Finally, Another Story

It is time that I try and write some non-hospital stories! After all, I do not go there right now, or hopefully, I do not have to do so now since my next time to meet the doctor is in May.

My medical program ended several weeks ago but it takes anywhere from 1 to 3 months for my body to repair itself after all that was done in the forty days of radiation treatment. Remarkably, very little of it actually hurts me at all. The big issue that I am dealing with is my tiredness especially after the last fifteen days of getting treatment at the hospital. It had changed slightly over that period of time. Nevertheless, that change did wear me out a lot more than before.

There were some interesting stories that I did see in the media that I want to talk about today. As I am sure that you appreciate, it brings me back to my “past” life now. Here are a few of them which I would hope you will find interesting.

Liberal Irek Kusmierczyk

It should be interesting to see how the career of the ex-Member of the Windsor Council works itself out now that he has been elected a federal MP for the Windsor-Tecumseh riding. Who knows, there might be some positive thinking about him. I just saw that he has been appointed as a Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion.

I was surprised by this because he was just elected for the first time federally in an election and he did not win a huge majority either when he was elected. Perhaps the Liberals figured out that he needed some good publicity if he is to be re-elected since another election campaign could take place in a couple of years because of the Liberal Minority government being defeated. That would probably mean calling for one. Nothing better than convincing those voting people to vote for a “Parliamentary Secretary” and not just some MPP.

Interesting, here is his past election history story when he was a Councillor that might even repeat itself now:

“Irek Kusmierczyk returns to council with a firm victory in the Ward 7 race, edging out the next top contender Angelo Marignani.

Kusmierczyk earned 3,761 votes, compared to Marignani’s 2,539 after all 103 polls were in, which is a decided improvement from the 2013 byelection when the two ran a close race that Kusmierczyk won by just 52 votes.

Kusmierczyk had the advantage in this campaign after nearly a year’s worth of exposure on council, but the energetic politician knew early on he could take nothing for granted.” (Derek Spalding, WindsorStar, October 27, 2014) 

Why not do it again would make a lot of sense to him I would think!

I connected myself to his Facebook webpage to see what he will be doing over the next little while from a political perspective. He seems to be doing a lot of very good things right now and we will see what results are achieved by his efforts.

Speaking of local politics on the municipal level, did you see this article some time ago that:

“Municipal politicians across Windsor and Essex County are pleased the province has decided not to force amalgamation on municipalities.” (Chris Campbell, CTV Windsor, October 25, 2019) 

I am surprised that the Government is not still requiring amalgamation as seemed to be what was going on for such a long time. What was interesting in that story was seeing what I think may be a difference between the City of Windsor and one of the suburban areas where I happen to live now, Tecumseh:

“Tecumseh Mayor and Essex County Warden Gary McNamara is glad to hear the Ford government is moving away from amalgamation…

Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens points out there are already shared services across the region – highlighting the city's police force taking over patrols in Amherstburg.

"We saved the Town of Amherstburg over half a million dollars a year and we're saving about the same amount as a city," says Dilkens. "So the more folks we can spread the fixed costs across the better it is for folks not just in Windsor but in every town in Essex County."

WHO CARES TO LIVE IN WINDSOR, ONTARIO

You might find that it will be a lot of people from all over the Province! Especially locations where houses are so much more expensive.

It is hardly a surprise to me that Windsor real estate prices are so low in comparison with other locations around Ontario.

When my family first moved down here so many years ago, the real estate market was rising significantly but Windsor’s housing prices at that time were still a fraction of those in the City of Toronto where we were then living. Our new home in Windsor was bigger in size and land space compared with our house in Toronto but our purchase price here was a small fraction of what our sales price was in Toronto then.

Obviously, the move down here was financially better for us. However, one of the concerns that I did have when we moved here was what would happen if we could not stand living in Windsor and had to back to Toronto. Fortunately, that did not happen!

I assumed that prices would rise dramatically here so that Windsor’s prices would be comparable eventually to those in Toronto. Clearly that has never taken place! My old house in Toronto is still worth now many times the value of my place in Tecumseh where I moved in the last few years.

