An Unexpected Journey

This week, we found the waiting to be difficult. The days have been full of normal things; work, school for the kids, pickups and dropoffs at extra-curriculars, etc. And they haven’t been bad at all. But Lori and I have both found, in the quiet moments, a tendency to worry.

It actually hadn’t occurred to me to worry about my test results before this last week. I’ve probably written before about my over-optimistic tendencies — the belief that things like this will just work out. The treatments worked, I tell myself. Why wouldn’t they have? And it wasn’t until this past week, spurred on by a minor but persistent sort of ache in my core muscles, that I finally had the thought:

well, what if the treatments didn’t work?

Or they did, but not enough, and things have spread. Or any number of other worrisome scenarios. It wasn’t a shattering thought, but it is difficult for me to acknowledge and face some of the bad outcomes that might be in my future.

The tummyache went away, and I’m still optimistic overall. Mostly we’re kind of at a place of wanting to get on with it. Which I will, with a CT scan tomorrow morning, followed by an MRI at the end of the week.

It’s probably gonna be fine. I’m sure it will. Well, mostly.

Changing the subject; sometimes, since my diagnosis, people have asked if I’ve ‘lost weight’. It’s meant as a compliment but I don’t know what folks are seeing — I mean, you looked at the comparison photos a couple of posts ago, and the scales at the hospitals always come out pretty much the same. I appreciate that folks are trying to be nice! But actually, as I would reply to people, I’m not supposed to be losing weight during this time. Visibly losing weight would actually be concerning; the doctors and my dietitian agreed at the outset of this journey that losing weight should not be a goal as my body will need its reserves of energy to help in getting through treatments.

I will never get upset to anyone’s face about this comment, but let’s be honest; if I’d lost my hair and looked ‘sicker’ it would not be something folks would offer as a compliment. And I’ll be honest again and say I’ve definitely stepped in this one myself; a few years ago I ran into an acquaintance after not seeing them for some time, and since they were noticeably thinner I asked, as a compliment, “have you lost weight?”

“Yes, stomach cancer will do that to you,” came the reply. And I felt…not very good. They weren’t upset with me, but their tone was so resigned that I got the sense this was something that came up a lot for them. And it wasn’t anything to celebrate.

So! Let’s agree not to comment on the body sizes of cancer patients! Actually, let’s go one step further and agree not to comment on the body sizes of other people, like, at all. We don’t really know what journey somebody’s on, and it just doesn’t seem like a helpful thing to focus on!

Hello from Nearly Two Weeks Into 2025. I wrote last entry that my new battery of tests would have started by now but I was wrong. I had a checkup entry on my phone’s calendar, but there was nothing in the Noona app about it, and when I called to confirm they said it had been cancelled. Good thing we found out before driving an hour-and-a-half to the big city. It’s been rescheduled, so my checkups and imaging will actually start on the 20th now.

It seems I’ve never mentioned Noona! Way back in May — less than a year ago but also ages, somehow — I was encouraged to install the Noona app on my phone after one of our first visits. It’s what CancerCare uses to keep patients on top of upcoming appointments, and it also has a built-in messaging system so that you can reach out easily if you have questions about treatments, side effects, what have you. It isn’t perfect but it has been pretty valuable throughout this journey. Actually, what’s sort of funny is that the Radiation techs told me to turn off notifications from the app; in summer it was pinging me multiple times per day, because radiation appointments shift forward and back by small increments of time on a regular basis. Eventually, CancerCare just disabled notifications for everybody, because the pings were getting so exhausting for patients that it was a hindrance rather than a help. They’re still not back on.

Anyway, if you were curious, that’s just one of the tools that you’re given as a cancer patient in Manitoba!

I had a virtual interview with Laura from the CancerCare Manitoba Foundation on Friday. I’ll be featured as part of a fundraising push for World Cancer Day (Tuesday, February 4th), so we talked about an overview of my journey thus far and how my diagnosis has affected my life. This will help put human faces to the work that the Foundation does, and I figured, if I can do anything to raise some funds so that the next patient’s journey is a little easier, I’m gonna do it.

One thing she asked was about my future goals, or rather, was there something in particular that has been driving me to get through the difficulties of treatment and so on. I cited my kids; they had already come up several times in our conversation, and I’ve been telling everyone since last year that I’ll do whatever it takes to be there for the milestones in their lives. That hasn’t changed! But I also added: my goal is to get an air fryer.

