Before & After

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.