Back Home Again

Where is home?  Many answers to that, all correct.  Where I hang my hat.  Where I can get internet.  Where i was born and raised.  Where I spent most of my life.  Where I now live. My permanent residence.

So the farm is home, Ukraine is now home but Regina will always be home. Our family spent 24 years in this city.  My oldest still lives here. As of September 1, it is home for Tanya and I for one year until I am healthy again.  We have a small 1 bedroom flat found and furnished by my eldest. Five minutes from hospital, doctors office and bus stops.  And affordable, sort of.

It is also across the street from Regina Exhibition Grounds, home of Canadian Western Agribition, the world's largest indoor cattle show.  Haven't been for 10 years.

I had a specialist lined up a month before we left Ukraine. My ostomy bag was giving no end of trouble - it would not adhere to my skin any length of time. My oldest was friends with a nurse who worked at the Enterostomy Clinic and would message her for information and assistance in trying to solve the problem.  The nurse mentioned this to a surgeon she works with who up until 4 years ago had been a surgeon in the hospital in Dnipro where I was a patient.  He got all excited and phoned Tanya a couple of times to discuss the issue.  I had an appointment with him before I had a letter of referral from a General Practitioner.

So the morning after we arrived I had an appointment with a GP or in this case a Nurse Practitioner to get a letter of referral to the specialist with whom I had an appointment the following morning.  The nurse practitioner turned out to have lived in the house behind us when we first moved to Regina in 1983. She and her brothers went to school with my kids.

I can't travel as we have no car and our government killed the provincial bus service, so friends are coming to see us.  People I haven't seen in years.  Averaging 3 to 4 per week.  It is wonderful to catch up, I can tell you.

Last night, Tanya and I went with friends to the Bushwakker Brew Pub to listen to live jazz from 'round midnight, a local band  where a long time friend plays bass. Food there is great.  I have never tried their beer as they have a wide variety of good Scotch.  Which I can't drink anymore.  Especially at $8 to $22 for a 30 gram ounce.  At least in Europe a shot is 50 grams.

Tomorrow I am going to an anti-provincial government rally just for fun.  Saskatchewan has a conservative government which like all conservative governments has cut taxes for the rich and made up the difference by cutting services to the rest of us.  They have already been forced to back pedal on several of their cuts.  Tomorrow is about forcing more back pedaling.

A CT scan and colonoscopy will tell me doctor how much more of my poor colon needs to be removed.  I will then be a semicolon. This will happen in January if all goes well. Then in February they will reconnect my stoma or as I told my children, reconnect my mouth and my a$$. My youngest suggested that when they were doing that, could they remove my feet from the one and my head from the other.  I get no respect.

By the way, did you know that when people kiss they just make a long tube connecting one butthole to another.  But I digress.

I am glad to be home.