I alluded to it in my very first journal post, but one thing that this unexpected journey did was upend our house renovation plans. After years of debate and hemming & hawing, Lori and I were on the cusp — the very brink! — of engaging a contractor to renovate our kitchen and dining area. We had the plans drawn up and were just waiting to hear back from our chosen contractor about when they could start. The air fryer comes into play here because we don’t currently have available countertop or storage space to keep one, and I’m pretty sure I would use one of those bad boys every single day. So before my diagnosis, my joke during our planning stages was that we were renovating the house just to fit an air fryer in.

Well. When we got the news of my diagnosis, one of the first things we agreed on was that it probably wasn’t wise to tear the house apart while also trying to deal with treatments and appointments and the things of that nature. So with much sadness, I called the contractor back and said that everything’s on hold for the foreseeable future. We’ve held on to the hope that our plan can still go ahead one day. Lori often looks wistfully around the kitchen and sighs about how much better it’s going to be. Unfortunately, we still know very little about the prospect of surgery and associated recovery times. But we still have the plans, and the funding, and we have to keep hoping things will become more normal and it’ll work. Because I was this close to getting my air fryer, and I still want it.

(I’ll be surprised if the CCMBF puts any of this in my donation biography.)

Happy New Year!

The late nights and early mornings of the Christmas season caught up to me this week, and it’s been yawns aplenty while I try and get through the days. Hopefully, with the end of the kids’ holidays we can all go back to something like a normal schedule starting tomorrow.

We had an extended family gathering yesterday, and one of my wife’s Aunties put words to a conundrum I’ve experienced more than once in the past year; in a social setting, what is the correct number of people that I want to ask about how my cancer journey is going? If too many people ask, it gets exhausting and my answers become rote. If nobody asks, I start to wonder if anybody cares anymore. (Neither of these are the problems of other people, I should add — this is a ‘me’ problem for sure)

So what would I consider the correct number of people? Is it three? I bet it’s three. I haven’t decided and won’t be releasing the number, if I do.

Unrelated, this is a selfie I took back in June, shortly before my first round of radiation / chemotherapy treatments started. (I added the Undertale text box just now). I was curious and wanted to chart the physical changes that might occur over the months.

Well, this is from the end of December, once everything was done, and…huh! Pretty much the same guy? Except with a beard, obviously. (Please ignore the mound of stuff on our kitchen island in the background, thank you). I’ve had a few people comment IRL that they thought I’d lost weight, but I don’t think I really have, at least if the weigh-ins at treatments and blood draws are anything to go by. Maybe my beard is slimming somehow.

You can’t tell so much from these pictures but there’s definitely more ‘salt’, or grey hairs, creeping into my hair and beard. Though, whether that was driven by the hardships of treatment or just me continuing to age is debatable.

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Lastly, the first of my battery of tests starts this week. It’s a checkup with my chemo doc. In the next few weeks I’ve got more bloodwork, plus a CT, MRI, and ‘scope I mentioned in the previous post. In the meantime I’ve rejoined the Prairie Singers choir for this season; it remains to be seen whether my other life stuff will interfere with my practices and performance, but I was advised last year not to stop doing the things I love because I might have to quit them at some point. We don’t know! So I’m going to try and assume the best.

Treatment Progress Check: All done, baby! I’m over the remaining side effects except that my feet are still oddly tender, so I wear my comfiest slippers everywhere. Then my sister-in-law showed me where to get even comfier shoes and I ordered them almost immediately.

This is the official end of the Treatment Progress Check.

Well, you read it already; treatments are done! Did I ring another bell? Reader, I did. Well, it was actually a bell app on my phone, and I shook my phone. And the bell was quiet because we were having supper in a restaurant, partly to celebrate me and partly to celebrate my daughter’s 8th birthday, which coincided with the last day of my pills!

The worst and most annoying of the treatment’s side effects are behind me, and I’ve been feeling really well for the past couple of days. (Some tummy troubles aside, but that probably has more to do with the quantities of Christmas gathering food I’ve been consuming than any pill stuff.)

