Saturday 29 March 2008

Friday at the House

Welcome to another riveting report from the lofty rooms of Canuck Place Hospice. Not a great night in terms of the namesake team...4-0 thrashing loss to Minni.....speaking of thrashings...Thrashers won and are now tied with the 'nucks for the LAST playoff spot...
I am growing a 'make the playoffs' beard and am desperate to shave it off...I guess I have one more week to determine my facial fate.

In the house this week...again with not so very original made up names...Krista, Jeffrey, Aldo, and Conrad.

Conrad is pretty much unable to communicate verbally...but he makes fantastic 'raspberry' noises with his tongue. He spent the night up in the school room making noises...taking off his socks and trying to take off his shirts. He also has an incredible reach with his arms. He managed to grab at Krista's arm pillow as we rolled past...and manages to grab almost anything within a 1m reach of his chair.

Krista is from Vancouver Island. Krista has Duchennes's muscular dystrophy which by all accounts only affects boys, but there is a very small percentage of girls with Duchenne's. I have not seen her for a year and she looks really good. She is going to be back in a couple of weeks for a 'girl's teen weekend' and I am really happy that my wife Cynthia will be taking a couple of hours to do the girls' makeup on the Saturday.

Aldo is a favorite of mine. I hold him responsible for a serious incident that took place at the house last year. Aldo has a serious love affair with Star Wars. I was armed with a hockey stick light sabre and a Darth Vader type sand bucket mask that enabled me to breathe with the patented Darth Vader heavy breathing sound. I was kicking Aldo's rear end with jabs and slashes and all sorts of fantastic moves. He is pretty aggressive in his chair so you have to watch your toes. I made a fantastic strike and moved to the left rapidly...not seeing the steel pole sticking out of the ground. My knee struck the pole with so much force that it made a resounding "GONG" and the echo reverberated for all to hear. The trouble is ...nobody heard it...all they could hear was my howling. My family counselor partner for the night was Martin....he has no sympathy whatsoever for me. He, for all intents and purposes, believed that I was faking it. This comes from a man who works in the post office and had to go on medical leave because he poked his eye with his thumb. Maybe it wasn't medical leave...but it was pretty serious!!
Aldo loves dinosaurs and Star Wars. He likes to play computer games and he is a really smart Grade Fiver.

Jeffrey made me laugh tonight. He is neat kid in Grade 9. He is in the house for respite care this week and has an appointment with a sleep specialist. I think they want to check that his 02 levels are ok while he sleeps. I told him that technology has advanced to such a point that during the test they can actually see the dreams he was having during the test. I had him hook, line , and sinker. He was really worried about it until I told him I was kidding.

I had had a really tiring week. I was really happy to end it with a night at the house.
malcolm

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The Blog

My name is Malcolm and I was a volunteer at Canuck Place Children's Hospice in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada for nearly seven years. Now I support them by raising money by participating in the Canuck Place Adventure Challenges!


I said hospice. Not really a word that you associate with children but there you go. We will tell you about the house as this blog progresses with the hope that you will learn, and as you learn we hope that you will share. The purpose of the Adventure Challenge is to raise money for AND awareness about Canuck Place.

The name of each kid at the house you read about has been changed.

September 14th and 15th are the dates for the next Adventure Challenges.

You can sponsor me for the race here: Adventure Challenge
Maybe you should do the race?

Names:

Just a quick note about the names of the kids in the house that you will read about: they are made up!