Category: Uncategorized

Sharing our ‘almost’ moments are important

Judy Kucharuk

Yesterday, the Premier of British Columbia , Premier Christy Clark publicly shared a personal moment in her life where she had been a victim. A moment of when a man had pulled her 13 year old being off the sidewalk and into shrubbery. She was lucky…..she managed to escape without physical harm, but still wonders who else might have suffered at the hands of this stranger.

She didn’t tell anyone. She kept it to herself like so many did and still do.

Premier Clark shared her personal story with the knowledge that she will be victimized again. She knew that telling her story would result in a deluge of terrible, horrific comments by the public who do not support her politically. Comments by folks who cannot see past her political position to a place where a vulnerable teenager still relives a horrible moment. An “almost” moment that would have irrevocably changed her life.

I can only imagine that her hope was that someone else might read what she wrote and feel safe in coming forward if the same or similar were to happen in their lives.

For a moment let’s read the words written by Premier Clark as if they were written by our sister, aunt, wife or mother. We would be horrified to read about that moment that almost was: The moment where someone dragged her into the bushes with the intent to harm her and she escaped. We would be horrified to think that she had to replay that moment in her mind over and over and over again and that she wasn’t able to share it with someone who could have helped her cope. We would be horrified to think that she had to keep this to herself for so long.

If Christy Clark were our sister, our aunt, our wife, our mother or our daughter we would be applauding her courage and empathizing with her.

Instead she will be victimized again….and young women: our daughters, our granddaughters and our nieces will stay silent because if Christy Clark cannot share her pain, her terrified moment, her “almost was” without judgment, then how can anyone?

This has nothing to do with political alliances or affiliations – this is a human issue.

Dream Killers

Judy Kucharuk

Dream Killers……hidingin you

Monsters: As children we check in the closet and under the bed and sleep once we are reassured that they are off terrorizing someone else.

I am grown up, but I still worry about monsters. They don’t live under the bed any longer, they live in my brain and I call them Doubts.

Those buggers are dream killers and they seem to have super human powers to turn my brain against me….

They come in so many forms: a comment on a Facebook page, an off-handed remark, a perceived facial response.

They enter your being through your pores and manifest as doubt….their only goal is to kill your dream.

Why would my brain do that to me? Why would it give me Hope with one hand and then Doubt with the other?

The Doubt Monster had told me (and the bitch didn’t even whisper, she screamed), “You are an amateur Judy and everyone is going to know you are an amateur and you are a fraud and your book is a book of a fraud(y) amateur and not worth the paper it is printed on.” and then the Doubt Monster said that my, “friends are going to be forced to lie to me and say its good when we know it isn’t”

And I want to crawl into a fetal position beside my bed. I want to throw up.

She.is.SUCH.a.bitch.

The Doubt Monster is like one of the cool girls at school and the power that she holds over me is unlike anything I have felt before.

Doubt Monster: Calm, cool, calculating

Judy: Frazzled and sweating from a hot flash.

Yesterday I was completed mired in doubt and so I reached out to a friend.

My friend listened…..She let me know that the Doubt Monster comes to her brain frequently and that I am not alone. She told me that I have the right to be both attached to my book and scared by it.

She talked me down…..bless her. No, seriously someone should bless her because today is somewhat brighter and I am trying to remember her words when that mean girl “Doubt” attempts to enter my brain.

The Doubt Monster looks for a picked at edge to gain entry. She runs her hands over the surface until she finds a little rough spot, a little corner that has become raised and frayed and then she picks and picks and picks.

It’s hard to battle the Doubt Monster 😦

Goodbye Ozzie Magoo

Judy Kucharuk

I have not written about Ozzie’s sudden passing in my newspaper column. I had no idea that we would lose both of our fur-babies that close together. After Riley died, Ozzie walked about like a lost puppy….he mourned….he was so sad. He would not eat and was clingy which is totally unlike Ozzie. He had the appetite of a much larger dog and food was never an issue for him. As far as being clingy….Ozzie was his own “man” and in that respect he was like a cat…only cuddling if he wanted to cuddle.

This lasted a couple of weeks and then something remarkable occurred. Ozzie began acting like a puppy once again. He was running around the house with his toys and scampering up the steps on the back deck – acting so spry! His appetite picked up and we had our Ozzie Magoo back again.