One of the things I will not miss — and it doesn’t look like I’ve ever mentioned this on the blog? — is that while on treatments I’m supposed to flush every toilet twice. This was during my five cycles as well as during radiation / chemo in the summertime. The reason is that, while taking chemotherapy drugs, my bodily fluids become cytotoxic, meaning they can cause damage to human cells. Flushing twice is one way that I was meant to keep my toxicity away from others. In practice, it involved a lot of me standing there, impatiently waiting while the tank refilled so I could wash my hands and get on with my day.

One of the things I worry about, going forward, is that I will lose what I have learned about slowing down and caring for myself. I’ve written a lot about the impulse to Do All the Things when I’m feeling well, and the way I’ll push myself when it isn’t really necessary. Now that I’m feeling pretty well all the time, am I going to remember to take care of myself too? I’m not sure. It’s early days in my ‘break’ period, and eventually I might be forced to slow down a lot if surgery goes ahead like they’ve indicated. I’ll most likely let y’all know how it goes.

I’ve now got dates near the end of January for a sigmoidoscopy (like a colonoscopy, but not as ‘far in’ ) and an MRI. Then we get to await the results and talk about what comes next. In the mean time, I’ve got another period of just…carrying on with my life.

Oh! It might be early days to talk about this but I’ve been contacted by the CancerCare Manitoba Foundation to chat and become a featured story as part of a fundraising effort in the coming year. More info as I get it.

Treatment Progress Update: As I write this I’m just two days away from being done treatments altogether. We don’t really have a good bell at home so I’m planning to use an airhorn sound effect app I have on my phone to celebrate. I’m feeling really well, generally, and I’m back up to drinking refrigerated things but I’m too nervous to try ice cream just yet.

Feelings check!

I am feeling hopeful. Treatments are nearly done, which means I’ve gotten through the worst of the treatment-related side effects. I’m feeling my daughter’s hand brushing my beard as she tries to help me write this paragraph (that’s her green title card up above there). I’m feeling like I want to lie down and sleep (“for a thousand years” adds Cassidy, helpfully). I’m feeling happy, because she turns 8 tomorrow. And it’s nearly Christmas. And I get a buncha weeks off from any testing or treatments or phone calls.

Okay, I’m writing this on my own again. Growing up we didn’t really observe the Advent season in any meaningful way, outside of getting tiny, waxy chocolates from cardboard calendars sold in stores. A few years ago Lori took the initiative to start a small Christmas Advent tradition in our house — each night (when we remember, tbh) we light the appropriate number of candles, name what they’re meant to remind us of, and usually do a little reading from the Bible.

Something I’ve been learning about through these Advent seasons is that they are to be experienced as a time unto themselves, not simply counting down the days to Christmas. Four weeks spent contemplating hope, joy, peace, and love, while also reminding yourself that we really don’t know what’s coming next for us. This year has been full of twists and turns for myself, some positive and some negative, as I suspect it has been for many reading this as well. Online, folks like to joke about having a bingo card for the year, and that whatever thing just happened was emphatically not on it. For instance, some things that weren’t on my 2024 bingo card could be —

• getting a cancer diagnosis, of course
• getting my first tattoos (dots, but still)
• standing on the field of the Winnipeg Blue Bomber stadium

…and so on. We like to hope that the years will roll onward with no major surprises and in a fairly orderly, planned way. But that isn’t what life has in store for us. In our first years of marriage, my wife and I felt that things were almost too good (subtle brag, I know), and at times we were anxious about an invisible hammer coming down and changing everything for the worse. But none of the worrying we did prepared us for what ended up happening anyway. Worrying, it turns out, was a total waste of time and energy.

Live in hope for the future, with joy at the wonders around us, in peace with others, and love for all. You don’t have to quit once the Advent season is over. It’s not easy and you’ll lose sight of it sometimes. But it’s worth trying, and beats the heck out of the alternatives.

Treatment Progress Check: Currently I am on day 4 of my final chemo treatment cycle. I’m recovering from the IV chemotherapy but still taking pills, and today my body feels very heavy. I’m having to really manage my energy and expectations. Because you know, Saturdays (when I start writing these) are for Doing Stuff! Making big to-do lists and crushing them! At least, that’s normally the idea.

At the outset of this post I don’t think I have any grand insights or nuggets of wisdom to share. Let’s do something else and look at a bunch of pictures from the week instead.

