Good day to all.
I am writing this note during a period that was
reserved for my 3rd session of Chemotherapy. In my last note I had indicated that the 27th
of Dec would be my date for Session 3 but that changed shortly after I had
completed the note. I received a phone
call from scheduling to say that the Christmas break was jamming up the available
services and they had moved me to early on the 28th of
December. That resulted in my plan to
have my requisite blood tests on Dec 27th in preparation for the
treatment. I ventured to the hospital early
on Monday morning on the quietest streets I have ever experienced in Ottawa. It was like a ghost town and I was able to get
to the hospital in record time. At the hospital I was greeted by the “blood
letters” as they were in severe shortage of patients to ply their trade on. We chatted in our usual and casual way and I
discovered that they all enjoyed Christmas and were all in awe of the ferocity
of Mother Nature as she dropped freezing rain over the city the day before. Shortly after arrival I was on my way with
samples flowing to the labs for testing through their internal systems. I was also quite confident that all would be
well as I had enjoyed a balanced diet, appropriate amounts of rest, lots of
sleep and some good samples of red wine.
Later that day, while I was working the keyboard of my
computer, I received a call from the scheduling office to cancel my 28th
appt for treatment based on the blood test results. Unfortunately the scheduler had no further
information and suggested I contact Martha the following day. Sure enough, the issue is that my WBC is
still too low. As I had suspected that was
the issue, yesterday I turned to the Internet to see what could be done “naturally”
to instill some development of new WBCs in my body. All the articles I read agreed that
Chemotherapy is a cause of decreased WBC count and only some agreed on natural
ways to improve the count. Some ways
included drinking lots of water (where have I heard that before) to flush the
system, eating garlic, eating probiotics (yogurt), consuming selenium (for its antioxidant properties), consuming more
citrus fruits, and of course there is the vine of some exotic tree in the
Amazon rainforest which is not readily available. I also found that the things to avoid are sweets
and sugar. OK so there goes access to
all the sweets that are around the house from Christmas. I was informed that red wine was still a good
source of “something” to help WBC as was some beers that use selenium in their
brewer’s yeast. You have to love science
as there is always some good news scattered amongst the doomsday stuff. As a result of that research (I use the term
loosely) I should eat more citrus, yogurt and drink more red wine and beer. I can live with that. I am going to seek some additional advice
from my Dr team as these delays leave me with a sinking feeling that I am
giving the bad guys extra time to be destructive while I wait for my crippled system
to produce WBCs. That is somewhat
unnerving as I am trying to get the upper hand here in this cat and mouse game of
finding and maintaining the best quality of life with this disease.
I just heard back from my Dr’s representative and she is of
the mind that my next Chemo will not be re-scheduled before the Jan 10th
planned session due to the Christmas backlog.
It seems they are only administering Chemo to new patients over the next
short while to reduce the burden on the reduced staff. So I
wait and hope that the WBC count changes before the 10th. On the 10th I will be going to the
Queensway Carleton Irving Greenburg Centre as there is some pressure on the TOH
Chemo services due to volume. Those who
live closer to satellite operations are being moved from the centre. I will be interested to see how they operate as
I will certainly compare the service I have grown to know and understand.
On a much more pleasant front, we enjoyed a new tradition
this year at Christmas. It turns out that
this year the “kids” took control of Christmas celebrations as Neill and Lee took
on the Christmas evening gathering with the Hempel and Rodier clans and
Tara-Lee and Brehn took on the Christmas day activities. Christmas eve was a very nice evening of
chatting happily about all manner of fun things while enjoying a delicious meal
sitting around a large table. Paul made his
tortiere and Lee made a very tasty cannelloni dish along with a variety of
support condiments and taste treats.
After a fine evening we retreated to respective houses for the dark
hours in hopes that Santa would judge is kindly.
 |
| Christmas 2016 |
In the morning we started the day in PJs sitting in Tara-Lee
and Brehn’s living room in awe of the vision of presents under the tree and the
glee that came with watching Kaia be exposed to this tradition for the first
time. I must say that Santa seemed to
judge us favourably as the number of gifts under the tree was very large. The day slipped by as we lazily opened gifts
and chatted excitedly about presents given and received. Somewhere in there we took time to prepare
and enjoy our traditional ham and cheese crepes and of course the Christmas morning Mimosa. My observation was that for a group who had
promised to cut back and be thrifty around Christmas there was a large booty
after all the presents were opened. I
call that a “wildly successful fail”. It
was tons of fun watching people get their surprises and we also enjoyed a
remote connection with the Pemberton family and watched Skylar and shared
opening presents from each other through FaceTime. Later in the afternoon the Hempel family
arrived for dinner and exchange of gifts.
Our turkey dinner and the assorted fixings were all delicious and we
count Tara-Lee and Brehn’s initial effort at taking on this tradition as a great
success. The evening sped by and we
broke to get some sleep late in the day.
All in all a very fun and enjoyable Christmas for all of us dotted with
great food, drink and conversation with a healthy sprinkling of good humour and
laughter.
I hope that you had a similar experience with your
respective families and that the New Year will bring you new and enjoyable
experiences throughout 2017.
Love to all .....
No comments:
Post a Comment