Then one day I saw him stumble and strangely begin walking in circles. I panicked and took him to the vet, scared that I was going to lose him too. Ozzie had suffered something that many small dogs suffer, much like a stroke, but one that he could recover from.

Gathering him up in my arms I took him home and both Bob and I tended to him until he seemed “almost” back to himself again.

A month passed and Ozzie began to lose his appetite once more. We tried changing his food and offering him treats, but he didn’t seem to have that voracious appetite any longer. Then I noticed him trip as he went from the grass to the deck and he had difficult time regaining his footing. It was if he was drunk and he was weaving back and forth. I picked him up and carried him into the house.

Then he began to cough. Bob and I hovered near, worried sick that we were losing our Ozzie now too.

I took Ozzie to bed with me and let him snuggle alongside my legs. I felt like something might happen and I wanted to be near him.

At about 5:30 a.m. Ozzie began to cough once more and I picked him up and snuggled him on my shoulder like he loved to do since he was a wee puppy. I heard it then…his breathing sounded like a water pipe.

Waking Bob I said, “I think this might be Ozzie’s last day with us. Do you want to get up and spend some time with him?”.

We did. We made coffee and sat with Ozzie between us, rubbing his back and scratching his ears.

That afternoon I took Ozzie down to the vet again.

Ozzie was in heart failure and his tiny body was filling with fluid making it difficult to breathe.

I called Bob at work to come home and took Ozzie home while I waited. I sat on the sun-deck with Ozzie on my lap and I soaked in his presence. I told him how much I loved him, even knowing that his deaf ears could not comprehend the words.

When Bob arrived, he did the same thing – cuddling our wee dog in his arms knowing that he would be gone soon.

The hardest part of loving your pets is knowing when to say goodbye. We didn’t want Ozzie to suffer what would be a very difficult and painful death.

We returned to the vet. It was time to say goodbye.

Holding our sweet guy in our arms, we told him we loved him and that he was a “good dog” and then he slipped from our lives forever.

And now we grieve once again. We grieve for the loss we feel in our lives and how much we miss both Riley and Ozzie’s presence.

Goodbye my sweet Ozzie.

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The Life of Riley

Judy Kucharuk

(Previously published in the Alaska Highway News February 3, 2016)

12573772_10153858490255050_2379012927297780315_nOzzie stares blankly at the front door, his tiny wool beret sits at an odd angle, an unlit cigarillo hangs from his mouth.

Under his breath I am certain I hear him whisper “Pourquoi?” as he shakes his head in confusion.

He has been this way for a few days now. Ever since the frantic flurry of activity where his buddy, his lifetime companion, was scooped up and carried out the front door to a waiting car: “The “Feeder” had not even put proper footwear on, nor changed out of her pajama pants. Perhaps she is going to Walmart? Why would she take Riley with her? Why did she return without him? Did Riley go to the groomer?  We always go together?

Hmmmm….something does not feel right.

Poor Ozzie. He has been wandering throughout the house for days now, mourning the loss of his friend.

We humans have been doing the same thing.

Throughout the years I have mentioned my dogs in this column. I have anthropomorphized them to the point where I image Ozzie with a beret and a cigarette and Riley as a skinny old man with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Last week we lost our dear Riley. It was very sudden and we are still coming to terms with that missing piece of our lives.

You knew that I had to do this. I simply had to share with you, “The life of Riley” which in retrospect, really was as delightful as the definition.

Riley was a pet store puppy. Literally we pointed and asked, “How much is that doggie in the window”.

At the time, Bob was looking for a puppy to be his travel buddy. Someone to sit in the seat next to him, keep him company and be his best friend.

Riley had other aspirations and they didn’t involve riding around in the truck all day. This was the scene every morning when Riley was a puppy:

Bob places Riley on the floor beside him while he puts his work boots on.

Riley scampers off to the bedroom and climbs under the covers beside me pretending to sleep.

Bob picks Riley off the bed and takes him to the truck.

Riley fakes car-sickness.

After a short time, Bob realized that he was fighting a losing battle. Riley was not going to be the truck companion of his dreams, instead Riley was going to stay at home with mom (me).