It is interesting to me that the lower prices in our area are not all that bad. If one is living here, and will continue to do so, and if there is a mortgage on one’s property, then the monthly amount to pay out is relatively reasonable. It is certainly a lot less than what the mortgage on a comparable home in Toronto would be as an example.

What is even more interesting is that people from more expensive homes in other areas may well be looking for a cheaper place to live. After all, people who are getting older are seeing their children leave their home to live on their own so that their “big” house is not all that necessary for them any longer. Seriously, who still needs a big three or four bedroom house with lots of grass to cut and snow to remove from the sidewalks and driveways when the kids no longer live there? Oh sure, they can find a cheaper place to live where they now have a new house that is smaller in size. However, the amounts that they still have to pay out in taxes, home insurance, utilities and perhaps even on a mortgage that they still have on their property would be a lot higher than the prices in our area.

There was a very interesting story written about this. Just take a look at the article by Jonathan Pinto, CBC News, August 1, 2019: 

“Yes, Windsor's property tax rate is high — but that doesn't mean we pay more…

With a property tax rate of 0.61 per cent, Toronto ranked as the city with the lowest property tax rate, while Windsor's rate of 1.78 per cent placed it dead last…

Joe Mancina, Windsor's chief financial officer, says comparing cities by property tax rates alone is "misleading."

"You really need to consider the property tax rates as well as the assessment values," he said. "In municipalities that have higher assessment values ... naturally, the tax rate is going to be set at a lower level."

Mancina says that Windsorites actually pay lower residential property taxes on average than other large Ontario cities.”

Accordingly, when someone in a city like Toronto sells their house at such a high price and buys a comparable home, or, even better still, a smaller one in our area at a significant lower price, then that makes Windsor and the surrounding towns a nice place to move to. That family all of a sudden has a nice chunk of money in their bank account down here in a similar residence.

It will be interesting to see if that really happens. One may find that house prices in cities like Toronto do not increase very much in the next while while they still go up here dramatically as people from outside the area, as well as people here still looking for a new place to live, compete financially to buy a place for sale in this area.

It's All Over

Please excuse me for not posting more articles on here about my visits to the hospital. I had to go there for radiation treatment to deal with the cancer condition that I had. I have to admit that I just did not feel like posting an article, whether it had to do with my medical situation or something completely different, as I have done so many times before as a writer. I had something more important that was impacting me so dramatically during this time period.

However, it all ended at the end of November. Accordingly, let me tell you quickly what happened during this time period so you will understand what I experienced with my condition.

Believe it or not, I had to go to the hospital every day for about two months for medical treatments. They started in the beginning of October and ended on the last Friday in November. I had to make all of these trips to have radiation treatments undertaken to help fight my disease. I had some negativity in my body that these treatments would attack. However, I believe that a lot of what I was doing was to prevent anything worse from happening because of this situation in the future.

In all, I went five days a week for just over eight weeks [NOTE: There were a few official holidays that interrupted the program since this section of the hospital completely closed on those days]. I officially had forty visits that I had to go to the hospital for treatments. I went every week from Monday to Friday. This part of the hospital was closed completely on weekends so I did not have to go then for radiation. In fact, I was told that this made medical sense since it would allow my body to rest for a couple of days each week.

Interestingly, I was told that, even though I am not taking any treatments now, my body is still reacting to the radiation that entered into my system and will do so for the next several weeks. In other words, I might still be having some negative matters taking place that could affect how I feel but so far, knock on wood, I am not feeling anything bad.

The length of time for my forty medical treatments may seem quite long to you. I have to admit that it seemed extremely long to me at first and I was not sure how well I would do while undertaking the program. I have to admit however that I cannot believe how quickly it all seemed to be completed from start to finish even though I spent two months going to the hospital. It just seemed to take place so fast

Each treatment took about 10 to 15 minutes once I entered the hospital treatment area. That was also a big surprise to me because I expected it to take much longer. I had heard before that it might take as long as an hour to be completed. Nevertheless, when one has to drive into the City to go to the hospital and then drive back home after the treatment was finished, several hours each day is taken up by this medical service.

