On Wednesday, December 13th at approximately
7:45am EST or 4:45am PST (the time zone Ron’s and my biological clocks are
attuned to) we entered the Salle de bal Victoria
Ballroom on the second floor of the downtown Ottawa Marriott Hotel. The buffet
breakfast was in full swing, but we were still in time for food and the opening
remarks of the new head of the Scientific Review Committee of the Heart and
Stroke Foundation. At 8:30 EST the large gathering dispersed and headed for
their appropriate committee rooms—Ron to the Salon Albert and me across the hall from him, to the Salon Laurier. Both rooms were located
on the Lower Level or Niveau inférieur.
(I think the French appellation here is a bit insulting, n’est-ce pas?)
This year Ron was assigned to the Basic science
stroke/neurophysiology/neuroregulation Committee while I was assigned to one of
two committees devoted to Clinical cardiovascular and cerebrovascular research.
Each committee had a Chair and a Deputy Chair and the members came from all
parts of the country. On my committee both the Chair and the Deputy Chair were
female as were the majority of the committee members. On Ron’s committee the
opposite gender distribution was the case.
My committee had 39 applications to consider within a day
and a half. Each application was summarized and judged on its merits by two
committee members who had been assigned beforehand to do so. After their
presentations, the debate began, with each application ultimately being awarded
a numerical score from 1 – 5, with marks of 3.5 or better deemed to fall in the
fundable range. There was little time for chitchat. Everyone got right down to
the business at hand. I was impressed by the quality of the discussion and the
energy and conscientiousness of my committee. We broke twice for coffee and
once for lunch. However, by 6 pm everyone was ready to call it quits for the
night.
The next morning the committees regrouped at 8 am, starting
with a working continental breakfast served in their committee rooms. I cannot
remember exactly when my group wrapped up. I think it was around 12:30 pm. Most
of the members had their luggage with them, ready to go, to catch their flights
home. Fortunately the weather, although frigid, was sunny, and there were no problems
at the airport. Ron’s committee continued working until 2pm, at which time he
and I met and chatted with the HSF staff. Our return flight was not scheduled
to leave until the following day at 6:30 pm EST.
Our room at the hotel was #722, one of the rooms which the
Ottawa Marriott has refurbished to accommodate disabled patrons. Essentially
this means that the bathroom has a roll-in shower and a tilting mirror to
accommodate guests who use wheelchairs. When Ron and I first arrived at the
Marriott three years ago, #722 was one of two rooms we ended up occupying. We
had one room for showering, #722, and another room diagonally across the hall
for sleeping and using the toilet. In the intervening years the hotel had
addressed a number of Ron’s earlier criticisms.
1. #722’s bathroom room now had
handle grips on both sides of the toilet, and
2. It now had two double beds for
sleeping instead of a single double.
Nonetheless, the hotel still does
not stock bed bars but Ron was able to improvise with one of the dining room
chairs from the salle de bal Victoria
which had a handle grip on the top of the chair’s back.
As Ron continually points out to hotel management in the
establishments we have patronised since his stroke five years ago, a bed bar is
a simple, inexpensive device which is indispensable for handicapped people,
especially when they, like him, do not have the proper use of one side of their
body. Ron’s right arm and leg still suffer from the after effects of his brain
attack. He has to wear a brace in his right foot which slips into his shoe permitting
him to walk short distances with the use of a cane; he is still only able to
type with the thumb and index finger of his left hand; and he needs a bed bar
so that he can pull himself upright in bed.
I doubt if there is a hotel or motel in Canada
which does not have a crib or a high chair, but we have yet to find one with a
bed bar.
In half-hearted defence of hotel management, most of whom
belong to the class of people Linda Ferron
terms “the temporarily ENabled”, I will say that, prior to Ron’s stroke, I had
never heard of a bed bar either. Nor would I have been able to pick one out at
a Red Cross Medical Equipment Rental Store. For those of you who have never
seen one a bed bar is constructed out of aluminum for easy manipulation; it is
sort of U-shaped with two long ends which attach to a handle bar and slip
between a box spring and a mattress.
However, there was another problem with room #722, one which
we only became cognizant of on the last night of our current stay. While I was
freezing my ears and the tip of my nose, walking the three long blocks to the
Parliament Buildings in minus 29 degrees (wind chill included) to check out the
skating rink on the hill established to celebrate Canada’s
150th anniversary, and, while Ron was conferring with Jean Woo, the
seventh floor filled up with the parents and siblings of nine-year-old boys.
The lads and their families were in Ottawa
to take part in hockey games to be played on the outdoor rink on Parliament
Hill over the weekend.
Ron and I remained innocent of their presence until
approximately 8pm when the whole gang arrived on the floor after dinner, with
much whooping and hollering. We figured the kids would probably settle down
around nine and peace would reign. By 9:30 pm the rectangular hallway which
accesses all the rooms on the floor was still being used as a race track for
shrieking children. By this time I decided it was time to play the Grinch and dampen
spirits. I donned a T-shirt over my night dress and stepped into the hall where
I was greeted by a gaggle of parents who were drinking straight vodka from
hotel glasses. When I voiced my complaint one of the moms said:
“Wow. We
didn’t know there was anyone else here. They told us at the desk that this was
the team floor.”
“Well, try
to keep it down,” I grumbled. “Some of us need to sleep.”
By 10 pm,
after a couple of calls to the front desk and a couple of subsequent visits to
the floor by the manager, I nodded off to dreamland. (I always use ear plugs.) I
believe that Ron was not so lucky. Ironically, this, too, was a repeat
performance from 2015 when the floor had filled up with a team of 20-something
male hockey players who seemed more intent on partying than they did on
preparing themselves for their games the next day. After my repeatedly calling
the desk to complain about the noise, the hubbub eventually died down around 2
am.
The next
morning management couldn’t have been nicer to us, offering us a complimentary
breakfast, a complimentary lunch and permission to check out at 4 in the
afternoon. At some point in these discussions, amidst the constant jolly
holiday celebrations and staff parties that noisily over crowd the lounges and
dining areas of the hotel at this time of the year, I did manage to glean the
reason for housing teams on the 7th floor: It is the only floor in
the hotel which is completely furnished with double beds.
(To be con’t.)
