daily life.

The other segment involved a young boy, a toddler who had been stricken suddenly with paralysis of the legs. Watching him be examined, be probed, watching technicians fit him with casts, fashion braces, prepare shoes and then watching physiotherapists try to show him how to walk in the braces was heartbreaking. Watching his father look on with near despair at what his son would have to learn to do, watching him worry aloud about what chance his son would have in Pakistani society without the use of his legs left me speechless. The truth that was beaming from the screen was like a sucker punch. It left me reeling inside. Tom Roberts' film is worth seeking out. The story is both powerful and urgent.

Talking and Talking about the Book.

The book has been out for three weeks and the reception, the reviews, the reaction have all been very reassuring and somewhat embarrassing. I am not an unduly modest individual but the kudos and congratulations have at times choked me up.

What I have found most moving at the various events is the inevitable approach by a stranger who tells me about a parent, a relative, a friend who is experiencing or experienced some extreme difficulty, often associated with polio but not always, and the troubles that a friend or relative went through to maintain even a semblance of mobility.

The stories don't come with questions or even comments really, they are simply a sharing. It is as if me being there, my book being published is a reason to talk about what they witnessed, the at times incredible pain and effort people sometimes have to make to overcome an illness, to manage a disability. I am reminded again and again that the Buddhist notion that 'life is suffering' has a crystal clear ring of truth at its very core. People endure pain, confront obstacles and wrestle with sometimes near impossible difficulties and for the most part there is no forum, no occasion, no time to discuss or share this most basic reality.

Far too often we find ways of being glib, avoiding difficult conversations, all in the interest of not troubling another person with our own burdens. What we miss, what we lose is that most basic of connections, that sharing of our common humanity. I met one man who describe a near relative who had struggled his whole life with even the most basic mobility and he wanted to know if his nephew would enjoy the book or would the book make him sad. I said I didn't know and we talked a bit about the nephew and his approach to life and then we talked about the book and he nodded his head and said, "I think he might enjoy it," and he asked me to sign the book. As he walked away I thought, wow, would I enjoy this book if I hadn't written it, if it wasn't about my life? I think so, but it is a question I am wrestling with. I never intended my story to be 'inspirational' and some of the most pleasing comments I have received describe the telling as open, honest, blunt. For now, as I mull this over, that will do.

Humbled by My Own Book

Working on a memoir means always learning new things about who you are and always discovering new buttons that, when pushed, unleash emotions and meanings you thought you were long past or finally over.

On Tuesday, April 14th, in the company of many many friends and the loves of my life, Debi and Jane, we launch the book and the air is filled with congratulations. Everyone makes a point of telling me how excited they are and how brave I have been and am being. I am truly touched, floating a few inches about the floor and deeply humbled that so many people both wish me success and are intrigued with the book.

If you think writing a book is a challenge, the task of promoting it is equally daunting. My publicist, Shona Cook, is constantly drumming up reasons, venues and opportunities for me to talk about my story, and expound upon some of the themes in even greater detail. For years, I made my living trying to think up questions for authors that wouldn't leave them bored or seem predictable. Now, I am on the other side of the microphone and finding it much tougher than it seems.

Later this week, I appear at the Ottawa International Writers Festival and for the first time I will actually read from the book to an audience of strangers. I am feeling nervous.

So I sit at my desk, pick a section of the book to read and rehearse in front of Debi. It is the chapter that details the year I spent on my back in a body cast when I was twelve. The chapter is nine pages long. By page four, my voice is cracking, and my eyes are tearing up. By page six, I am weeping. I am weeping partly because I haven't read it aloud before but mainly because I feel so sad for that little guy. I finish reading the chapter, struggling through the tears because I have to, it seems important to do so and because Debi wants to hear the end.

After a minute, I wipe my eyes, half smile and say, "well, maybe I won't read that chapter in Ottawa."