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Sunday

No church today, we’re going to Vancouver. I have a problem with over packing and keep running back to the house for one more thing. My iPod, a pillow for the car, shampoo. My parents are already waiting in the driveway, making it tough to enjoy my breakfast. Eventually we’re on the road. The back of the car is cramped- I haven’t been comfortable back here since 2002, but I squeeze in. My dad creeps slowly over the ice in our neighborhood. When we hit the highway, he floors it.

At the rest stop outside of Nanaimo, I run up the hill as I always do, and stop at the spot on top where you can look into the forest and imagine a T Rex is going to come bashing out of the greenery. The branches are snowy now, and it doesn’t look quite like the prehistoric rainforest I remember from summer. That’s okay. I run back down the hill, moving as fast as possible to keep my feet beneath my body’s momentum.

The iPod is playing The Killers. I’ve heard Sam’s Town all through and now I’m on Hot Fuss. The bass on “Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine” seems to be speaking in actual words, albeit a foreign language. It’s weird and disturbing in a very cool way.

We stop at my grandparent’s house. I stay and chat briefly then walk up the hill to my aunt and uncle’s, where my brother is also staying. He is the only one home. It is, as always, difficult to get into a conversational groove, and after a minute or two we return to the grandparents in his truck. On the way he shows off his own iPod (black nano), which is new, and the speaker he’s hooked it up to, which is even newer. I play “Pancho and Lefty” and he sings along in a fake redneck accent. Later, he and I go to pick up my cousin Russell from the ferry. While we wait, I crack jokes about the other denizens of the ferry terminal. One boy in a cool leather jacket is wiping his nose as his girlfriend pats his back. “Is he sad to be leaving?” I whisper. “Is he from California, and the weather is making him sick? Is it cocaine?” Tim makes the universal sign for “stoner”.

As the passengers start filing through the gate, I remark that it would be a fun drinking game to count guitars and iPod headphones. Russell is carrying both- we mime a double and walk over to him. He has been to Vancouver to see his girlfriend. The girlfriend’s father is a gun nut and has taken Russ to the range for target practice. He shows off the pistol, rifle, and shotgun jackets he salvaged. I brag about my cadet shooting record, which ends up somewhat embellished. I become an expert marksman who is privileged to play with machine guns and Springfields. It may be more accurate to say I shot air rifles and decommissioned .22s, but I was pretty good.

Monday

We are en route to the ferry.

The ferry trip is dull. I have a snack of the type of indigestible food that you eat on ferries because you have no choice.

Since we are in Vancouver so I can get to the hospital for surgery, we can stay at the Easter Seal House. It is funded by donations and dead cheap. No one can mistake this for a luxury hotel, but it is clean so I won’t complain. We’re a bit early for check-in, so the folks decide to go to some random mall, which has not yet received the renovations that are so ubiquitous in most malls in BC. The place is dingy and noisy, and I realize my dislike for shopping. However. Passing through the Bay, I see a red dress that looks just like the one in my imagination. It will be perfect for graduation, only it’s $300. Cheap for a dress, but not for my budget. After an hour of shopping, I go back and try it on- sure enough, it fits perfectly. At this point I’ve fallen in love with the dress. It’s fire engine red, cut in a kind of 40’s style. It’s satin and flares when I turn. There will never be a dress as perfect as this. When I put it back on the rack, mum realizes it’s the 50% off rack. Yay! I get my dad to buy it and feel that my day has not been wasted.

We then proceed to Easter Seal House, which is just as ugly as ever. Obviously, though, without it we would all have to leave off eating or something because there’s no way we could afford this trip otherwise. So it’s all good.

Tuesday

At one o’clock in the morning there’s a false alarm. I can’t hear the alarm, I’m simply shaken awake by rude hands. We go downstairs and stand around in the cold for ages, then come in and wait around in the lobby for ages. Everyone in the hotel is there too; winter jackets over pajamas and sullen children in tow. Eventually the alarm stops, apparently, and we go back up.

I don’t like fire drills much- I’m always reminded of the time at camp when the alarm went and I was in the shower. Then my locker wouldn’t open. Or the other time, again I was in the

shower, but by then I couldn’t hear high noises like alarms, so I just finished my shower, got dressed and found the barracks deserted. I went outside to find the military police conducting a full-scale search of the camp for a missing cadet. Oops- me.

After I sleep another 6 hours or so, I get dressed and we go downtown for shopping and exploring. My parents know Vancouver better than I do. They won’t take me to nightclubs but they do know about shopping. We do Granville Island, and I get a scarf. I don’t normally wear scarves, but I can’t get sick before surgery tomorrow and this seems like a good reason to get something to keep my neck warm.

The city is snowy and full of oddly dressed people. I mentioned earlier that I tire of shopping, but people watching is what I chiefly come for. There are addicts, pink Mohawks, and cute Koreans in business suits.

We also drive around Stanley Park, observing the destruction of the winter’s violent storms. Huge, snapped off trees lie on the ground everywhere. The insides of trees are kind of salmon colored. I don’t know why, but the devastation brings me a smile.

The surgery I’m having is called a cochlear implant. I’m severely hard of hearing, mostly in the higher frequencies, i.e. the speech frequencies. I wear hearing aids but they help very little for the problem that I have. It’s fairly impossible for me to have a conversation with more than one person at a time, or even one person if there’s any background noise. So the cochlear implant is to improve my hearing, probably a great deal, by eliminating my shoddy natural hearing and replacing it with electric signals. The implant is happening at 11:30 tomorrow. It was actually supposed to be Dec 5 last year, but some equipment in the OR broke down and it was cancelled.

