Day 3 – Stomach Full but Mind is Mush My ability to write intelligently has diminished. My mind is mush. Day 3 was spent with my body in total rebellion, serving up a huge migraine that lasted all afternoon. Which made me grumpy, tired and unable to concentrate.
The new strategic marketing plan that’s due next week? It will need to be completed on the weekend after a meal or two of protein and fresh fruit and veggies.
Breakfast was the usual cereal and milk, but only half a portion as I could already tell that my body was not happy with another dose of gluten.
It was Take Your Kid to Work Day so Maddy and I headed out together for a meeting about the MRI campaign at the hospital and look over the decor options for the “Who’s Your Santa?” Ladies Luncheon. My dear friend Maureen had brought snacks with her, bless her, but Maddy and I were both full from our cereal. It was so very kind of her to think of us like that.
I’ve always been so fiercely independent, a trait I get from having an active mother with a disability and a stiff-upper-lip, get-the-job-done father. I try to imagine what it would be like to need to rely upon the kindness of strangers and friends to get me and my daughter through the day.
Back home at the office I made a peanut butter sandwich (with an allergy pill chaser) and drank a big glass of the milk. Maddy had been thrilled to see the Alphaghetti pasta can in our selection and decided to heat that up. I showed her how to add some milk and margarine to make it taste a bit better but it didn’t help much. An hour later, half of the food was still on the plate.
It is amazing how your appetite changes when you don’t have access to nutritious foods. I can feel my hunger subsiding even though I know that I should be hungry. My body just doesn’t want any more sodium and starch. Had a second meeting in the afternoon, was offered delicious food but declined – after all I would likely not be in that situation at that business meeting if I was on assistance – it seemed like cheating.
Dinner worked out well, Maddy had a meeting where they would be serving food for free so I made a big bowl of the last half of the spaghetti and used the mushroom soup as the sauce, added a side of canned peas cooked in the microwave with some margarine and spices.
There are so many little things we take for granted everyday… this has made me very self-aware and I am so grateful for the opportunity to reflect and to think of how we can make a greater impact in our community with awareness activities like this.
I am not grateful for the migraine that is making it difficult to do more than want to fall into bed. I’m hoping tomorrow to adjust my diet a bit so that I can avoid having these migraines turn into the vertigo attacks I used to get. Fingers crossed.
But the bottom line is this: It is Day 3 and I am managing, just. What if this was Day 653? What would my life be like if I had no income other than social assistance? If I had to live off of so little?
How would I have the energy and the ability (because by then for sure the vertigo would be full-blown again) to take a multitude of buses to get to the Food Bank to pick up my box of food and take it home again? Would I have the mental agility still to find work? Would I get hired (since the vertigo made it seem like I was perpetually drunk)?
So many questions have cropped up.
If the cost to add a $100 monthly food supplement is approximated at $500-600 million dollars, where can we get that money from? Is there largess in other budgets that we could cut? How can we re-prioritize budgets in Health and Com-Soc so that they work in tandem? After all – the lack of nutritious food for those on assistance must be increasing the burden on the health care system. I wish that government budgets didn’t work in such silos – that we could break down those silos.
Perhaps what is needed is a future-costs-of-care analysis (it is a tool used mainly in the rehabilitation and insurance field to determine how much it will cost to provide health care to an individual with a medical condition or disability). Perhaps if Com-Soc and Health saw those numbers they would allocate more money towards nutrition?
Is the barrier a concern about how that money will be spent by recipients? Would something like food stamps be an option to calm those concerns and ensure that food was purchased? NOTE TO SELF: Do research on the success or failure of food stamps and other options used internationally.
This is a complex issue that will require a very well thought out solution. But the bottom line is: Something MUST be done!
Kim Dowds
