Through The Waters

    On another hot sweltery late July evening, here I sit.  I hear my dear husband's chair creaking downstairs as he sets his mind to creating images on a canvas, filling in lines and shapes with colours and creativity.  I hear the neighbour's occasional loud noises, the garage filled with young adults who enjoy making a lot of noise and hullabaloo with their noisy tuned mufflers (how is that called tuned?  Seems like the mufflers all have huge holes in them, but hey, what do I know about cars?).  I feel the breezes blowing over me, not quite like zephyrs (sweet gentle breezes) but more maybe like a windy day at the beach, from my chair side fan which is keeping me in relative temperature control.  I know that down the hall, there's a very tired and fast asleep little 3 year old.  And I feel joy and contentment when I think about the world surrounding me at this moment.  Yet, how is it that tomorrow will bring so much to think about?...

Today, I share with you words that I did not write, that I did not think of, yet which totally and absolutely resonate deeply and truly with me.  These words, which I found online, whilst in the midst of a search (which I try not to do very often), are written by an oncology nurse from the States who was diagnosed with stage 3 colorectal cancer.  She felt obligated to write to her patients and share her thoughts and I hope that you may read this and be impacted the way I was... I cried... for a long time after I read this.  I think that this may help nurses to understand a little of what we as patients are going through, that it may help patients, families and others struggling to understand a little of the experience... and I sure wish that I had read this before I started my oncology nursing career.  I totally acknowledge that these are the words of Lindsay but I share them with you today as words that I can echo so heartily and with deep emotion.... Dear every ...

Hmm... where to start?  It feels like it's been a while since I've written so here I am at long last.  I was struck by the date as I typed it in... and looked back over the calendar on my phone to realize that it's been almost two months ago, we sat down with our doctor at St Joseph's Hospital, on Black Thursday, to hear the diagnosis and those awful awful words that still ring through my ears, over and over again.  Two months since our lives have been turned upside down, we've been shaken, battered, grieved and it feels a little like we've been hung upside down on the clothes line after being put through an old fashioned wringer washer and all the change has been shaken out of our pockets and the blood is still rushing to our heads and it's hard to keep things straight.  Two months ago, my stomach, minus some ugly bits and bobs, was unscarred and only just starting to show vague signs of our little baby growing in there.  Two months ago, I could honestly sa...

     As I type tonight, with the quiet all around me except the noise of the fan turning around and keeping me cool, Timothy downstairs painting away and Martha safely tucked into bed, I'm accompanied by "baby bottle" # 2 of chemo.  Hard to believe we're already on cycle 2... seems like yesterday that we were sitting before Dr Neary at St Joseph's on Black Thursday to hear the news and now this...  It was still very hard to go through the JCC doors and to realize once again I'm a patient.  It's hard to swallow at times when I am doing normal things, sitting in church, eating dinner, puttering in the garden a little bit, that I am really sick.  There are times when I still believe I'll wake up and this will all be over, a horrible, horrible nightmare and that I'll be back to work and waiting for the birth of our baby like any normal pregnant mother.  But no, there I take myself and my pregnant belly into the Chemo suite and we're hooked up to sa...

On a balmy sweaty summer evening, a short update.  We're just back from an ice cream date - Timothy's brilliant suggestion as tomorrow I'll be back to no more cold stuff for about five days.  How that stinks in the hot weather!  But I'm also terrified of the feelings of cold shock and throat spasms so I'll stay away until the time is up.  So one last dose of ice cream to tide me over.  Our friend Helen came with us and Martha was very excited and happy to be out with the three of us.  I think that half of Hamilton was also having the same idea as the line for ice cream was out the door!  We also had a chance to eat supper outside and enjoy the soft breezes and birds chirping around us.  So nice to enjoy food - something that will likely change again this week with the onset of Cycle Two of chemo.  At least I know what to expect this time... the routine and the pre-meds and the drugs and the waiting.  I'm not sure I'm quite as scared this...