Riley was a Shih Tzu – Cockapoo cross with long legs and a pointed nose. Very little Shih Tzu was involved in his genetic makeup. He was a lovable conundrum with soft black hair and tiny paws that he would place on the most tender, sensitive part of your anatomy as he walked across you in bed.

Riley had a severe under-bite that scared small children. I believe that he became a loveable, gentle, patient dog as a way of saying to the world “don’t judge me by my looks”. After he won a stranger over with his charm, that under-bite became a smile.

Riley was our OCD dog – watching him eat was a study in animal anxiety. He was afraid of flying bugs and in the summer he would vacillate between loving the sunshine warm his sore back and the fear of being stung by a wasp.

Riley disliked a bed that was made for some reason and after I made ours, I would hear a rustle and go in and see the pillows on the floor and the bedspread crumpled: Clearly a sign that Riley had been there.

Once we brought Ozzie home, the family bed got a wee bit crowded. We moved the dogs into their own beds on the floor. Ozzie will sleep on anything, but Riley was partial to a small down-filled duvet. He would nest until he was curled into a little ball and we would hear the most contented sigh.

My sister told me, “When you give an animal a life so good he sighs in contentment, you’ve done a very good thing”.

It is true, Riley did have a very satisfying, long life, but we are never prepared for a pet to leave us. My thoughts after he passed away? “If I had known that I was going to lose him today I would have held him closer yesterday”.

 

The Sun will Come up (Part 2 of Erin’s journey)

Judy Kucharuk

Many of you have been asking me privately, “How is Erin doing? Is she finished with her surgery for her skin cancer?” You might recall that I wrote about it in my column titled, “Ray of Light” and about how she had been documenting her skin cancer journey on the Instagram page: bccnosejourney.

After posting her photos and her updates on social media she has received many private messages from other’s that are having the same type of MOH surgery and subsequent reconstruction using the Paramedian Forehead Flap technique.

This is how I described the Paramedian flap in my first column: “The reconstructive surgical procedure is called a Paramedian Forehead Flap or PMFF for short. The surgeon harvests a piece of cartilage from the ear and uses it to recreate the stability of the nose. The forehead flap is a fancy-pants surgical technique that means, ‘take some tissue from the forehead and use it for the nose’.” That tissue is then left attached to the eyebrow for 6 weeks to encourage and support the new cartilage to grow.

Erin had that surgery and then another surgery to begin finessing the look of her new and improved nose. She still has the tissue from the forehead flap in place (called a pedicle), which is one of the reasons why this surgery can be so traumatic. Can you imagine being a young woman with this pedicle thing on your face for 2 months? You can’t really cover it up, and it extends from your eyebrow to the tip of your nose so you can’t drive because it obscures your vision; therefore you become very reclusive.

Which is why I felt the need to write about this once again. I wanted to provide an update on her progress and I needed to write about how insensitive and clueless people can be when someone looks “different” than they do.

After 5 weeks of not going anywhere but back and forth to Edmonton for appointments or spending time at her grandparent’s home, Erin decided to join a bunch of us at the movie to see the Melissa McCarthy movie, “The Boss”. She placed a bandage on her face and joined us for a night of fun and laughter. The first time she had been ANYWHERE public.

Standing in line at the movie theatre, waiting for the obligatory popcorn and small beverage from the concession, Erin overhears the people immediately behind her talking about her….and they aren’t whispering. They weren’t children, the were grown adults and the man and woman were speaking in normal voices RIGHT BESIDE HER. You know…the “oh my gawd, what is wrong with her face?” conversation.

Up to that point Erin has not really left the house. She understands getting stares because her reconstruction progress can look alarming, but a grown man and woman discussing her condition as they stood beside her?

FYI people…..she had cartilage taken from her ear for her nose….it didn’t effect her hearing. Much like the boy in the movie, The Sixth Sense, she still can hear “ignorant people”

Now before some of you say that I am being too harsh and that these types of things can be difficult for others and that it is acceptable to point and stare and talk well….. I say NO. I am not being too harsh and the Webster definition of “Ignorance” is: destitute of knowledge or education, lacking knowledge of comprehension of the thing specified and resulting from or showing lack of knowledge or intelligence.

