I am in grade four. My teacher is asking us for the names of emotions for some writing project. After all of the obvious ones have been called out, like happiness, sadness, anger, etc., I raise my hand.

Me: “Relief.”

Teacher: “What? Relief isn’t an emotion! The only time you can relieve yourself is when you go to the bathroom!”

The entire class proceeded to laugh at me. When the school year finally ended, I cannot tell you how utterly RELIEVED I was to never have to see him again.

This is the same cat from this story; she has continued to thrive and beat the odds.

I had heard about a “wine for cats”; it’s packaged in wine-shaped bottles and given cat-themed wine-esque names, but it’s basically just a tea made out of catnip. Just for fun, I decided I wanted to get it for my cat since she is now nineteen years old, which is the legal drinking age for humans where I live. I figured that it would be fun to get her some “kitty wine” to celebrate her reaching that age.

Unfortunately, none of the pet stores in my city carried it in any of their locations. I literally called thirteen different stores looking for it. The closest seller I could find was a cat café in a city two hours away. 

Fortunately, my mom’s husband sometimes works in that city, so I asked if he could pick it up for me.

Mom seemed really unsure about it, especially since the cat I wanted to give it to is the one who still lives with her. (She’s my childhood little baby, who stayed with Mom when I moved out because that home was all she’d ever known.) And Mom really didn’t think her husband would agree with giving her the wine.

Mom: “I mean, maybe, if we hid it from him and gave it to her sometime when he’s not around… because she’d be acting differently… Firstly because of the catnip, but also because of the alcohol—”

Me: “Uhhh, it’s not alcoholic.”

Mom: “But you said it’s a wine?”

Me: “No, I mean, it’s a ‘wine’—” *air quotes* “but it’s not an actual wine! It’s basically just catnip tea. No, I’m not going to give her booze! I’m not gonna try and get her drunk! I don’t even know if that’s safe for cats! As far as I know, that could kill her! I don’t think she’d even want to drink that!”

Mom: “Ohhh! Okay. I was kind of wondering… Okay, I’ll tell him. He might be into it in that case.”

We ended up looking up the ingredients, Mom agreed that it looked fine and told her husband, and he agreed that it sounded fine. So, for my kitten’s nineteenth Christmas, she is going to get a little bowl of catnip tea-wine!

Related:
You Gotta Be Kitten!

I used to live in a small town that was just over a mountain highway from our province’s capital. The mountain pass was somewhat infamous for being narrow, hilly, and difficult.

My psychiatrist was in the capital, so I regularly had to take the commuter bus from my town to the city and back again. One day, I ran a bit late to my appointment. My doctor was kind enough to stay a bit late to give me the full hour. But his kindness turned out to be a really bad thing that neither of us considered until it was too late.

I was his last appointment of the day. And after leaving my appointment, I needed to catch the last bus back to my town. Staying late meant that I missed that bus. There was also a ferry I could catch from one bay to another, but… I’d missed that, too. So there I was, stranded in the big city, with nothing but my bike and my wits.

I tried going to a couple of my friends’ places to see if I could crash for a night and catch a bus the next day, but nobody was home. My cell was dead, I didn’t have a charger, and I didn’t have any of their numbers memorized, so I couldn’t call anybody.

So, faced with no other option but to sleep on the streets… I filled up my water bottles, put on my reflective vest, got on my bike, and started the journey over the mountain pass.

Just before you get to the main mountain section, there is this little ice cream shoppe. By the time I reached it, I’d already been cycling for at least half an hour, and I decided to take a short break.

Me: “Is there anything I can get for…” *empties out my changepurse and counts it out* “… a dollar and eighty cents?”

Cashier: “Uh, not really… I could maybe give you a sample?”

Me: “Okay, second question… Would you say we’re about halfway between [City] and [Town]?”

Cashier: *Looking at my helmet* “Oh, my God, are you biking there?!”

Me: “Yeah, well…”

I explained.

She offered to let me use an outlet to charge my phone, but not having the cord with me, I couldn’t. She offered to let me use the store phone to call a friend, but not knowing their numbers, I couldn’t. She offered me a free ice cream cone, which I could accept.

So, I went off on my way to tackle the mountain pass. I stopped a little way down at a provincial park to eat some dinner and finish off my cone before tackling the ACTUAL mountain part.

And, man, let me tell you: it was AWFUL. I had grown up riding my bike across town to and from my elementary school, and at the time, I was riding my bike to work every shift. Both routes had plenty of hills. I was no stranger to riding a bike up hills. But the hills I was used to were steep and usually either had a long flat section or a previous downward hill that I could use to build up speed to get up. The hills on this pass were just… awful. They weren’t steep, they were just long, slow, gradual, constant, unrelenting inclines. I had to get off my bike and walk it up more times than I could count because my legs just couldn’t take it anymore.

Eventually, a car pulled up in front of me. And the girl from the ice cream shoppe stepped out. She told me that she’d felt so bad thinking of me having to bike all the way home, so when her boyfriend came to pick her up after her shift, she’d convinced him to come find me and drive me home. We threw my bike in the back, and I hopped in and gave them directions to my home. I checked the time when I got in, and I am still proud of myself for conquering enough of the Malahat that it only took eleven minutes to take me from where they found me to my front door.