On a mellow, warm, breezy summer evening, here I sit.  Listening to Timothy reading Martha some stories - she has a voracious appetite for books and words and songs and it's so heartwarming to see the two of them cozied up in my armchair working through a huge Richard Scarry book.  She's counting like a pro and clutching her beloved Georges (her much-loved stuffies that go with her everywhere).  I love to watch my family and I pray that I may be given many more days on which to do that, to enjoy them and to grow together.  As I type, Ava is giving me kicks and reminding me that she's a part of this family too.  She's growing bigger too, her kicks are no longer as low as they were but are starting to range higher up my belly and that's encouraging to me.  On Thursday, Timothy and I met with the obstetrician at MacMaster and were able to see Ava on a 3-D ultrasound.  We initially were a tiny bit creeped out by the image, as it's a little sci-fi and a lit...

What to say...what to write?  It's been a few days...and what's happened since then?  You'd think it would be easy to remember since I'm not exactly functioning on a super high maintenance schedule at the moment, eat,sleep, etc..but somehow, the days do manage to blur into each other and I find myself questioning "did that really happen today or yesterday and what did I really do today?"  Days are mostly filled with visits and time spent on the computer and taking naps and trying to keep my meds straight, but somedays are truly spent binge-watching a show or two on Netflix and feeling rather useless to the world and myself.  I think I might have to take up knitting as my mother has suggested.  Not sure who would want to buy my crooked knitting products - I remember the girls at work trying to teach me how to knit on night shift waaaay back when, when we used to occasionally get breaks to socialize on a shift, and always running to the end of a row and not havi...

It's a hot and sweltering summer afternoon and I'm sitting here in the shelter of my fan and drinking water like a fish to keep me cool as well as to flush the chemo out of my system. The VON nurse has come and gone, and things are relatively quiet here today.  The neighbourhood dogs are barking to beat the band and I'm on the verge of traipsing outside and yelling at them to be quiet but I know that will do no good at all... silly things.  Oh, wait, someone else just yelled at them, good job!  As I sit here, I'm glad to be free of my companion for the last few days.  My ugly little bottle that made me so upset when I left the cancer clinic on Tuesday afternoon, wearing it in an ugly little white bag around my neck, marking me clearly as someone getting chemo and making it obvious to the world that I am sick.  I HATED that feeling - and my dear mother, as soon as she went home, sewed me up a cover for that too (she's been making me awesome PICC covers - I still ...

I never imagined I'd begin my writing career by preparing a blog post on the first day of my wife's chemotherapy treatment. She's had a challenging day. It's been difficult on many fronts: getting chemo after giving it to her patients for all these years; wearing a silly little holster with a bottle and a tube, getting told a million things about what she can and cannot do. She's got an extreme sensitivity to cold, apparently. Anything from the refrigerator is out. So she drank a lukewarm gingerale while we caught up on our day. Things took longer than expected in the chemo suite today. Danielle and her mom were there from ten until about 2:30. I was at work and in a meeting when Danielle sent me a picture of herself at around noon. I was impressed, she was smiling, giving me the thumbs up. But they had just started then. I guess it took them a while to mix the drug and set her up. By the time Martha and I got home Danielle had enough time to think about how her...

Less than 24 hours til Chemo Day One... day one of how many, wish we knew but that's an unknown really... up to six months worth and than a reassess of where we're at.  So back to the unknowns...that lonely forbidding territory in which we have been wandering a lot in the last month and a half.  Today is nearly a month ago that surgery happened... Time seems to have flown in some ways and in other ways, things have been slow... slow to improve, slow to accept, slow to realize that moving forwards is the only way to go.  We can't just stall and stay in neverneverland until I am finally ready... cause I might not ever be, really.  I've had an opportunity for a lot of good conversations with Timothy over this weekend, both of us being open and vulnerable to each other, sharing our deepest fears, anxieties, angers and hopes, fearful to think of the future and yet knowing that our futures are in the best hands possible.  That leaving, that trusting that we can leave ...