On Monday, she is heading back to Edmonton for a big surgery. I am calling it a “big surgery” because it is during that surgery that the surgeon is going to clip the pedicle and it will no longer be attached from eyebrow to nose. She will be able to see clearly for the first time in weeks and will finally begin looking like her old (well…young) self again.

She will be able to play with her baby without worry, she will be able to drive and she will be able to leave her home without stares and whispers.

I write this today as a reminder that being and looking different is not a bad thing. It is not something that we should be afraid of or intimidated by. Acceptance is a virtue that we all can embody.

A Ray of Light (Part 1 of Erin’s Journey)

Judy Kucharuk

erin57_nShe got her first tattoo at sixteen. Typical teenage rebellion, the decision to get a tattoo came from a moment in time that many teenagers wrestle with. Most stop at one tattoo: the powerful need to defy or assert personal identity and power satisfied with a tiny heart on the ankle or butterfly on the wrist.

Not this girl, nope! Erin loves the individuality of beautiful ink: artwork as individual as a fingerprint. Parts of her shoulders, arms and legs are adorned with colourful pigments of her imagination.

Perhaps this is why she didn’t notice the imperceptible mark on the side of her nose: this Trojan Horse disguised as a freckle. “When did it appear Erin?” I asked her before I wrote this column. She couldn’t really say. She cannot remember when it wasn’t there, but she can’t recall when it appeared. It just “was”.

It wasn’t until her recent pregnancy that she noticed it begin to grow. Hormonal surges seem to do that to women: the same magical hormone elixir that grows and feeds a fetus also grows our hair, our nails and our skin cells. The freckled blemish began to change; the edges became ragged and red, a stubborn sore that would not heal. A topical over the counter antibiotic cream was applied, but to no avail. It simply would not heal.

A doctors appointment indicated that indeed it was a very suspicious sore and quite possibly cancerous. A surgeon was contacted and the journey for my young niece began: The journey that many, many take when diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma – one of the most common forms of skin cancer.

The first surgery was completed, the cancerous lesion removed and the lesion and margins of the area sent to a clinic for biopsy. The biopsy would determine the type of cancer and the margins would be inspected to see if any cancer remained.

Erin waited. Meanwhile, the scar faded quickly and you would hardly notice that anything had been removed.

Weeks passed and the results came in….they were both good and bad news. The good news was that the cancer was indeed basal cell carcinoma (one of the easiest to treat and rarely life threatening), the bad news was the margins were not clear and that she needed to be referred to another surgeon, one that specializes in removal of this type of cancer.

This was the first time I had heard of MOH Surgery. MOH surgery (MOH because it was developed by Dr. Frederick Moh) is now one of the most effective techniques for removing basal cell carcinoma. A very precise technique, the doctor removes very thin pieces of tissue, examining each section for cancer cells until the microscope can identify no cancerous cells in the tissue. The goal is to keep as much healthy tissue as possible, while removing the cancerous tissue.

Erin would also be referred to another surgeon, one that specializes in reconstruction of a MOH surgical site on the nose. This doctor would reconstruct Erin’s beautiful nose following the cancer surgery.

As I write this column, I have just left the hospital where Erin is recovering following her reconstructive surgery. The MOH surgery that happened last week successfully removed a circular section of tissue and Erin is now cancer free. Unfortunately, the surgery comes with a cost and that cost is now undergoing another procedure that came with a lot of trepidation.

The reconstructive surgical procedure is called a Paramedian Forehead Flap or PMFF for short. The surgeon harvests a piece of cartilage from the ear and uses it to recreate the stability of the nose. The forehead flap is a fancy-pants surgical technique that means, “take some tissue from the forehead and use it for the nose”. As Erin said with a sarcastic laugh, “thank goodness I have a big forehead’’.

The doctor says that she will have at least two more surgeries before she can put this experience behind her. When she was first diagnosed we said, “No way! Not Erin – she HATES the sun” and that is true now, but wasn’t the case when she was 20 years old. Those days were spent in the tanning bed, trying to get a bronze tint to her skin that refused to change colour. She is not saying that a tanning bed did the damage, but the type of cancer she is battling is generally caused by repeated unprotected sun exposure including tanning beds.

