Hypochondria and my dog Billie Jean

My dog is exacerbating my hypochondria
Victimized again by Rev. Donald Francis Gavan
By Terrance Gavan
I am a confirmed hypochondriac.
I blame it on my upbringing and I pin it specifically on my uncle, the Reverend Donald Francis Gavan.
Gav was wildly cognizant of every working part of his slowly discombobulating body.
A chronic worrier.
A serial hypochondriac.
Now the medical definition of the disease states that:
“A person who has hypochondriasis, a disorder characterized by a preoccupation with body functions and the interpretation of normal body sensations (such as sweating) or minor abnormalities (such as minor aches and pains) as portending problems of major medical moment. Reassurance by physicians and others only serves to increase the hypochondriac's persistent anxiety about their health.”
The Reverend Donald Francis never actually took these minor complaints to his doctor.
He did however bring it constantly and continuously to his rather large extended family in Ottawa.
He was a constant presence at Saturday and Sunday Gavan family dinners.
His own hypochondria was enormously and prodigiously enlarged when confronted by other people’s maladies.
He was a “hypochondriac chart topper” taking extravagant and almost Rambo-like zeal in medical one-upmanship
If you had a cold … Uncle Don had the Asian Flu.
If you had shin splints … The Rev had a torturous ankle condition from a “pre-existing wartime injury” that “flared up” in hot humid conditions; or extended cold snaps.
My mother had three major coronaries.
The Reverend Donald would visit regularly.
Inevitably he would leave the hospital with mysterious chest pains, shortness of breath and shooting pains down his right arm.
By the time we reached the car - having watched a procession of emergency room victims pass by in various states of disrepair - Father Don would be limping, wheezing, and wiping rivers of sweat from his forehead.
“My arm’s swelling up, I have a migraine, I think I’ve got a bad case of Denghi Fever, let’s get the hell out of here,” Gav would say, sprint-limping like a gut-shot Ostrich to the car.
I happened to mention one Sunday that I was doing some research on the rise of smallpox on the African continent.
I swear to God, Gav popped his head around the corner of the kitchen.
“Tell me about it,” says Reverend Donald Francis. “I have these huge red welts around my abdomen and my joints have been sore as hell since last Tuesday. Smallpox eh? Have you got any reading material that I can take home tonight?”
Understand that we all loved Father Don.
We just wondered a lot about his almost manic preoccupation with disease.
He smoked about three to 15 packs of cigarettes a day.
Never once did I ever hear him complain about an allergy to smoke, or some concern that his habit may be contributing to a lowered life expectancy. His own hypochondria never extended to his own forlorn lifestyle choices.
The medical profession calls this “whistling past the graveyard.”
I call it ironic, because it was lung cancer that finally swept the good Donald Francis off this patch of green in the late nineties.
My own hypochondria I attribute directly to the Reverend Donald Francis. Rampant and derelict access to the Internet and all those dastardly self-diagnosis sites doesn’t help either. And now I have an itchy problem with my dog Billie Jean.
Some time ago I read an article about the canine’s ability to sniff out disease in humans. It said: “Already dogs are used to warn of epileptic seizures, low blood sugar and heart attacks, although whether they are detecting changes in smell or physical behavior is still unknown. And, while they may not be able to perform CPR, some canines do know how to call 911.”
I am now fully tuned in to my dog’s first-alert warning system.
If she takes an inordinate interest in my feet, I am off like a shot to Haliburton emergency services.
“What’s wrong,” Triage Person will ask.
“I’m not sure,” I reply, “but my dog Billie Jean seems to think I may have a pre-existing ankle problem. Maybe run a battery of X-Rays and set me up for a Cat Scan?”
My preoccupation with Billie’s moods has increased exponentially over the past two years as I do further research on canine diagnosis via my hi-speed Googler.
I am stretching the patience of the very solicitous Triage Person at Haliburton General.
One day last week Billie stared unblinking at the top of my head.
Fearing the worst, I bolted for emergency.
Triage person sits looking at me with that perplexed and haggard look of the long-suffering soul.
“Terry, what now?” says Triage Person.
“I don’t know, but Billie’s thinking brain aneurysm, and I’m guessing we’ll be wanting a full PET scan,” I say, tapping the top of my head which produced a hollow Bongo-Congo sound. “Oh and she was licking my hand … what do you think? Carpal Tunnel or arthritis?”