The above picture is from my last treatment. Don’t I look like I’m handling things well? I suppose I did, but emotions ran very high on those days. You can’t see them, but I’m wearing the last pair of surprise socks that some friends of ours got me. There were three pairs, and I saved them and parcelled them out to myself on treatment days. They’re supposed to be glow-in-the-dark but I haven’t adequately tested them at the time of this writing.

I won’t miss the ward, but there was an absolutely beautiful watercolour painting of a prairie sky with a golden field and grain elevator that I looked at a lot. We sat in the same spot for each treatment, and the painting was a calming thing to stare at while various things got poked into me, or tape got pulled off (curse my hairy arms).

As before, during the radiation treatments, there’s still more to do. But ringing the bell marks an important milestone in its own way. And both times, I somehow wasn’t expecting people to clap and cheer, so it felt genuinely nice. Actually, it felt like the way the villagers gather round and clap for you in the game Animal Crossing. (This is why my daughter says I’m “the nerdiest boy in the house”. She instructed me to put those exact words in this blog post)

If you go back to the video you can see the painting I was talking about. You can also see that my right arm is held rather stiffly. This is because it is extremely tender from the treatments, and touching it both hurts (like a bruise) and sets off a wave of unpleasant tingling sensations. The whole effect takes a few days to subside. As of today I’m no longer aware of my arm inside its sweater sleeve.

One thing that’s been pretty consistent throughout this experience is that my kids don’t seem to be very worried about me. Which is great! There’s nothing they can do by worrying, and we’ve worked to keep things as normal as possible while I do treatments and go to appointments. We’ve definitely been keeping an eye on them and I have supports available if we feel they need someone else to talk to about this experience, but neither Lori nor myself have really noticed them acting out of the ordinary. They play together, they squabble, usual sibling stuff.

For what it’s worth, the pets don’t seem very agitated, either.

Well, there you have it. This has been my weekly check-in. One day this’ll be a distant memory, so I’m glad I’m writing these things down now.

Treatment Progress Update: I was supposed to have started my fifth and final cycle this week but there was a slight complication — more on that in the body of this post. I’m feeling really well and drinkin’ cold stuff right out of the fridge. Not looking forward to losing this ability again come Tuesday, but I am looking forward to it being the last time I’ll lose it.

Something I’ve generally tried not to do is ‘play the cancer card’; Meaning, I try not to demand special treatment or status because of my illness. I think I’ve written a bit about this before.

This last Monday, however, there was the complication I mentioned. I met with my family doc in the morning to do a pre-op checkup regarding the surgery that is likely to happen early next year. This wasn’t a physical exam in the sense that I expected — mostly just a big questionnaire that we both had to fill out. While I was there I asked for a flu shot, as I am immuno-suppressed and cold/flu season is in full swing. They gave me a High Dose and I went away satisfied.

Well. That afternoon I developed a persistent cough and started shivering uncontrollably for several hours straight, while my temperature climbed into the (low) fever regions. We wondered aloud if it was just me reacting to the flu shot, but here’s the thing: when you have cancer they will tell you that if you have even a mild, low-grade fever, you need to get yourself into the E.R. immediately. It could be nothing, but it could also be a clue to a more serious infection happening somewhere in the body that could greatly complicate matters. Then, they give you a pink card that has your name and treatment details and some instructions for the attending E.R. physician. One of the instructions is that you are to be seen as quickly as possible.

So it’s a literal cancer card.

We called in Lori’s folks to watch the kids and off we went to the hospital, which was already having a pretty busy night. And yes, I brought the card, and showed it to the triage nurses. I was whisked in and put through various tests (blood, urine, X-rays of my chest) with relatively little wait time between stops. As a people-pleaser it did not necessarily feel good to be shuttled past folks that looked like they’d been waiting a long time, but all along I was assured by staff that coming in was the right call and that I wasn’t abusing the system in any way.

We did still end up being there for a couple of hours in total, what with waiting for test results and talking to the doctors & nurses. Still, I definitely walked out past people in the waiting area who had been there when I came in. In the end I was prescribed a short course of antibiotics, which ended up delaying the IV chemo treatment I was supposed to have had the next day. They didn’t want to overlap the chemotherapy & antibiotics, apparently. This was disappointing, as I had been looking forward to being over my treatments by Christmas Day and now…I’ll still be feeling a bit yucky.