Of course I asked Erin’s permission to use her story this week in my column and she said this: “if it encourages people to take a good look at their skin and go to the doctor if they notice anything suspicious, then that is a good thing”. She also wishes she had never used a tanning bed but knows that you can’t go back in time and change it, you can make the choice to do better and move forward.

My beautiful niece decided to face this scary medical experience head on and document her surgeries and reconstruction progression on Instagram. If you are interested in finding out a little more about her story or perhaps dealing with this type of surgery yourself and want to learn more, you can follow her on Instagram at BCCNOSEJOURNEY.

 

Tidying the junk drawer’s of my life….

Judy Kucharuk

Think of the room that I would make in my life if I simply folded those damn bags into organized triangles!

Last week an unusual video popped up on my Facebook timeline multiple times. This happens often because my friends and I are “birds of a feather….and of course….we think together”.

It makes sense that if I find something of interest, that my friends will as well, and thus the sharing begins on social media. It spreads quickly and can make the rounds of social media feeds with the speed of an S.T.I.

Last week there was a video of a woman folding a plastic grocery bag. Yes…..she actually did an instructional video on how to fold a plastic grocery bag. With almost a religious reverence, this woman flattened and folded and created this little triangular plastic package (which looked like a miniature flag folded to be handed off to someone graveside or a spanakopita pastry pocket).

I have attached a youtube video of something similar to what I had watched.

I watched the video and thought to myself, “There but for the grace of Prozac, go I”.

The plastic bag folding insanity is just another toe dipped into the bucket of “got too much time on your hands” KonMari Method of living.

Before you think that I am going to bash this entire anal-retentive way of living, I will admit….I am only lashing out because I am jealous. Jealous that someone has the time and energy to fold plastic bags and stand them up in a drawer; jealous that someone looked underneath their kitchen sink at the piles and piles of bags and thought, “there has to be a better way”. I do that too you know….I have moments rife with flashes of good intentions….but then…… SQUIRREL!

The funny thing is, that I traveled to my daughter’s home later that same week and after saying hello and remarking on how clean and tidy her home was, I started to say, “Hey did you see the video of the…..” and she interrupted with “plastic bag folding? Yes!!!! Look in the kitchen and see what I did”.

I poked my head around the corner from the living room to the kitchen and I could see her plastic bag container still affixed in the same place on the wall directly above the recycling bin. What I didn’t see were bags puking out from every orifice of the container. Instead…..I saw teeny, tiny little triangles of plastic artfully arranged in the plastic bag container.

“I did it yesterday”, she said with a smile, knowing that I am probably going to mock her incessantly after the fact.

Now….this is a girl who only a few years previous to this, would not remember to pick up the towel in the bathroom. This is a girl who came into the front door and dropped her backpack, her purse, her hat, her gloves, the dog leashes, her shoes and her BPA free water bottle in a continuous trail that stretched into the kitchen. THIS girl sat for GAWD knows how long and folded plastic bags into little triangles?

Hell I was impressed. I couldn’t even come up with a sarcastic comment (at the time…..later I came up with something good).

The fact that she watched that short video and was prompted to begin organizing her life, beginning with the unseemly display of plastic bags in her kitchen, was inspiring!

I folded one as well. The first one didn’t turn out perfectly, but it was not bad. Then I folded another and then another and then I worked myself into a Zen-like rhythm of flattening, smoothing and folding. In moments I had completed 3 tiny plastic Spanakopita’s and I felt an odd sense of comfort knowing that there was some sense of order amongst the plastic.

Now I know what the fuss was about! It was the sense of calm that you feel when you created order out of disorder.

Returning home a week later I looked at MY plastic bag collection under the sink with a renewed sense of purpose. Think of the room that I would make in my life if I simply folded those damn bags (yes…..this is a metaphor for all the junk drawers of my life) into organized triangles!

The plastic bags represented everything in my life that had been frustrating me lately: The pile of paperwork on my kitchen table, the cutlery drawer near the sink, the towels in the bathroom, the makeup strewn all over my en-suite.

So I sat and folded…and folded….and folded. I sat in front of the television and I found my rhythm as I folded every one of those bags.

And do you know what?

It felt good.

Got Period?

Judy Kucharuk

Got

The other day I was trying to come up with a call to action so that the attendees of a function would know that they could donate feminine hygiene products as the price of admission.