Something that was very interesting was the time of day when I had to go in for the treatment. I asked before it all started if my attendance could take place at 10 AM or a bit later every day. I knew how my body acted every morning and wanted to make sure that I was not going to suffer otherwise. In the vast majority of the visits, my timing took place around the time that I had asked for. However, there were several occasions when I had to be there at around 7:30 AM in the morning for my treatment. I got up every morning at about 4 o’clock to prepare to go in at that time. Some of the people told me that their hours were sometimes pretty crazy with one appointment late in the day and then the next one early in the morning.

I do not know the reason for this weird change in time but I expect it happened because of one of the important issues that took place just after I started attending for my appointments. Normally, the end of the day for treatment there was around 5:00 to 5:30 PM. However, it changed dramatically after I started attending by extension of appointment time by about two hours, or in other words ending at around 7:00 to 7:30 PM each night. The number of new cases increased dramatically I was told.

I have no idea how long this should carry on. Clearly, there is something very dramatic happening with respect to the number of people who are so ill now. Can you think of what may happen as even more people get older and, just as importantly, if more older people move from other cities to the Windsor Area after they retire. What will happen once a new hospital is built that is about the same size as the hospitals now and some of the existing hospitals are closed down? How will a substantially increased number of patients be treated at that time?

If you want to know what my condition is like now, I wish I could tell you. I have not got the faintest idea be honest about it. My last appointment with one of the doctors there, since my doctor was on a Sabbatical for a couple of months, did not give me all that much information about my condition because that doctor did not have anything that he could talk to me about.

The strange part about everything is that my next appointment with my doctor at the hospital to discuss my condition after all this treatment will take place in May of next year. The reason for it was quite a surprise to me. It will take anywhere from one to three months for all of my testing results to be finalized so that the doctor can decide what my position is. Obviously, if there is a concern, I would be called in a lot earlier. However, and I am hoping for this, if there is no serious negative change in my condition then there is no need for me to meet with him until that time. Of course, I will have to have some blood testing undertaken before I return to the doctor for him to review my condition then but my hope would be that my situation was a good one if I did not have to see him for such a long period of time.

I do believe that, even if I am in good shape at that time, I will still have to take tests periodically in the future to make sure that nothing negative is starting all of a sudden. Or, if my situation is getting worse, then I hope that I will be able to start taking a medical program right away to minimize the impact of anything that is coming on. With the program that I have with my urologist now, it is supposed to carry on for about two to three years. I expect that I will have something similar with my cancer doctor.

Let me just talk about one other matter. The employees of the hospital who looked after me were completely fantastic. As I said, I had forty treatments. Each of the treatments had at least two people who were working on it. I did not have the same two people attending each of my forty sessions. Rather, I probably had some people treat me only about two or three times if they were in the senior position or perhaps up to six times if they were in the junior position in each session. In doing a “Patient Survey” to let the senior hospital people know a bit more about my dealings in the Radiation Therapy Department, I filled in one of their forms. I am not going to set out everything that I wrote but just this which I wrote and sent out so early in my process:

“I am about halfway through my 40 sessions in the Department. In fact, I just finished the other day my first meeting with my doctor after my sessions started in order to bring him up to date on my status. I let him know that, in each session, I have been treated so well. I expect that I have seen quite a number of different employees who have handled all of the sessions. Each one of them has dealt me in a very professional manner, making sure that everything about me is working out well…

It should be obvious that my health matter now is much more serious to me than anything before. Certainly I am concerned myself, but I am just as concerned about how my wife and children are able to handle my terrible situation. I do not want them to suffer as well because of what is happening to me. Once again, the remarkably positive way that I am being dealt with by the Radiation Department staff has made life so much better for them and relieved them of many of the difficulties that they are having to face right now.”

There you have it. Now you will understand what happened to me over the last two months while I had my treatments being taken. There is no doubt that I was sometimes unbelievably worried about what might happen to me. Fortunately, the people involved treated me so well that I felt so wonderful as the program was carried on so successfully.

I better get myself back into order and start writing articles for my Webpage!