Afternoon Bath at Canuck Place

Smiley People in Paris

I remember reading in a university psychology text (back in the late '90s) that the North American idealizations of happiness (i.e. happy all the time, everyone) were off the charts in relation to other culture's expectations of happiness. In fact, I remember the authors saying that if you were to walk around the streets of Paris with a big, wide grin on your face, they might think you were mentally challenged. The French are, after all, a very serious bunch.  :)

image from the Canuck Place website

For the first time in a long time, here at Canuck Place I feel like I'm the super haaaaapy(!) person who doesn't get it. The kids here are just so flippin' adorable, but the criteria they need to meet in order to be admitted is absolutely heart-breaking. The thing is, though, what we think is heartbreaking is our reality. It's not heartbreaking for them. It's reality! And their realities are so, so fundamentally different than your average person's.

Big smiles. Different realities. What's the connect?

Well, sometimes I think when you're exposed to the harsh realities of life – or when harsh realities are your life – your reality changes. You adapt. You grow. You get stronger. And your understanding of the full spectrum of life and of humanity increases.

The full spectrum. Not just the happy spectrum.

And I think that's what I'm observing here. There have been several kids I've tried striking up conversations with and they don't want to talk to me. I get that. I really do. Here's this 6'1" guy, walking around with two healthy feet and a healthy body, with a big toothy grin (to quote my father-in-law's wedding speech), trying to enthusiastically strike up a conversation. What do I know about what they know? Nothing! I wouldn't want to talk to me either. They're French and I'm this guy strolling the streets of Paris with this big grin on my face, only aware of one slice of the human spectrum.

And then there's all the healthy people I've observed since Gabrielle's birth, smiling away and fretting about how much work they have to do, or complaining about having to get up early for work, or how worried they are about their very healthy kid's dentist appointment, or all the Facebook updates about really normal and superficial things. Sometimes I cringe, and sometimes I chuckle: big smiles in the streets of Paris.

But when these kids laugh, they laugh. I mean, their smiles are so full of human spirit that it warms every heart in the room. It's not heartbreaking. It's genuine. It's refreshing. It comes from such a wise and mystical place – a place that no one else in the room can understand – that it can't be called anything other than special.

The big difference between these kids and Parisians is that these kids – each and every one of them – are heroes. Humans of all kinds celebrate and idolize heroes. Heroes are people we look up to, who can teach us how to be better and better. But I defy anyone to find a more heroic person than a child who knows they may not see it out of childhood and can still laugh and smile.

image from Canuck Place website

Canuck Place - "A Place Between Heaven and Earth"

To the staff of Canuck Place,

Tomorrow will mark one week since we arrived... and we are all starting to feel like ourselves again. After Gabrielle and I said a very tearful goodbye to the docs and nurses on 3B at BCCH, we were escorted by the ambulance personel downstairs and were ambulanced from the hospital to Canuck Place.  It was a warm sunny day when we arrived.  After being in the hospital for almost 4 months, I felt hollow, I was utterly exhausted, big bags under my eyes, pale, had no idea what the next week or month of our lives would look like, hadn't showered in a few days and was ready to collapse.

When I stepped outside of the ambulance with Gabrielle on the stretcher in her car seat, I felt like I had stepped into another world.  I squinted my eyes at the sunlight and looked around to beautiful flowers and green grass, birds chirping, and a big beautiful mansion out of a storybook or movie.

The paramedics escorted us to the back of the house and the elevator doors opened up as soon as we got there.  It's as if you were waiting for us to arrive.  We came up to the second floor and the first person I saw was one of our doctors who has been following Gabrielle since our NICU days, and I wanted to cry with relief.  A familiar face who has seen Gabrielle almost every day of her entire transplant, through the ICU and now through our transition to Canuck Place and then home.  We walked into Gabrielle's room and my jaw dropped at the sight of her beautiful big room, painted a light green with massive windows, a huge bathroom and a nice warm breeze.  It was heaven.  I was overwhelmed again with emotion as I was so relieved for my baby girl to finally be out of the hospital and into a wonderful, loving, cozy environment.

Every day has been like this since we arrived.  Every day I am filled with awe, relief and gratitude to all the people of this establishment.  You saved our family.  We no longer have bags under our eyes, we are staring to feel whole, we have energy again and colour in our faces.

Canuck Place is allowing Regan and I to take care of ourselves, which is, ironically helping us take care of everyone and everything else.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts,
The Ross's

Canuck Place

On our second night at Canuck Place, I can't help but feel so relaxed and taken care of.  I never want to leave.

Some of our highlights so far:

Proper sleep.  We don't hear sat monitors beeping off, the loud hospital door opening and closing, and nebulizers at 2 am.

Gabrielle has a huge room the size of our living room at home full of windows and fresh air.  Airy, fresh and feels much better than the hospital.

Gabrielle has her own nurse all the time and the 1-1 nursing is meant for the whole family, meaning it gives Regan and I some time to talk, catch up and maybe even sleep!

I have this really cool old fashion pram that I can put Gabrielle in and take her all over the house.  Their rendition of 'isolation' is much more relaxed then at the hospital where we couldn't even leave our room.

Most importantly...I get to have my whole family under the same roof together...and it is awesome!

Learning To Be Grateful

The other day, in the germ-free hospital playroom (super cleaned for the toddlers/kids going through chemotherapy), I was chatting with the mother of an 18-month-old boy with leukemia. As she was holding onto her son's hand, helping him practice his walking, making sure he didn't trip over the IV/med tubes & wires, she said, "But you know, it could be so, so much worse. Like look where we are."

And we looked around at the room full of regularly sterilized toys and up at the glass ceiling that let the sunshine beam down for the kids to bask in, and nodded in mutual understanding.

Her gratitude struck a chord.

Later that night, bored, with Gabrielle sleeping on my chest, I surfed the net looking for videos on gratitude. Nothing anyone said seemed to capture what I was looking for better than the video below.

Maybe it's how real this song is,

Or how lacking gratitude is in our culture,

Or how lacking beautiful songs of gratitude are in our culture,

Or, heck, how lacking people singing anything in chorus is in our culture,

The children's thank you for a bunch of new shoes just seemed so real and authentic,

Honest, heart-felt, and true.

And it reminds me of how lucky we all are,

And how regularly unappreciative we all are.

And how much we can learn about gratitude from those who have so much less than we do.