Getting to Done

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 author sits in a recliner in the cancer ward at the local hospital. He is smiling, despite everything. His arm is wrapped in blankets and an IV medication pump lingers nearby.

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).

A short video clip of the author ringing the bell to signify that the IV treatments are over!

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.

Speaking of my daughter, this is a page from a notebook of hers where she designed and cut out ‘collectable animals’. She then put the animals into unmarked bags so you could have the true Gachapon experience of getting a random animal!

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.