Don’t pick your nose and other salutary tales!

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I began writing this posting on a holiday weekend in Canada. It turned out to be rather traumatic and it was entirely my own fault. On Friday, before going to work, I shoved an exploratory finger up my, nose. This was a really bad idea. Blood started to pour out in an impressive and steady stream. After an hour and a half of pinching my nose, icing it (the most effective form of ice I had was a bottle of vodka from the freezer, which worked surprisingly well in terms of providing the maximum coverage), and trying other remedies, (including) those I found with a quick Google search, I knew I needed help. As Tony Hancock put it in “The Blood Donor”:

‘I had lost close to an arm full’.

It was a prolific nose bleed.

I caught a taxi and headed for the Grand River Hospital, which is actually within walking distance of the apartment. It did not make sense to walk with a stream of crimson coming from my nose. Fortunately, the majority of the towels I have in the house are red; in fact blood red. This meant I was able to carry something with me to absorb the gore. When I got to the hospital I was checked in with the triage nurse, details were taken and I was labelled. Mine said: “Stupid older white male who does not know how to pick his nose – no rush”.

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Lost Moleskins and much entertainment

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The beginning of April saw the winter term drawing to a close. My last day of teaching was Monday 10th, which as it turned out was also the last day of term. I had not realised that. A pity, because I had a panel of colleagues from the community to talk about wellbeing. The class was not all there, some having started travelling on their spring breaks. Indeed not all those that attended were mentally there either – they were thinking about deadlines, assignments and perhaps even holidays. When, the previous week, the second course I taught ended, and the class went to the pub, I was very touched that they invited me to join them. I should have gone.

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Spring is here and the snow is almost gone

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The weather has finally begun warming up here in Waterloo. It is now possible to walk around without a winter coat on, although a jersey is still necessary. The squirrels are increasingly active and migratory birds are returning. We are all looking forward to spring and summer, and it really does feel as though it is imminent. What happens is that the temperature fluctuates widely. It has been as high as 18ᵒc one day and as low as -10ᵒ the next night. I wonder how the animals cope; the trees on the other hand, seem, rightly, rather reticent to bud.

I have had a very busy few weeks. On 7 March we had Stephen Lewis come and sit on a panel with a number of students and faculty members. He is extremely well known in Canada, and more broadly as an exceptional humanitarian. The auditorium was packed and a number of organisations placed tables outside to advertise their activities to the assembled company. It is good to be able to facilitate these events; it is part of building a community here in Waterloo.

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Economic Policy in an Interdependent World – “A Brave New World: Genetics, Insurance, and Policy Options in Evolving Times”

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The following post was written by Kerry Solomon.

Kerry Solomon is a Graduate Research Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and a Master of International Public Policy Candidate at the Balsillie School of International Affairs 2016-2017. Her research interests include equity and global health.

Canada has protection from discrimination based on one’s race, religion, and sexual orientation; however, it may come as a surprise to some that genetics is not one of those grounds. In fact, Canada is the only G7 country that does not already have laws in place to protect its inhabitants from genetic discrimination. On a personal note, as someone of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, I am at increased risk compared to the general population to have an inherited mutation in the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2. This means that that if I carry this mutation, I am at a much greater likelihood of developing breast or ovarian cancer. Does this leave me vulnerable to discrimination based on my genetics?

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Economic Policy in an Interdependent World – Let’s Talk About It: Men and Mental Health

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The following post was written by Jeremy Wagner.

Jeremy is a Graduate Research Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and a Master of International Public Policy Candidate at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. His research interests are in food security and public health.

Openly discussing depression and anxiety can be difficult for anyone who struggles with their mental health — but for men, the cultural baggage of traditional masculinity bears with it unique challenges.

There’s an obvious stigma when it comes to men and anxiety. Research suggests many men find it difficult to disclose anxiety and depression symptoms. In a society where “being a man” is conflated with being stoic, it’s hard for men to come forward and reveal they struggle with their mental health. As a result, it goes unheard; it hides in the shadows.