I was having a conversation with my counterpart about how difficult it was to phrase my call to action without using wording that might be “off putting” to the general public (yes….I realize that is crazy talk…being caught up in this politically correct, hypersensitive, damned if we do and damned if we don’t world). We both laughed uncomfortably and said, “that would make a good subject for an article”.

Here we were, worrying about using words like “period”, “pads”, and “tampons” because….Heaven forbid we offend someone. It was like we were trying to make the request pretty and wrap it in a bow without conjuring images of blood or bleeding. It seemed like there was no middle ground: either have clouds and women riding horseback on a beach or a scene from Dexter.

Why?

As if we lived in a time and place where talking about periods would cause embarrassment…….

I like to think that I am evolved and comfortable with my body and the way it operates, but I also realize that when I was a child I recall that the local confectionery store (a small town 1970’s 7-11) wrapped Kotex boxes in brown paper to disguise the product. You could purchase your “product” without you or the clerk being embarrassed. It was like a drug transaction, “Psst…..you got any pads?”. Don’t even ask for tampons……HIPPIE FREAK!

Why? Why do we insist on couching the terminology or literally wrapping the packaging so that no one gets offended or embarrassed?

The fact of the matter is that women do get their period each and every month for many, many years. Those who are fortunate enough to afford to stock their cabinet with sanitary products take it for granted that they will have a pad or a tampon handy when they need one. Unfortunately, there are many, many women, young and old who simply cannot afford that “luxury”. Yes…..a necessity for many, becomes a luxury for others and that is not right….it is simply WRONG.

Can she go to school like that? Can she go to work like that?

I hate that this is happening and it took a conversation with someone from the Salvation Army Food Bank at Christmas to open my eyes to the need. Not only are tampons and pads necessary, but products like Poise and Depends are necessary as well (another so-called embarrassing subject).

I want to do something. I have to do something!

But how?

I have reached out to the folks who have organized something called Tampon Tuesday and am working on (hopefully) getting something like this happening in Dawson Creek and Fort St John.

Are you interested in getting on board with this? Please let me know by emailing judykucharuk@gmail.com

 When someone is struggling financially, the last thing they should be worrying about is when their next period will arrive and how they will cope.

I will keep you posted! I truly believe that we can make something like this happen in our community – stay tuned.

Judy

Stay Gold Pony Boy….stay gold

Judy Kucharuk

STAY GOLD PONY BOY

Dear Cauliflower…..I hardly knew ya

Our relationship was short and passionate as I discovered that you were absolutely delicious roasted with a drizzle of balsamic glaze to add that bit of sweet. You were a chameleon when I chopped you up into tiny bits and fried you in sesame oil and frozen peas with a dash of soya sauce…..like a Oscar winning actor you become “fried rice”.

But, alas…..you have become beyond my reach and are now only served to royalty…..the foie gras of the vegetable community, the Beluga caviar of the cruciferae family.

Stay Gold, Pony Boy….stay Gold.

Cheers! xoxoxo !!!!!!

Judy Kucharuk

CHEERS!Judy

Staaaaahhhhp!

This morning I caught myself for the umpteenth time signing off an email with:

Cheers!
Judy

Why? I am not a “Cheers!” kinda gal….what the heck!

When did I become infected with this virus where I substitute proper signatory sign off’s with the offhand, extemporesque, “I heart you”, casual word which somehow infers that I have an expensive, locally brewed IPA in one hand as my laptop sits in front of me on a bar table.

I have begun using this as my complimentary close to much of my email correspondence.

Let’s face it…..it doesn’t always work. For example:

I regret to inform you that you were not the chosen candidate…..

Cheers!

Or

The test came back positive.

Cheers!

I don’t generally send the same types of correspondence as I used as examples, but I do find myself using the closing, “Cheers!” when I want to counter some negativity in the response. It has become a passive aggressive ending and I am hereby calling myself AND others out on it!

I don’t even use the word “Cheers!” in my spoken vocabulary, why on earth am I using it in my written responses?

I have indicated that 2016 is going to become the year of saying NO. Perhaps the first NO should be to uber casual email closings. Hmmmmmmmm?

Sincerely,

Judy