Word Games

Housekeeping

• I just wanted to say again how much I appreciate your comments. I don’t respond to many of them but I do read them all. I particularly enjoy anyone that compliments my “perfect grammar” (thanks Auntie Joyce 😂)

Treatment Progress Check: As I write this I’m on day 17 of a 21-day cycle. Currently I have completed 0 out of 5 cycles. This is a resting week for me, so I was able to stop taking the chemo pills last Thursday. That felt nice! Weirdly, I’ve had some more foot soreness this week than before, and there’s still the odd wave of nausea. But I got to finish the leftovers of my ice cream cake last night!

This Past Week

One way I’ve been sort of monitoring my brain fog and cognitive abilities is with those daily NYT Word Games. I fell out of touch with them for a long time, but this year my wife and I started exchanging our Wordle results again, and we’ve since branched into Connections and Strands. I really recommend doing something like this instead of making the news or social media the first thing you look at in the morning. Also, a fun thing to do is to include the Smug emoji 😏 when you’re sharing particularly good results.

I’ll pick on Connections as an example. If you’re not familiar, it’s a game where you get sixteen words which you must collect into four themed groups of four. The themes linking the words range from obvious to remarkably obscure. On the first day after my IV treatment, I remember sitting at the breakfast table and just staring at the words for ages. My brain wasn’t even starting to try and make links or even interpret meanings, they were just…symbols on a screen. But, given enough time (and a bit of coffee) I was able to pull together the answers for the puzzle. That honestly convinced me that I was okay to go to my office that day.

The office work that day was similar; slower, with lots of windup time needed and a re-centering “what was I doing again?” every time I’d get distracted. But I made it, and decided: if there’s a day when I can’t do the puzzles at breakfast, I’m going back to bed.

During the past week I had another appointment with my new counsellor as well. As before I won’t share every detail of our visit, but she did tell me something that I want to share. I had been talking about a deeply frustrating experience I’d had involving my kids, and she was trying to help me re-frame the experience so that next time I can try to see the good in it as well. (And maybe not get so mad.)

I suggested that I could try reminding myself that there are people who’d gladly take the challenges of raising kids if it meant the good things as well.

“We don’t need to bring other people into this,” she told me.

Okay, fine. I tried again. This situation is frustrating now, but there will probably come a day when they’ll be out of the house and I’ll miss having them around.

This next thing was the important bit for me: she told me to change the “but” to an “and”. She explained that we don’t have to try and throw away or dismiss the frustration and negative feelings we experience. We can hold two truths at the same time, where we acknowledge the challenge of the present moment while also finding something positive or worthwhile in it.

The situation is frustrating now, and there will probably come a day when they’ll be out of the house and I’ll miss having them around. See? One little word change. Now, all I have to do is remember it.

Looking Ahead

This Thursday I do some testing and checkups to see how the chemo landed on me, and then Friday we continue IV treatments and pills. As always I’m not looking forward to feeling worse again, but we gotta do it.

On the brighter side, CancerCare Manitoba reached out with an opportunity to take part in a Winnipeg Blue Bombers football game! I’ve agreed to be one of 15 people carrying the flag during our national anthem at a game in October. Afterward, we get to stay and watch the rest of the game. I’ve never seen them play in their new stadium, so I’m really looking forward to the experience! _{Hang on, I’m being handed a note here…apparently they’ve been in their current stadium since 2013, so it’s not exactly “new”. Well, alright then.}