Thoughts – post session 10

It has been a while since I sat down and wrote about some of the things that I have been thinking about and experiencing.  I wonder why that is.  The last entry in my blog was focused on how things have been with my treatments and news of some travel to a warmer climate.  That was in early May and I find myself looking at the final days of the month already. 

I was thinking about how quickly the month has slipped away as my time seemed to be filled with many activities and obligations.  I also managed to find some time to do some reading.  By that I mean meaningful reading other than the usual fiction mysteries.  I saw a clip on TV about with Sheryl Sandberg where she discussed her new book “Option B”.  Her book is a consolidation of some of the things that she endured and realized after she was presented with a life altering situation.  A successful woman in social media business, a mother to two insightful children, married to a successful social media business person and a life that was pretty satisfying was interrupted, or better stated altered, when her husband unexpectedly died.  In this book she reveals her personal thoughts and outlines the huge amount of research she and her co-author did in and around the subject of “resilience”.   This book gave me lots of things to think about as it detailed her reactions, her personal resilience and made some interesting observations on how people react and rebound when dealt significant life blows.  In some cases I was surprised at her observations but I also recognized some of them as I looked back over my last couple of years.  Resilience is not a state, a skill, an experience or a reaction but it is a muscle that is tuned, worked and operates like all of the physical muscles in one’s body.  If exercised it becomes strong and if left unattended it atrophies and becomes less useful.  When faced with life altering circumstance one has the opportunity to “go to the gym” with resilience.  I was trying to better understand my own situation while I read this book.  It was a good exercise and it had a profound effect on how I see sadness and rebuilt my ability to empathize with those in unexpected untenable situations.  Life sometimes deals some crappy blows but in most cases there is some silver lining that needs some conscious effort to find and diligence to build one’s own resilience to that situation.  Without going into any detail I want to say that I recommend this book to those who receive these crappy blows but also to those who know others who have been dealt crappy blows and want to understand what might be of assistance to them as they adjust to their new world order – Option B.

I was thinking about a recent experience with part of our family as we spent a nice relaxing early evening with friends.  Tara-Lee and Brehn had some friends of theirs take some early photos of Kaia shortly after she was born.  These friends run a successful Photo Studio and have delivered on their promise to provide memories for many families over the last few years.  Tara-Lee and Brehn had planned a second visit to the studio to update their family pictures and they invited Freddi and me to join them for the shoot.  As is always the case in our family “getting there” is always an adventure but we managed to get there at the prescribed time.  In a very quiet and remote setting we spent a couple of hours chatting, shooting pictures and renewing our acquaintance with Ben and Christine.  Their physical environment has been developed into a friendly home that they share with their clients.  One gets a feeling of their love of their skill and experience behind the camera and the pictures we have seen to date reflect their insights into their subjects.  We had a lovely evening and enjoyed the chatter, walk about and the time sitting on the deck in the late day sunlight.   I would like to include one of the photos here but we have not finalized the selection of pictures yet and will include a picture or two at a later date.

I was thinking of what the upcoming month will bring to us.  This is looking to be a busy month as the focus of the month is the wedding of Tara-Lee and Brehn in the third week.  There are lots of activities going on in preparation for the wedding and lots of people are making their individual plans to visit Ottawa for that weekend.   We are looking forward to meeting Brehn’s family members we have not already met and we are certainly looking forward to seeing our family members who will be coming for the occasion.  It is intended to be a celebration with close family and close friends.  Tara-Lee and Brehn have done all of the organizing and we are called upon from time to time for input or to assist in certain activities.  They are doing a great job to ensure a good memory for all who attend and participate in the weekend activities.  I understand my part is to deliver the bride to Brehn during the service but we are still negotiating the dowry of several goats, a couple of sheep and of course good breeding chickens.  The venue is picked, organized and will be the focus of all activities of the day of the wedding.  As airplanes play into almost all that they do they selected the Aviation Museum as the venue.  The tables will be set in amongst the aircraft and food and drink will be served in the same area for all to marvel at our flight history in Canada.  This will be a fun day and weekend.

I was thinking about my treatments and where this is all leading me to.  I unfortunately cannot make any conclusive statements as there are none to make at this time.  In June I will have another CT scan to determine if the treatments are doing their work and at that time I hope to be able to formulate a “goal statement” about my situation.  It has been very hard for me to live this last period without a goal – other than my next treatment.  My life has always been goal oriented and to live without a goal is difficult as there is no direction or progress to be made towards an unspecified goal.  I am hoping that will change this month as I have been kind of melancholy on this subject and it has affected my daily attitudes and mood over the last period.  Many unasked and unanswered questions are out there and it is my hope that I will be able to ask and answer some of those in the near future.

I am now thinking that I feel better today than yesterday as my latest treatment was last Tuesday.  I also know that I will feel better tomorrow than I do today.  So goes the first week after treatment.  I am motivated to feel better as I have many things to accomplish before the upcoming wedding weekend.  I have been picking away at the bathroom renovation but no huge steps have been made.  The boss tells me it has to be done by the wedding but there is a bunch of work to be done before it can be “completed”.  I will do my best.