She points me to my doctor.
My doctor, Marcia Welby MD, is a no-nonsense practitioner, and she is not quite as patient or understanding as Triage Person.
“Terry, I want you to quit bothering Triage Person,” says Dr Marcia.
“Billie Jean is not clairvoyant and dogs do not have a license to practice medicine in Ontario. Oh, and I want you to put a block on Web MD on your Internet,” says Marcia.
We have come to a grudging agreement.
I limit my Triage Person visits to one or two per month.
But just in case … I am currently teaching Billie Jean to dial 911.
She’s apparently a quick learner.
Last month I got a bill from my long distance provider.
Did you know that a random call to the Australian Outback comes in at $165 per hour?
Billie Jean is giving me a migraine.
I think.

Parasailing first person screed

Popping for a silly-sally sail in the clouds
Parasailing is a blast - but watch the after effects
By Terrance Gavan
If you’re not a parakeet, and you’ve never flown, well this is about as close as you’re going to get.
Clicked into a huge yellow and white parachute with a happy face logo.
About 350 feet above the shimmering depths of Lake Kashagawigamog you can’t hear much at all.
You certainly can’t hear the low rumble of the Ski-Mazing Water Sports tow-boat hundreds of yards away.
After a hiatus of 14 years, Craig Bowker and Ski-Mazing Water Sports are flying high in the Highlands sky once again.
Bowker says the winch boat is an option that is 100 percent safer than the old beach launch method of parasailing.
“You used to hear crazy stories from back in the eighties when parasailing started,” smiles Bowker. Today says Bowker, the winch lets you out off the platform slowly and then reels you back in on the return.
Bowker offered two scribes from the Voice a flight and we jumped at the opportunity.
And Bowker is right. Safe, reliable and courteous, and one heck of an adventure.
But be forewarned.
Pick your flight partner with care and consideration.
Once you’re up there, well, you’re there for a while.
I found out the hard way.
It’s quite quiet up there; except for the low drone of co-rider Mark Arike, who convinced me to take him along for the ride on this tandem flight.
Two minutes into the flight, I finally convinced Arike that he didn’t have to maintain a ‘death grip’ on the hanging straps, holding us into our canvas seats.
Freaky Arike let go of the straps. But he continued to have his arms in the air, in the old “stick ‘em up” pose. You know, just in case he might need to grab hard onto the reins again.
Another minute of watching him in full rigor mortis mode, I convinced him to summon his inner Jack Nicholson.
“Mark, look at me,” I yelled from behind, on the tandem two-person set underneath the parasail.
“Do a Jack … Do a Jack!” I screamed waving my arms and flapping maniacally like a wounded ostrich on a Jonathan Livingstone Seagull Peyote trip.
“What’s a Jack? For chrissakes!” screamed Arike, who was trying to relax, but was obviously growing increasingly ambivalent about my proffered advice.
“Jack Nicholson you great feathery dolt!” I screamed.
He glanced back to stare at me, like I had just descended from Mars.
The eyes were wide as saucers, the look unyielding and non-comprehensive.
I recognized it immediately.
Altitude sickness compounded by winded thrust.
The wind at 350 feet was undoubtedly whistling through the empty spaces between those floppy ears.
He screamed at me: “Jack Nicholson, what?”
I began flapping my wings even harder, trying to jog that unfertilized noggin back to life.
“Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack!” I screamed, arms flapping willy-nilly just like Jack did on the back of that chopper sitting behind Dennis Hopper in that old sixties anthem to the road.
“Easy Rider! Easy Rider, you great disenfranchised boob!” I screamed still flapping my wings.
“Easy What?” screamed Mark, just another young whippersnapper, with no touchstone to reality or great movies borne from seminal literature.
“Easy Rider, Easy Rider the film, you clandestine moron!” I scream over the gusty wind that moves us over a sandy beach far below.
“Have you never read Jack Kerouac, you illiterate scoundrel?” I ask.
“Jack Shellack?” screams Mark. “What are you talking about?”
I gave up.
“Just flap your wings, you sullen excuse for a pundit,” I beg, over the windy, blue-tinged slipstream.
And my god!
He takes the cue.
He says: “Oh you mean like this! Wheeeeeeee!”