Still, I get a good New Years’ 🙂

(As an epilogue: the cancer ward called me a few days later and said they’d talked to my family doc and learned about the high dose flu shot. We agreed that it was probably the culprit. “That wasn’t in the notes from the ER”, they said, and I am not sure because I feel like I definitely mentioned it? But anyway, they said I could stop the antibiotics immediately and get ready to get treated on Tuesday next.)

The kind of person I am is one that historically has not liked to make waves or take up too much space. My illness makes that mission much more difficult. I needed rides to the city in summertime, I need to take more downtime to look after myself, I need time off from work for appointments. Even getting priority access to the E.R.. All of these things, I start to tell myself, increase the burden and workload of people around me, and how dare I do that? But I would happily do what I could for family and friends in the same predicament. Maybe one day I will have an opportunity to pay it forward. Maybe I will not, and will simply have to accept the kindness and generosity of those who carried me when I couldn’t walk on my own.

Either way, I’m continuing to try and convince myself that I can take up space in the world. The work will probably continue well after this ‘cancer’ business is behind me. C’est la vie!

Treatment Progress Check: Right now I’m nearly finished my 4th cycle, with the 5th and final IV treatment set for Tuesday. As always this will be followed by: a week of feeling kinda bad, then a week of feeling only a little bad, then a week of feeling pretty okay actually. And then I’ll be done, and hopefully feeling fine in time for Christmas! What a gift for me 🙂

First of all, thanks so much to everyone who goes out of their way to comment on the blog here or on the various social media platforms where I share this. As I’ve said before I may not respond to everything but I do read it all, and y’all were wonderfully supportive after my last post. Much love <3

What’s on my mind this week is: surgery. I haven’t talked a lot about my impending surgery because I still really can’t think about it too much. As in, I feel incapable of focusing on it for very long; either my brain slides off of topic and on to something easier, or I get overwhelmed by information I don’t need yet. But, to face facts for just a moment: I’ve been told I will be having a colostomy. The nature and location of this cancer is such that the operation will be permanent (or at least, permanent until medical science advances to the point of being able to reverse my situation somehow). This will also mark another change in the story I tell about myself, from A Guy, to A Guy With Cancer, and then A Guy With A Disability.

None of this is the end of the world. In fact I keep telling myself that it’s vastly preferable to the alternatives, and if it allows me to see my kids graduate then it is the best way forward. I know that people in very similar situations to my own have gone on to lead healthy, fulfilling lives. But it’s also a lot for me to process! And since we’ve been so focused on just doing the Next Thing in terms of treatments, I haven’t really had the space or need to do so. As of now I’ve done very little processing. The closest I’ve gotten is that in the past week or so I’ve started to form questions in my mind about what life will be like on the other side of surgery, but I’m still not to the point of being able to actually doing any research.

(Folks in the comments: this is not an invitation to share resources, blogs, etc. I will almost definitely not look at them.)

It’s gonna be okay. I’m stronger than I tend to think I am. It’s just…[long, dramatic sigh here]

What’s been good this week? I’ve been feeling really well and gotten to see some friends from out-of-town. The very bothersome tingling in my hands and feet has gotten much better. And I got a lovely vinyl LP of Star Trek themes from an internet Secret Santa exchange. Lastly, I’m relishing cool tapwater. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this, but in the days after IV treatments I cannot drink anything even a little cold, or my throat feels weird and starts to constrict. And hot water is not very refreshing. So when I go to the sink in the middle of the night for a quick drink, I stop and feel grateful for being able to just gulp it down.

Enjoy the little things, folks!

Treatment Progress Check: As I write this, I’m on day 12 of a 21-day treatment cycle. I’m in the 4th out of 5 cycles. I’ve only got pills for today and tomorrow, then I get some time off, and I’m feeling…pretty okay! This weekend I was able to put up Christmas decorations, go with my family through an interactive Nativity thing in the park, and Lori and I did a Christmas Shopping day in Winnipeg yesterday. I’ve got a short list of tasks to do during my Feel Good week coming up, and then it’s one more IV Chemo treatment and the side effects thereof. Still trying not to overdo things, but as always, I’m grateful to be up and about.

Something that I often think is that I’m doing this journal wrong. Nobody has told me this, of course, and there’s no concrete reason to think so, but I am indeed my own harshest critic and that hasn’t stopped just because of a little thing like having cancer. I may write as though I’m becoming enlightened, and perhaps that’s true in increments, but as a human being on planet earth there’s still a lot of work to do on myself.