I was thinking about the crappy weather we have been dealt this spring.  This has affected our ability to get boats out of the field and at the docks of their rightful owners.  We have made some progress and one third of our boats are now in the lake.  We have reached out to the owners to find about their expectations and will schedule the boats during the month of June.  We worked through heavy infiltrations of black flies on the weekend.  Fortunately we have bug shirts that distance the bugs from us otherwise there would be no work going on.  They are very bad his year and we expect the mosquitoes to be bad as there is lots of standing water in the forest.  We are looking for the dragon flies to arrive as that is the signal that the black flies have outlived their usefulness.

I must move along now and I enjoyed dropping in to share with you some of the thoughts I have been having.  There is nothing startling here but simply things that are worth thinking about.  It is my hope that all of you are well and happy and looking forward to the upcoming summer.  It is officially summer here as the SENS are on the golf course.  We appreciated their vigorous efforts in the Stanley Cup run-up and enjoyed all of the games they played to win.

With love

Round 3 Session 9

Today I find myself sitting in front of the fire to try and get the chill out of the bones from the persistent rain and cool weather.  I am now in day three after my last treatment on Tuesday.  I am not feeling very perky and I am suffering a little bit more than I had anticipated.  There is probably a reason for that but first I must go back a bit and cover some of the footsteps I have taken to get to here.

My last session went pretty much as described in my last post with the addition of an intensifying cold (cough and sniffles) to make my life a little different.  I still had my usual rounds of nausea, diarrhea, constipation, sleeplessness, lack of motivation, malaise etc. but I added sneezing, sniffling and deep coughing for the duration.   I thought the cold was just a passing thing but I still have it today and it feels “full on” regardless of the fact that I have had it for greater than 3 weeks.

None-the-less after my last round I was committed to traveling to Las Vegas to visit with my brother Richard and sister-in-law Barb for a few days.  Once the planning got underway Tara-Lee and Kaia joined me for the flight down on April 20^th and the stay with the Lents.  We, the three of us, travel pretty easily and our flights were easy but full on the way down.  Travel to Las Vegas seems to be with lots of groups of people who are looking for a great time right from the wheels-up.  There were a couple of groups on our plane that were doing either bachelor weekend or bridal showers and they started early.  They managed to clean the galley of all forms of alcohol in fairly short order. 

Upon arrival in Las Vegas we secured a vehicle and drove out to Henderson to join Richard and Barb.  Richard had made some arrangements for us to stay in one of the Casino Hotels for a couple of nights and we retired there after our visit and dinner in Henderson.  Over the next few days we visited, toured, went to a concert put on by Marty Allen (age 95 now) with his wife Karon, enjoyed some great meals, enjoyed the dry warm weather and tried to rid myself of my cold.  Brehn flew in on Saturday and I moved into the house while Tara-Lee, Kaia and Brehn stayed at the Green Valley.  Richard made those arrangements also as he “knows” folks around Las Vegas.  That hotel/casino is one very nice place with all the comforts that you would like to have in your home plus the added convenience of being beside “The District” where some high end shopping goes on.  It was very nice.  We laid low on Sunday as it was a hockey day with both the Senators playing followed by the Maple Leafs in their challenge match.  All good and we followed that with a nice dinner at the house.  On Monday we set off on our different ways.  I returned to Ottawa and Tara-Lee, Kaia and Brehn flew to Victoria to see his parents.  Our flights were very close together so we went to the airport after a nice breakfast with Richard and Barb.  My flight to Toronto was full but I managed to secure a stand-by seat.  However, I was not as lucky on the Toronto Ottawa flight which was the last of the day.  I ended up bedding down at the Sheraton at the Toronto airport.  After a short sleep I caught an early morning flight to Ottawa.

Back at home I had a few days in week three where I could actually get some things done.  With the help of Bruce and Allen we made some progress on some of the many small tasks associated with renovating a bathroom.  We completed the electrical, did some plumbing, built some walls and installed back board for some of the areas to be covered by tiles.  Each one of these tasks was fraught with lots of complex details and progress was slow.  I guess that is true with any renovation compared to new build.  I also had the opportunity to have dinner with some fine friends from my work at AANDC.  We try to get together for dinner every once in a while and we managed it that week.  It is always fun to hear of their lives and work environments in a relaxed mode.  Those evenings are always special times for me.

Monday rolled around pretty quickly and that signaled a start to another round.  I went to the Bloodletters and had a visit with them.  They processed my blood tests and I did not get a call indicating that my WBC counts were low.  So I guess, even with a cold, my attention to diet and meds held up the WBC count allowing me to go forward on Tuesday May 2.  The actual session was without extraordinary events and I was finished around noon.  I felt pretty good and set off for home and a quiet afternoon/evening in preparation for another sleepless night.  To amuse myself during this sleepless period I watched late night TV instead of delving into serial type shows.  Those shows were not very rewarding and I now prefer the serial shows to the talk shows.

Yesterday I had my bottle of Chemo taken off and I managed to do some small chores in the city but retreated to the cottage in the afternoon to lie about and sleep some.  I was feeling pretty crappy all day and unfortunately that has continued into today.  I am optimistic that tomorrow will be a better day and that I will have a few great days before the next round on May 23^rd.

Be well and thank you for your notes and comments on this and other blog entries.  I hope the upcoming spring days of sun and light breezes helps everyone prepare their gardens and lawns for the summer.

With love .......