Yet, it’s a chronic public health issue. Anxiety is systemic in men and women alike; an estimated 11.6% of Canadians aged 18 years or older have a depression or anxiety disorder. Gendered social constructions ensure that mental health experiences can vary between men and woman.

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False Spring? I hope not!

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In the middle of February I greatly enjoyed sitting in my office or my apartment and watching the snow fall. It was quite magical. In total we probably had about 10 cm, enough to cover the ground and make everything into a winter wonderland. Normally here there is a period when the ground is covered by grey snow as it slowly melts. In the corner of the parking lots there are piles of the white stuff, bulldozed there by the clearance teams. This year it warmed up from about the 18th of February and most of the snow disappeared very rapidly. I woke one morning to see a digger loading the snow into large trucks in our apartment parking lot. It is taken away and dumped somewhere. There must have been at least six or seven loads. It was probably necessary to do this, because the piles take a very long time to melt, and the snow was heaped in the guest parking. It provided an insight into the workings of Canada in the winter, and perhaps even into the cost, as I’m sure this service will appear on the bill.

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Understanding AIDS

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I’ve written a guest blog post on Oxford University Press’s blog titled Understanding AIDS:

In 1981, the first cases of patients with the disease that was to become known as AIDS, were identified in hospitals in New York and San Francisco. By late 1983, the cause of AIDS — the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) had been identified. Significant numbers of cases had been reported from central Africa. In southern Africa, where I lived and worked, we had seen only sporadic occurrences — mainly among gay white men. However by 1987, HIV-infected men were identified in the workforce serving the mines industries and farms of South Africa. Armed with knowledge of labour migration and the potential for the spread of this disease, I wrote and presented my first (highly speculative) paper on AIDS at the first ‘Global Impact of AIDS’ conference held in the Barbican Centre in London.

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‘January brings the snow, makes your feet and fingers glow’.

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It is most unusual for the first of the month of the year to have come and gone without my having prepared a new blog. I’m not quite certain what happened. I can only think it was a combination of the pressure of teaching and preparation which distracted me. There is quite a lot to report, both events of the past month and ones for the next few months. I have been, and will continue to be, busy.

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Returning to Canada, not as easy as I hoped

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Christmas day in Norwich was abnormally warm. The temperature rose to 14° C and it was possible to walk around without even a coat on. It then turned very cold, with a layer of ice on the car in the morning, and much scraping before we could go anywhere. I was quite pleased with this. I had cut up a lot of wood for our wood burner in the lounge, so I was able to use some of it. In addition to this, one of my Christmas presents, which I must stress I actually asked for, was a couple of sacks of coal. I had such fun building and tending the fire.

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Sharing 60

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Sharing 60

Normally when I post on the website I comment, at the end, on films I have seen or books I have read. This month’s post unusually begins with the two films I watched on the flight from Amsterdam to Johannesburg in early November. The first was the new Ken Loach film I, Daniel Blake. It was excellent, thought provoking and depressing. The story is of a 59 year old scaffolder who is unable to work because of a heart problem. He is caught in a bureaucratic nightmare of not getting the state benefits he should, because he is deemed fit enough to look for work. It is a searing indictment of the failure of the welfare state, increasingly the case in the UK. This is the result of global trends to elect people who don’t care, at least not in the way I was brought up. It made me ask what I would do if I had power, probably a basic income grant for all.

In Durban I am sharing the car with Rowan, who has travelled over to spend five months in South Africa. She has two days’ work a week in Umhlanga, so on those days I walk. There was a youngish white man, on crutches, begging on the street a few hundred metres from the flat. I asked him over to tell me his story and, in exchange, gave him a decent amount of money. He said he was a welder by trade. He lost the lower part of his left leg in a motor accident a few years ago. He said he was trying to scrape together enough money to replace his identity document in order to get work. He is living with his wife and child in one room in the town centre. How much of that was true? I don’t know. South Africa is a harsh society for people who don’t have resources.

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