Three treatments down. One cat gone

Val has completed three radiation treatments, and the most she can find to say about the experience so far is that it's "weird": machines clunk, three beams radiate each for one minute, the staff are friendly and forthcoming with info about what they're doing...Thirteen more sessions to go.

On Friday, Chester was taken by Gracie to live at her grandparents' farm south of Winnipeg. By all accounts, he is settling in well. Gracie sent along a couple of video reports over the weekend: Chester was loved by all the cousins and he was beginning to show curiosity about heading downstairs from his 'safe' room and investigating outside. We are sad to have let him go, but his preference for outdoor living is much better suited to a farm setting than our urban home, especially as the summer approaches. As Susan R told me, it's like sending your kid off to university or college: You miss them immensely, but know it's necessary for them to leave home. That  helps me understand my mixed-up feelings of relief and sadness.

It's a rainy Monday morning, and I'm glad I cleaned up my front flower beds a bit on Sunday with a light raking that got rid of all the fall detritus lying like an abandoned building site (road grit and grime all over everything) on top of my perennials. A few brave things had the tiny tips of their noses already poking up through the ground. Here's hoping spring actually gets here one of these days!

This and that

Holly, as ever unimpressed by her humans and their exploits. 

Val had the first of the prescribed 16 sessions of radiation today. Not much to say about it yet. Appointments number 2 and 3 tomorrow and Friday afternoon, then next week and so on until they're all done.

Erika made us a delicious pizza and salad for dinner and delivered it hot (the pizza not the salad) to our table. Yum!

Val's hair is growing back with a distinct wave: 'chemo curls' they call it. Same gorgeous red colour (see pic).

Snow is disappearing with the warming temperatures.

My main courses are now done; just three more to complete by mid-June.

My presentation on 'making biscuits' went very well in Tuesday evening's adult ed class.

Thanks to all of you who connect via Facebook or send emails. All modes of communication are greatly appreciated. Stay in touch. It's always nice to hear from you.

Love to all...

Of time and movement

We would be nothing without time

Yet time is a heavy burden when waiting for the unknown.

Life's lesson: To make good use of time 

Regardless of its weight on our mind and heart

To paraphrase the late Ronald Dworkin (The Guardian's obit here), life's value is more adverbial than adjectival. That is, it is in the doing and the moving that we generate meaning and effect in our life and for our life. In the end, our life may have been good, bad or something else, but if we do not do our living with intention while we can, the result will be of less consequence and value - to ourselves and to others, also.

It's a good perspective, I think, because without the ambition to keep moving, to keep doing life (which seems different to me than merely living), I would grind to a stand still and just wait. And that would get me nowhere. (Better to scrub the toilet while waiting; at least I'd have a clean toilet out of the waiting!)

So. I keep moving even as my eye is trained on April 23rd, the day of Val's first radiation treatment.

I am haunted - no, that may be overstating it. I am unsettled - that's maybe more accurate. I am unsettled that Val will soon be among the many who walk voluntarily into the radiation treatment room. CancerCare Manitoba provides very good care, but the place is weird in how normal having cancer seems, and how normal it is for so many people to be treated there, treated by people whose work it is to administer chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

Radiation (good explanation in second paragraph here). For some reason I find this next step in Val's treatment more troubling than the four rounds of chemo were. And I can't really figure out why. She suffered very real physical side effects - fatigue, hair loss and changes in appetite - and she will suffer very real physical side effects from the radiation - skin burns, fatigue, and who knows what else, including possible lymphedema in her left (dominant) arm and hand.

Maybe my real fear is that she will go through this horrid-sounding treatment for no real long-term benefit, and she'll be left with lyphedema as a life-long reminder of the pain but no gain. Try as I might, I cannot get this thought out of my mind. Yet, I must - and will - keep moving towards and into this next round of treatment. If I don't, I will be stuck in the never-never land of wanting what is not: Our life without cancer in it.

Life is about making choices, and sometimes those choices don't make easy sense, even when based on statistical evidence and scientific protocols.

So. I keep moving and paying attention to my own stuff (displacement behaviour?), including my final adult ed course. On Tuesday evening, I'll be presenting what I learned about my own learning process while teaching myself how to make biscuits last weekend. Watch the 30-second video (Amanda Makes Biscuits) that I made to include in my presentation.

Here's to waiting. And to keeping on moving...

Hanging in

As we head into the Easter long weekend, we are hanging in -- just.

What with chemo brain still very  much in evidence (yesterday, Val put the left-over salmon from supper into the coffee drawer rather than the fridge!) and radiation anxiety building for session # 1 this coming Wednesday, life's parameters are close and sharp.

• I am crawling my way to the end of term. I will continue to teach in May and June, but only three shorter courses, so I will have time to complete the final requirement in my adult ed certificate program. 
• Val is putting her energies into teaching a weekly yoga class and starting up a new teacher training program at Yoga North. She really enjoys being back with students in that setting. 
• The cats are enjoying more outside time. 

Life goes on. We'll keep you posted as we come to grips with Val's 16 sessions of radiation, beginning on April 23.

Next step

Val had the meeting with both docs and the patient advocate yesterday. It was a good meeting, but the news is hard: Radiation is unavoidable to reduce risk of local recurrence. We were hoping this would not be the outcome, but it is. Val will explain in greater detail once she has wrapped her head around it.