Anyway. This journal. I ask myself, and sometimes Lori: “Is it too honest?” or “Is it not honest enough?” or “is my tone too serious? I’m not that serious” or “maybe the tone is too light? this is a difficult subject” and on, and on. I’ve rarely felt entirely happy that I’ve said exactly what I want to say, in exactly the way I want to say it. Thus, I tell myself, I’m doing it wrong. I think I must somehow be misrepresenting myself or my journey to my readers. I’ll be outed as a liar, a fraud. By whom? Don’t know. The Journal Police, I guess. Somebody. It isn’t a rational line of thinking, so the details aren’t always as important as the broad strokes.

When I read this back to myself, of course it sounds ridiculous. There isn’t an objectively correct way to journal one’s way through a cancer experience. There are tips, and guidelines, but I think I’ve got to make my peace with the idea that whatever I write is the thing that needed to be written at the time I wrote it. And, there’s no Journal Police, slowly building a case against me, waiting to pounce.

So, to my inner critic, I say, silence! Even if you think I’m doing it wrong, I’m still gonna do it.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Thanks so much for reading this, and to everybody who leaves lovely comments. You’re all doing your best out there in the world, I’m sure.

Treatment Progress Check: As I write this I’m on Day 4 of a 21-day cycle. Currently I have completed 3 out of 5 cycles. I think I’ve gone and confused myself as to when a cycle is done or not, and I’m sorry if I’ve confused you too. I am currently in the midst of the 4th cycle. I’m getting a little better at understanding the rhythms of when I’ll feel good and when not; for instance, the first day after IV treatment is a Day where I Feel Great But It’s A Lie. For the first three cycles I’d feel really good on that second day but overdo things and my energy levels would crash the next day. This week I’ve seen it for what it is and made sure to take it very easy on myself that day — I really think it helped. It’s a little too bad that it’s taken this long to understand the rhythms, but right now it feels like most things in life change when you’ve just started to truly understand them.

There’s something I’ve been a little obsessed with for most of this journey, like since May. It’s the opening to the show Mad Men:

I haven’t actually watched the show in years and years, but many times, as I’d be lying in bed trying to sleep, the song or the image of the man falling would show up and play out. Over and over.

I’m not going to try and pretend this goes any deeper than you’d think, just by looking at it. The man has his life seemingly together, and then everything collapses and he falls seemingly endlessly. Sort of like having the rug pulled out from under you with a diagnosis. It makes sense that my mind would latch on to that as a way of visualising how I was feeling. (It also helps that the drums are great — but they’re not part of the metaphor, I don’t think)

I just note it because it’s interesting to me that my brain pulled this out of storage and chose to dwell on it, again, not having watched Mad Men in at least a decade.

This cycle I’ve been trying to focus on what I still have. Looking around the chemo treatment area during my last treatment really drove home what I can still be thankful for; hopefully not in a pitying way of the others, but like I said, as a reminder of what I’ve got going for me even now. I get to keep my hair, for instance! I feel slightly vain every time I say it, but my thick hair has always been a point of pride, and it would’ve just added more mental weight to the adjustment of treatments.

Also, I can move under my own power, and in a pinch, I could even drive myself to and from appointments. Not everybody can say that. I spend a pretty decent amount of time napping (especially in the past few days) but I’m not absolutely wiped out by sickness or fatigue. I even got to lead a song in church this morning and feel good about my voice. It was a bit challenging to move around — I do feel weak these days — but I’m pleased that my voice and mind are still in working order.

(At least — I think my mind works? Maybe this is all rambling nonsense lol)

A quick summary of the events ahead; I’m scheduled to do my last IV chemo treatment on December 3, taking pills until the 17th and being able to stop all this treatment stuff just in time for Christmas. Nice! A recent phone call with my surgeon indicated we’d do another round of imaging in mid-to-late January to see how the treatments did; however, regardless of how it looks I’m hearing that there’s still going to be a strong recommendation for surgery. They explained that imaging isn’t perfect and your *ahem* ‘back door’ is really not a place you want cancer to reoccur, so, the suggestion is likely to be that we throw the baby out with the proverbial bathwater.

That will create a whole ‘nother series of challenges that will keep me blogging well into the next year, I expect.

At least I won’t have to take a dozen chemotherapy pills daily!