Testosterone makes both good and bad things happen for men. Just ask Bill Clinton. And for women, pain can be productive. Hard labour ends in the most magical of conclusions: that living, breathing, amorphous little package that is delivered after nine months of waiting and wondering and worrying, and which is instantly and unconditionally adored.

But you know, I never enjoyed my brief stays at the Hotel much. After my anxious arrival at the portals of pain, the hard work, the roller coaster and the indignity of the thing, I was relieved to have that baby finally whipped out of my hoo-hoo and put into my arms. But then I'd have to lay there, as if it wasn't enough already, being poked and prodded and stitched up like a thanksgiving turkey. Finally, I'd be taken to my room. Concierge? I don't think so. You're lucky if they will even bring you your baby when you are so sore that a stroll to the bathroom, much less the far distant nursery, is akin to hiking over hot coals, only the coals are located a little farther north. Room Service? Not even worth discussion. Sympathy? In your dreams. Teary, sore-breasted postpartum blue mothers are a dime a dozen here. You're on your own. Tender loving care? I think not. Being yanked from exhausted sleep at all hours of the day by clumsy cantankerous meal tray deliverers and collectors, garbage emptiers and nurses taking my temperature and quizzing me about how goes the flow is not my idea of a restful recovery. Why were they taking my temperature every two hours anyway? For god's sake, I didn't have the flu, I had a baby. Oh yeah, and the perpetual hand offs of my precious little package who would be taken away, sleeping at last, for some draconian procedure, only to be returned to me, wailing so loud that I could hear her coming from half a mile away. Going home was a holiday in comparison.

From what my sources tell me, most guys enjoy a little stay in their wives' Bed and Breakfast. From what I can tell, the only up and at 'em recoveries are from what would appear to be the most painful process. The Big V. The Snip. I'm talking about the ol' family jewels, about having sperm street turned into dead end drive. I've heard about guys who've limped out of the urologist's office, pumped up on pain killers and prozac, and who are miraculously ready to rumble after only one night in the hotel. It takes balls. And they've obviously got 'em. I don't know a single woman who was even remotely interested in sex the day after giving birth. For that matter, not even after a couple of months.

My friend who gives flu shots for a living tells me there is a big difference in the way her male and female recipients deal with the pain of a pin prick. If a woman asks (and they rarely do) if it's gonna hurt, she asks if they've had a baby. If the answer is yes, she laughs. They know all about epidurals and episiotomies, and in comparison, a flu shot is a non-event. Guys, she tells me, often get a little woozy when they get stuck. And they want a badge when it's over. So she gives them a big, shiny Band-Aid.

But, all joking aside about men getting sick, here is the real story: It's a bad thing to see the person you love and depend on being carried by a truckload of firemen and a couple of ambulance attendants, all pulling and pushing and manhandling him around a one-eighty turn of the winding stairs to your bedroom on a stretcher because he can not bear weight. I worry when my buddy is in pain. The guy who I hold up as my shining-white-knight. The problem solver. The guy I call when the toilet is plugged, the roof is leaking, or the chequebook won't balance. The guy who saves the day when my overblown Martha Stewart-inspired array of Christmas lights fries the electrical panel or when I lock my keys in the car. The man I love truly, madly, deeply. He's the only person in the house who can put together furniture from Ikea, hang those ill-fated boxes of outdoor Christmas lights, change the tank on the gas barbecue and ride with me through life's ups and downs. It's him I call when I crash our car. He can fix everything. He is my man.

When he lies down and whimpers, my little world caves in. And then, inexplicably, the loving in sickness and in health wife takes a sabbatical. And Nurse Cratchett moves in. I really can't explain her arrival. It is just an impatience for things to get better. Quickly. I want him up and outta here asap. Seeing him down and out, wearing his pajamas in the daytime, scares me. It reminds me that, despite his apparent youth, the wheels could be starting to come off, too soon, much too soon, before we do all the things that we have planned to do in our life together.

And, you know, I've worked in the real Horizontal Hotel. As a geriatric nurse's aide for a couple of summers during my University years, I spent time helping and nursing terminally sick and elderly people in their final years, days and hours before they checked out. I've seen the last flicker of the flame of a life extinguish. The transition between life and death is but a breath.

The real Horizontal Hotel is a lonely place. People who have Alzheimer's or MS or a plethora of other age-induced ailments, people who have been ravaged by strokes, people who have become deaf or blind or totally incapacitated to the point that they are incapable of managing even the most basic of human voluntary functions, like eating or drinking or being continent or speaking or recognizing their own children, people who are checked in by their families or their doctors. As they become more and more ill and disconnected with the world, it gets harder and harder for their families to spend time with them. It is just too painful. So in the end, they are most often alone when they die.

It's not the way I plan to die, being warehoused in an old folks home while my body and my mind slowly shut down. I've been there, seen that, and it isn't graceful or poetic or dignified. It is not how I would want my family to remember me - a broken shell of a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister.

I wonder how many of those people that I took care of, some of whom were no longer living, by my definition, and instead were only being kept alive, would, if they had been given a choice while they were still capable of making it, have chosen for their life to be ended while they were still able to say a sweet good-bye.

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