Elderly, Confused, and Under Arrest

“When Karen Murphy learned her father had dementia, she did everything she could. She went to the Alzheimer Society for advice. She wrote out his medications on a card and stuck it on her parents’ fridge. She paid a visit to the local police department in Sarnia, where he lived, and added his name to a list of the vulnerable—even gave them his photo and asked them to remember that, if he ever became violent, it was the disease talking and not the man. He’d been a mailman, the type to stop and chat, the type to hand out candies at the stores where he delivered. He was a gentle, lovable, huggable man and had never hit anyone, let alone his wife or his kids. But the day he raised his hand against his wife, it was as though he didn’t know who he was.”

 

Alison Motluk – The Local – October 2019

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Worth the risk?

“In the months after her sixth child was born, Amy Reed didn’t bounce back the way she had in the past. She continued to bleed, heavily, to the point where she had to plan her days around it. She became anemic and even climbing stairs was difficult. Some growths in her uterus, called fibroids, were now hard to ignore—not only could she feel a bulge in her abdomen when she pressed on it, she could actually see her uterus sticking out when lying on her back. When her bleeding finally stopped about eight months after the birth it was replaced with a strange watery discharge. Reed knew this wasn’t normal. When she took her concerns to her obstetrician, the doctor agreed that the symptoms were alarming and recommended having the fibroids taken out.”

Alison Motluk – Maisonneuve – November 2015

A Journey to the Medical Netherworld

“One day in early December, not so many years ago, my nine-year-old daughter caught sight of herself in the mirror at daycare, and noticed her face was bright red. All the kids had red faces, because they’d just come indoors after playing in the snow. But everyone agreed that hers seemed particularly bright. She felt hot, too, but a thermometer revealed she had no fever. She sat by an open window to cool down, and when I picked her up an hour later, she still felt hot and looked red, but she said it was going away. By the time we’d finished dinner, it was gone.”

Alison Motluk – Hazlitt – March 2016

Uncommon Ancestry

“Kat Palmer learned in grade nine biology that two blue-eyed parents can’t have a brown-eyed child. She thought that was curious, because she had brown eyes and both her parents had blue. But when she joked about it at home, she got a shock: her mother told her she’d been conceived at a fertility clinic, using sperm from an anonymous donor. The man she knew and loved as her dad was not her biological father.”

Alison Motluk – Hazlitt – March 2017

Hallway health care

“Her bed was pushed up against a wall, with the IV pole and other paraphernalia wedged in beside her. Clough had nowhere to sit, so he stood awkwardly next to her until a nurse kindly brought him a chair. There was a curtain, but no switch to turn off the lights at night. That location would be Yerxa’s home for the next 19 hours—and her predicament would get worse from there.”

Alison Motluk – Toronto Life – April 2018