“By George I think she’s got it!” I exclaim.
He looks back and I see the eyes glazing over once again.
Damn literary references.
“Never mind … it’s just Shaw and Pygmalion you great goofus … forget it … keep flapping you great speckled bird,” I scream, failing to footnote Ian and Sylvia Tyson.
And we are both of us, under the smiling happy face on the large parasail flapping like Jack.
Flapping mad as we glide gently from one end of Lake Kashagawigamog to the other.
Trust me folks.
If the smile on Arike’s face is any indication, this ride is well worth the trip to Ski-Mazing Water Sports headquarters - right beside the Wigamog Inn on Wigamog Road, off County Road 21 just west of Haliburton.
As we winched safely back down to the platform – but only after the thrilling toe drag in the water – Mark was still flapping madly.
Just like Jack.
After we were back on terra firma Mark asked me about Easy Rider – and Jack Kerouac.
I pulled one of my old dog-eared copies of On the Road from my glove compartment and last weekend I gave him a DVD of Easy Rider.
I got an interesting phone call from Mark last Saturday night.
“Terry love the book,” said Mark. “Question; what’s peyote?”
I told him to Google Carlos Castaneda.
Haven’t seen hide or hair of Mark in two days.
He’s not answering his Blackberry.
I’m giving him another 24 hours.
Then I’m calling in the tracking dogs.
Just in case he’s metamorphed into a “Spirit Wolf.”
Or, worse - a Trickster Raven.

The day the bridge blew up in Halcyon

When love of a dog sets logic aside
The day the bridge blew up in Halcyon
By Terrance Seamus Gavan
Lest you get the wrong idea.
It’s important to know that Paddy Baldurson is a dog lover.
It’s also important to know that Paddy Baldurson has an eclectic view of the world.
I first met Paddy back when I was a young reporter with the Halcyon Packet and Times in the Manitoba Interlake.
Paddy was a 74-year-old seed farmer and very involved in local politics.
He was a former Reeve of the Rural Municipality of Reykjavik and he was like me, half Irish and half Icelandic. When I first arrived in Halcyon, in 1988, my hard knock editor Lorne Bjornson told me to get to know Paddy. Said he would be a great contact for local news and rumor.
Well, over my five years with the Halcyon P and T I did get to know Paddy Baldurson very well. But we seldom talked politics – or gossip.
Mostly we talked dogs. And we had many rollicking discussions.
Paddy was never without at least three dogs in tow. He ran a kind of rescue mission for Black Labs out at his ranch.
No matter how many dogs you meet in a lifetime, one always stays with you.
Paddy’s old collie/black lab cross Mel – short for Melancholy – was such a dog. Mel was the personification of her name. Paddy had taken Mel in when she a very young puppy. She came from abuse, was left on an open Manitoba Highway during one of those prairie Nor’westers that seemed to drop onto the bald prairie from right out of the Siberian Gulag.
That was back in 1974 and Paddy figured that Mel was about a year old.
For the first two weeks Mel was wary of everything and showed all the classic shyness of a dog who had been abused. Paddy had a way with dogs and it didn’t take long for Mel to come around.
“One night she came up and put her head on my lap, and she looked into my eyes with trust, love and just a wee touch of melancholy,” smiled Paddy. “Only one name would fit after that. Melancholy she was and she’s been Mel to this day, the best dog I have ever known … and I’ve known a few in my time.”
Mel became, over the years, the Halcyon town mascot. Paddy loved high school sports and he and Mel became a fixture at football, track meets, basketball, volleyball and hockey games.
In the spring of 1991 Paddy flagged me down and I pulled in off the highway into his yard. Mel was lying in the shade and she looked up, but after two futile efforts to rise, she just wagged her tail in greeting. Spunky went over to see her and she licked him on the face.
Paddy was crying. I knew what was happening.
“I don’t think I can bring her to the vet to put her down,” said Paddy, biting back tears.
“Can I do anything?” I said, the tears coming as I rested my hand on his huge shoulders that were shuddering now through the tears. Paddy just sobbed and shook his head. I went over to stroke Mel’s big black head. She licked me, wagged her tail, but couldn’t rise. Her breathing was shallow. She was 18 or 19 years old and she was fading, but she wasn’t in pain.
