Fast forward

Hard to believe it is still February, so much has happened. Since the dramatic end to the truckers' protest there has been no lull in the drama of one thing following another, all very troubling except for a relaxing little trip for the two of us with a night in Kingston, to be described in a separate post. On the drive home from Kingston, tuning into CBC radio, we heard the Federal Government's response to the invasion of Ukraine by Putin's military forces, the deputy PM Chrystia Freeland giving an impressive, slowly enunciated speech in three languages, English, French and Ukranian. Though born in Alberta, her mother came from Ukraine, it seems, and Freeland herself, Minister of Everything, as the Globe and Mail very recently described her, has a Master's degree in Slavonic studies from Oxford University. Her page on the government website also says this about her:

After launching her career in journalism as a Ukraine-based freelance correspondent for the Financial Times, The Washington Post, and The Economist, Ms. Freeland went on to various roles at the Financial Times of London. She then served as deputy editor of the Toronto-based Globe and Mail between 1999 and 2001, before returning to the Financial Times as deputy editor and then as United States managing editor.

The news from Ukraine, reminiscent of the news from Afghanistan, is so upsetting I'm having a hard time forcing myself to follow it. I feel for our pacifist daughter Emma who speaks Russian and once lived for three months on the outskirts of Moscow; she has fairly close friends / colleagues both in Russia and in Ukraine. And I know someone from Kiev, that we must now call Kyiv.

Ice has coated the whole of eastern Ontario to the extent that, if you're a skater, as some are, you can skate the length of the runway at Rockcliffe airport, as well as the taxiways.

Then on Friday Chris broke his arm and wrist while clearing snow off the steps by our front door. There was thick, uneven ice under the snow there, that we hadn't done anything about since our return from Kingston. He broke the ulna and radius plus several of the little wrist bones. At the Montfort Hospital he was efficiently and kindly dealt with by the Emergency staff who made two attempts to realign the wrist bones by force, under a local anaesthetic, with no success until the second attempt; then they put the whole of his lower arm in a cast and sent him home for a very belated supper. 

At some point next week he is going to be called back for surgery under full anaesthetic; we have no further details about that yet. Since Friday night he's been suffering a lot of discomfort and some sharp pain which we're dealing with by means of Tylenol and various distractions. He's sleeping reasonably well so far, but a normal night's rest isn't possible. We'll have to get used to this as it will take at least seven weeks for the injury to heal. Although it's the left hand that's out of action (he's right-handed, thank heavens) I now have to help him with many things we usually take for granted he can do by himself, and he can no longer help me with housework and such. 

It's all rather time-consuming, but not so bad for me as for Chris who keeps suffering from instant replays of his fall on the steps which make him shout with dismay. Apparently the downtown residents who were tortured by the honking of truckers' horns day and night are also suffering from something of this sort: phantom honking, like a very unpleasant kind of "Ohrwurm" (as the Germans call it, a song you can't get out of your head). This is Post Traumatic Stress.

On Facebook, about 100 people have sent Chris get-well-soon wishes and wise advice to me, friends have come round to help in various ways (Carol, our go-to person in times of stress, has been particularly supportive, driving back and forth to the hospital in treacherous driving conditions when I didn't seem up to it) and our family members overseas keep on calling us by phone and video to say comforting things. We had four friends round to supper on Friday.

At the second attempt today, we did manage to fit Chris' sling on top of a winter jacket without too much agony resulting, so we went for a very short walk round the block between snow squalls.

My brother-in-law and sister have been put through the mill as well, he having just got through open-heart surgery to install (wrong word?) a missing heart valve with a valve from a cow's heart. He was in hospital for nearly a week this month.

The Rideau River ice clearing operations continue. They have started to dynamite the ice.