I will have to fast the day of surgery, so I get a good lunch- salmon chowder- and a good dinner- Subway melt. We go to a movie in Burrard Street. It’s called Night At The Museum, with Ben Stiller, and it’s pretty good. We picked it because it’s the only movie that has closed-captioning. I have to read the dialogue, or I can’t understand it. I’m glad it was such a good movie. After, we walk back to the car, people watching again. Everyone on the street at this hour seems to be dressed like they’re going somewhere. Every decade seems to be represented in fashion – camo hippies, plaid punks, flower hippies, leather punks, and ultra-modern yuppie types in suits that cost more than a year’s tuition for my school. And the Koreans; they always dress just a bit cooler than anyone else. I love how they all make the street more interesting just by existing. This would be more fun if I wasn’t hanging out with my parents. I think, 6 months till graduation, and then I’m out.

We walk to the children’s hospital. I’m taken to the surgery waiting room. I change into one of the stupid blue gowns and lie down in my cubicle. A nurse comes and measures me- 165 cm, 59.1 kg. They put some white cream on my hand and tape it down; it makes my hand numb for the IV. The anesthesiologist gives me some pills, one big and white, two tiny and blue. Doctor Kozak, the surgeon, comes around and writes his initials on my right cheek. Another nurse takes me, finally, to the OR. I say goodbye to my parents, who have been waiting with me throughout.

Awhile later, I waken with a pain in my ear. My entire head is wrapped in bandages, except a tuft of curly brown hair on top. I will have to give up on vanity for a few days. A nurse takes my temperature and blood pressure and gives me a pill. An IV is still hooked up to my hand, but as far as I can tell, it’s only got saline in it. The nurse thinks my blood pressure is weirdly low, but according to my chart, it’s always been like that. The temperature and pressure procedure will be repeated every two hours.

My parents come by, but I’m too tired to open my eyes for more than a second. Kozak comes as well and talks to the nurse. He says something to me also, smiling, but I can’t hear him. I smile back. I like him.

The light in my room is enough to read by, but so indirect that I can sleep with it on. No one turns it off, and I don’t have my watch, so I can’t tell if it’s night or not. I sleep for awhile- or rather, close my eyes and rest. I don’t think I get real REM sleep at any time in this long, woozy night. When not sleeping I read.

The book is called The Lost Colony, by Eoin Colfer, and it is amazingly good. Not heavy material, cause my dopey mind couldn’t handle anything complicated, but a fun, fast read. It’s about fairies that are trying to stop demons from invading the world, while also protecting the demons because they’re an endangered species. A human, 14-year-old genius Artemius Fowl, is the star and comes up with most of the ideas, and his fairy friends help with technology, manpower, and damage control. It is 477 pages (yeah, I checked) and I finish it by morning.

I also have a nice chat with Nurse Rita around 4 am. She’s not busy, as the rest of her patients are sleeping. The way I should be.

I have lost my sense of taste. My ham sandwich tasted like sawdust. I assume that’s because it looks like sawdust too, in the manner of all hospital food. Amazing, you come here to get healed then they feed you processed, pesticide and hormone filled junk food with no nutritional value whatsoever. So I try the apple juice, which should taste sweet. But it’s like water. I swish it around, and find a tiny patch on the left side of my tongue that detects sweetness. Slight relief. Though I haven’t eaten for about 2 days now, I have no appetite for food that resembles hay. I lean back and contemplate force-feeding myself cardboard food for the rest of my life. Fortunately, the hospital bed is so comfy and warm, I sink back and my eyes close of their own accord.

Doc Kozak comes back to take off the bandages. He says the taste thing is normal, he just bruised a nerve trying to get where he was going with the cochlea, and taste will come back-probably. He also checks that my facial muscles work, since he brushed that nerve as well. I give him a smile- no trouble there.

When the white tape comes off, my hair is a sight to scare children. Part of my scalp behind the right ear is shaved, and stitches are visible. The rest of my hair is gelled back, and on the other side it’s all flattened down. It’s kind of mohawkish. I look like a punk rocker with seriously bad judgment. Also, my right ear is jutting out at a terrible angle. With the hair all pushed back, my poor swollen ear is totally exposed, at right angles to my head, and coated with bloody gunk. It’s disgusting, but I scratch it out anyway because I cannot resist. No one could. Kozak catches me and yells. He says I’m not to touch that area at all, nor get it wet. This means I can’t wash it for a week- I just have to walk around with my hair all hideous, even after I go back to school. The doc advises me to invest in a hat.

After a few more rounds of codeine and Tylenol 3, a nurse comes around with a giggle of students in tow to demonstrate removing an IV. She doesn’t let them touch me, thank God. I am now free to go. I dress, hanging on to rails and things for support since I can’t seem to walk in a straight line. Mum turns up with the rest of my personal effects and eats the lunch that I can’t bear to look at. Yet another nurse, armed with drugs and a wheelchair, arrives shortly after. I swallow and sit down, and we depart. Dad is waiting out front with the car, and it is snowing again. Wet, slushy snow this time, the type that gets your socks wet. It looks nice.

We head for the ferry at once- dad wants to get the hell out of Vancouver before the ferries stop running. I get a nosebleed on the way from dehydration. Mum passes me a water bottle- not much else to be done. As I write we are waiting on the ferry queue. We will land in Nanaimo, hopefully stop at Oakridge Mall and shop for hats, then home.

One other thing- Dr. Kozak said the surgery was successful. In a few weeks, once the wound heals, we’ll come back to Vancouver and I’ll get the implant switched on. I’ll be able to hear, hopefully, instead of this oppressive silence on my right side. Can’t wait.

My iPod, on its last gasp of battery power, audible in one ear only, is playing U2’s Boy. Fade to black, I sleep.