Two days later, on July 1st, I got the call. It was Paddy. “Mel’s been sleeping for 18 hours, but she won’t let go,” said Paddy. I said I’d be right over.
I wasn’t prepared for the sight that greeted me in the yard. Paddy, had Mel dressed in a flak jacket, which was rigged with 5 sticks of dynamite and attached to what looked like an alarm clock trailing wires. I had heard various stories about Paddy and how he had been involved at Camp X with spymaster Bill Stevenson in the Muskoka’s during World War 2. I knew he had a blasting license because he had been hired by the RM to manage some tricky demolitions’ work from time to time.
“I can’t bring her to the vet,” said Paddy through tears. “This is all I can do for her now. Will you help?”
I remember nodding and setting off on what was to be our last journey across the Viking River and up to Jardosson’s Bluff on the edge of Paddy’s home quarter. Paddy had Mel wrapped in her favorite quilt. We put her in the back of his trailer attached to the hitch of his Yamaha 4-wheeler. She was in a coma sleeping peacefully.
We went across the old and rickety Landmark Covered Bridge that straddled the Viking River. It was built in 1866 and there was fight on to restore it.
We got to Jardosson’s Bluff, overlooking the blue-green expanse of Lake Manitoba. Paddy laid Mel down in the alfalfa fringe of the Oak bluff. And then he set the timer.
He nodded and said “Five minutes.” We both said a short prayer and drove slowly back to the old condemned covered bridge.
We were half way across the bridge when for some reason I looked back. And there was Mel, at full gallop across the prairie, risen like some dynamite-infused Lazarus from that coma.
I tapped Paddy on the shoulder. It didn’t take long for the two of us to realize that Mel, miraculously metabolized, was now coming at us like a smart missile. “Holy crap!” said Paddy, quickly checking his watch.
We arrived at the other end of Landmark Bridge just as Mel was entering. We stopped at the far side of river bank. Paddy was counting down. “nine, eight, seven …”
And out came Mel, like a bullet and right at us. “Three, two, one.” The explosion was deafening and both Paddy and I were lifted off our feet and lay flat on our butts in the sweet smelling alfalfa.
I felt a nudge. I looked up only to find mel, big brown eyes staring quizzically right at me. Then I was immediately accosted by Mel’s tongue, licking my face with delight.
Paddy and I looked down the bank at the sight of the Landmark Bridge slowly crumbling into the Viking River. Mel was too busy cavorting to take much notice of the noise or the destruction. The flak jacket had apparently slid off in the middle of the bridge.
The insurance paid for the historical restoration of the old Landmark Covered Bridge.
It’s the only covered bridge in Manitoba and it’s a big tourist attraction.
No one in Halcyon calls it by its historical moniker.
Around Halcyon the old restored landmark is known as Mel’s Big Bang.
Mel was rejuvenated, and enjoyed a remarkable six months of mobility.
She passed away peacefully with her head in Paddy’s lap, in front of a roaring fire on Christmas Eve 1991.
And every Canada Day since 1991, there’s been a huge fireworks display in the meadow surrounding Mel’s Big Bang on the shores of the Viking River.
Proof enough for me: that sometimes it’s better to go out with a whimper … not a roar.

Michael Jackson - he loved kids to broken bits

“Everybody deserves lovely words,” Shepardson says. “Say lovely words.”

Obits glumly render all that is morally abysmal to flowing elegic
If y’ain’t got nuthin’ nice to say – don’t say anything
By Terrance Seamus O’Gavan
I admit to be a little peeved by the onslaught of valedictions that cascaded and caromed off the pinging walls of the Fifth Estate, in the wake of Michael Jackson’s untimely demise.
It’s almost as if we’ve forgotten - in our unbridled haste to plop another elegeic log on the funereal pyre – Mikey’s questionable predilection for sleeping with children.
Yeah, I know. Thriller. The Moon Walk. Storied legacy. Rock n’ Roll genius. Yada-yada-yada. I get it.
And yeah, I know, I know. He was never convicted.
Quick refresher.
In 1993, Jordan Chandler, a minor, received an out-of-court settlement for $20 million from the estate of Michael Jackson. The allegations of sexual impropriety poofed into the billowy clouds above Neverland. Jackson was charged formally in 2003, and faced more child abuse scrutiny in 2005. He moonwalked out of the courtroom.