The next day, though…

There is a kind of “comfortable pain” that comes from a good workout — a slightly sore, nicely stretched feeling.

I did not feel that. I felt like somebody had beaten my thighs with a baseball bat.

And, that morning, my grandmother’s cleaning lady came. I greeted her and told her about how I had missed the last bus and last ferry back to town. She cocked her head, looking at me with confusion.

Me: “I imagine you’re wondering what I’m doing here…”

CONTENT WARNING: Gross (Feces, Gastrointestinal Distress)

I recently had to go on antibiotics due to a painful cyst in the tail end of my digestive tract. The pills had “digestive issues” in the side effects. I had planned a camping trip prior to this development, so I went on the camping trip, and other than having to head to the outhouse slightly more frequently than usual, everything was fine.

Until the second night.

Let’s just say I had an “unfortunate experience” while trying to get to the outhouse. So, in the middle of the night, I was down at the dock rinsing my pants out in the lake. I hung them up to dry back in camp and climbed back into my hammock to sleep.

Shortly after that, I heard my mom go to the outhouse, and I greeted her when she got back.

Me: “Hi.”

Mom: “Hi… I’m not really up to talking. I’m not having a great night.”

Me: “Okay. Yeah, me neither.”

In the morning…

Mom: “Yeah, I just felt awful last night. Just nauseous all night long. What about you?”

Me: “Oh, I s*** myself.”

Mom: “Oh, no! In your hammock?!”

Me: “No, about ten feet from the outhouse. Incidentally, do we have a shovel?”

Every year on our birthdays, my girlfriend (at the time) and I would go to a local sushi restaurant because they had a great birthday discount deal. We looked forward to it for weeks beforehand because it let us splurge a little more than we normally could. Unfortunately, one year, I had to cancel.

I woke up that morning slightly nauseous. Throughout the day, I tried to get over it, but by the time [Girlfriend] came downstairs so we could get ready to go, I had realized it was more than just a small bug. In short, it was coming out both ends, and even when the nausea and bloating were relieved by evacuating, I still had this constant painful cramp on one side. This reminded me of something my high school biology teacher had taught me several years earlier.

Basically, if you think you might have appendicitis, try this; put one thumb in your belly button, put your other thumb on your hip, find the halfway point, slowly press in as far as you can, and suddenly let go. If you double over in pain, GO TO THE HOSPITAL.

So, I did that test, and though I did not double over in pain, I did feel a significant amount of it. I had to break it to [Girlfriend] that we couldn’t do our planned birthday lunch because I was roughly 80% certain that I had appendicitis, and while I’m not a doctor, I was pretty sure that gorging myself on raw fish wasn’t exactly an ideal treatment for that.

After a talk, I evaluated my current condition and we mutually decided that I would still accompany [Girlfriend] to the dinner party her family was throwing. We went, it was fun, I ate practically nothing and only had a bit of sparkling water to drink, and then, when we got in her mom’s car for the ride home, we kind of casually asked if she could bring us to the hospital instead. She stared at us. We explained. She brought us by our home so we could get some essentials — which was really nice because I ended up having to spend the next three days hooked up to an IV. But good news! They just pumped me full of a whole bunch of antibiotics, so I was able to get out of it without surgery and walked out with an intact appendix!

A little under two years later, I ended up getting appendicitis AGAIN. And since I knew what it felt like the first time, I was at least 97% certain that’s what was happening. So, I went to the hospital and explained that I had appendicitis for the second time and I knew what it felt like from the first time, and they sent me aside to wait.

Eventually, a nurse came to talk to me to clarify things, looking visibly confused, and I reiterated that I knew the symptoms because I had already had appendicitis once before.

Nurse: “And… so, you… had it… removed?”

Me: “Oh, no, I was just pumped full of antibiotics to nurse it back to health.”

Nurse: “Ohh, okay, that makes a lot more sense!”

Shortly after that, I was shuffled to a different area, which I later learned was the “high contagion” area; apparently, there’s an overlap in symptoms with [contagious illness] and this was in early 2021. So, on the off chance I was wrong about my condition, it was safest for the staff interacting with me to be in full PPE (and I mean, like, FULL PPE — in addition to the normal mask and gloves, they would not enter my room without a face shield, plastic gown, and shoe covers).

As luck would have it, it was on the weekend right before I was supposed to meet my new psychiatrist on a Monday morning, so I left a couple of messages throughout the experience. Basically: “Hi, this is [My Name]. I think I might have appendicitis. I will be double-checking throughout the day, but I may not be able to make it to my appointment.” “Hi, this is [My Name]. I’m at the hospital, turns out I was right about the appendicitis, will keep you updated.” “Hi, this is [My Name]. I’m going to have an appendectomy tonight, but they figure I’ll be discharged in time to make our appointment.”

My psych appointment was at the building directly behind the main hospital, so someone walked me to the proper exit and pointed me right where I needed to go. Within ten minutes of getting out of bed, I was sitting with my new psych, and the first thing they said when I sat down was, “I am amazed you are here.”