As many of you will know, I have two miniature schnauzers – Jazz now 12 and Apollo 11. They are sister and brother although obviously from different litters. Many of my work colleagues will remember them for their monthly Friday visits to the office many years ago.

Having to walk them three times a day, especially during COVID work from home (since March 2020!) has been a life saver in terms of getting some exercise. In the summer of 2020 Jazz was diagnosed with diabetes, which on its own is quite treatable with insulin shots twice a day. Unfortunately by the fall she had developed cataracts which are a common result of the diabetes, and lost a large amount of her sight.  That said she has been amazingly resilient and adaptable. It does mean however its a struggle to walk them together anymore and her own walks are slower and shorter as one might expect. She still knows where she wants to go though!

On Wednesday December 15th, I had finished walking Apollo around Bishop Strachan School, when I tripped on the sidewalk in front of Grace Church on the Hill, landing with 225 lbs on my left ribs – with just a little padding from my parka. Luckily Apollo scrambled out of the landing zone in time!  Now my past experiences with trips and falls in public, usually followed a very embarrassing look around to see who saw you fall and a quick as possible jump up to prove it was really nothing to worry about – I’m sure many of you can relate lol.  In this case though, I’d really knocked the wind out so just needed to catch my breath when a very well meaning gentleman rush over while talking on his cell phone and insisted on helping my up. In retrospect I imagine it was a rather comical scene – him chatting to me and his cell phone almost at the same time, me trying to catch my breath and grab Apollo’s leash (he was actually just sitting quite still watching me) and eventually accepting the help up.

We were only about 200 m from my apartment so figured I’d just walk it off and headed home. As the day wore on though, the pain increased in my left rib cage and clearly some pulled muscles in my lower back. I debated whether I should go to the ER for x-rays on my ribs – at the best of times our ERs are over crowded and while the OMICRON variant was just ramping up, the health care system has been stretched for almost two years at that point and I really didn’t want to be needlessly clogging up the ER.  Eventually though I hailed a cab and headed to the ER at Toronto General Hospital. Perhaps because it was later in the evening, it was not as busy as expected, and after a couple of hours and an x-ray, was told that my ribs were not broken or fractured. I was given a prescription for some Tylenol 2’s and sent on my way. I walked to the Queen’s Park subway station and headed home.

As I came out of St Clair West subway and regained cell reception, the was a message for me, saying they had also spotted a new “ovoid mass” in the right lower lobe of my lung and that further scans with CT were required. I was asked to come back the next day so they could do further assessments.  While clearly not a message I wanted to hear, there was really not enough information to start worrying about.

I was also relieved I’m made the decision to get the x-ray even though it would begin a journey I’d never really anticipated.