Should we be surprised? Never. Not in Neverland, where childhood angst is lost midst the windrows of rides, Nintendo, Elephant man remains, hyperbaric chambers, and the toy-stocked “special room.”
Way too often, in celebrity trials, we’ve seen the scales of justice tipped in favor of that imposing wheelbarrow full of newly serialized Benjamins.
Jackson stated in a documentary with British journalist Martin Bashir that many children, including Macaulay Culkin, his younger brother Kieran, and his sisters had slept in Jackson's bed.
Y’know, I can forgive a litany of sins. But not this one. This is the biggy. It’s the one that has 35-year-old men and women torn to waking, bathed in cold sweats.
They still remember the trauma of that betrayal when they were 4 or 5 or 6 or 7.
No, the life of a child is too precious. An adult should never barter fame, power or a seat of influence to harm a child.
The whiff of serial child endangerment lingers around Michael Jackson. I never trusted him after the payout in 93, and the Bashir interview cemented that gut-ugly feeling.
The fact that Michael never expressed an iota of remorse, and sought to quash all interference through his battery of legal aid and that access to hush money just makes it worse.
And try as I might. I can’t jump on the bandwagon.
And I am totally flabbergasted at the number of people who rushed to the many available microphones and cameras proffered last week in the wake of Mikey’s untimely death.
But I understand it. Good music. A Rock legend. I get it.
Talk of the kids just spoils the nice buzz.
And, we are all taught from an early age not to speak ill of the dead.
Jan Shepardson operates a eulogy writing web service called www.lovingeulogies.com. She offers advice for the passing, or parting shot: “Everybody deserves lovely words,” Shepardson says. “Say lovely words.”
This long and flowery bouquet is not unprecedented.
Remember Adolf? Whooooo, boy. Now that guy knew how to party.
Do you perchance recall the long, flowing verbal semaphores that came-a-twinklin’ when they pulled gentle Adolf and wheezy Eva from that well-stocked bunker in Berlin back on April 30th 1945?
Glorious eulogies. Flowered elegies. Rousing verse dripping from all available nooks, crannies and corners. Say what you will about Hitler, but the trains ran on time.
“Ah, Adolf,” wrote his good friend, drinking buddy, and fellow world traveler, Ernest Hemingway.
“Remember the parades? Those marvelous mass meetings in the squares?” wrote Papa.
“Adolf brought us the pageantry. The goose-stepping phalanx of misanthropic palace guards, the tanks – god those tanks were beautiful - the long, long, long speeches. The pogroms, the genocide, the nihilism that literally tumbled from every inch of that scrunchy little man. To look into his eyes was to stare into the deep, dark depths of Nietchke’s abyss. God, I can hardly believe he’s gone.”
And Winston Churchill, Adolf’s counterpoint and contretemps, his bon vivant alter ego, on hearing the news of Adolf’s bunkered demise was heard to say: “I cried. Poor Adolf. Legacy, accomplishment, curriculum vitae. The body of his all-encompassing, grasping and overarching work. Compelling, awe-inspiring and visually stunning! The Volkswagon Beetle, those planes, those ships, the Bismarck, those unguided rockets, those glorious nights in London, cooking dinner in the dark – always in the bloody, goddam’ dark - that popping prance with the Polish Cavalry. Bloody Hell! The Swastika, and those lovely concerts in the park! Adolf, you lovable, overmedicated, megalomaniacal, little sociopath … goddamit’ you little shit! We’ll miss you.”
Too much?
Heloise, that eloquent etiquette diva says nay! Never too much when it comes to propping up the bygones.
“We will be dead too, one day,” says Heloise “And in death … do we not deserve kindness?” Ah, sweet Heloise, insight, oozing from every polite, proper and ponderous pore.
Okay here goes.
“Hi Mikey, sorry you’re gone. I had a chat with St. Peter and I’m afraid it’s a thumbs’ down. Anyway … I have it on good authority from Janis Joplin that there is a huge band down under. She says the acoustics off the canyons on the River Styx are ‘friggin’ mind-numbing.’ Kinda’ like the Demarol I guess. Love the shoes, the hat and the glove. And the songs. Except Ben. Rest in Peace, Michael.”
“Everybody deserves lovely words … Say lovely words.”
More important than the lovely words?
The children.