An Unexpected Journey

What a week!

On Monday I got a call from my surgeon’s office, wondering why my Sigmoidoscopy was so late in the month. “The endoscopy people said February 18th was the next available date,” I said. That’s too late, I was told. We have February 20th set aside as your surgery date.

Whoa, okay. That was news to me. The person on the phone said they’d see what they could do about moving it up.

Tuesday, they phoned back. Could I possibly get to the Victoria General Hospital in Winnipeg at 7:15 a.m. Friday? Well, back in the beginning of this whole journey, Lori and I made an agreement that we would Make Whatever Work and that I should accept dates as they come, even if I’m not quite sure. So I said yes, fine.

And so, Thursday night, I said goodnight to the kids and my wife and hopped in the car to drive to a motel in Winnipeg. (Yes, I have family in the city who are probably reading this, but to my knowledge none of you are very conveniently close to that hospital, and anyway, I had some preparations to make that I didn’t want to do in someone else’s home.) I’ve booked and checked into hotels plenty of times in my adult life but I realized that this is actually the first time I’ve ever done it alone. I’ve always been with someone else when I’ve travelled overnight, OR I’ve been on a bus and just slept in transit. The quiet in my room was unnerving. I kept the TV on for the noise.

Early the next morning I made my preparations and then made my way to the hospital. Sedation is optional for a sigmoidoscopy and I chose not to have it, on the grounds that I didn’t have anyone to drive me afterward so I couldn’t have sedation anyway. It was a lot of hurry-up-and-wait, and then I was being wheeled into the room. Suffice it to say that the procedure was very uncomfortable but mercifully brief. Then, while I was still collecting myself, my future surgeon hit me with the rest.

• The CT showed the cancer hasn’t spread (hooray!!) but there is a lymph node in the region that’s concerning.
• The MRI showed an “incomplete” response to treatments, which sounds bad but just means the treatments didn’t completely eliminate the cancer on their own. It’s common.
• The scope that was just done confirmed that my cancer is, still, sitting right next to the *ahem* ‘exit muscle’. So the whole thing’s got to come out and get closed up. They’ll also take out that troublesome lymph node I guess.
• So it’s confirmed: I’m getting a permanent ostomy in just a couple of weeks.

Then he rattled off a series of potential complications from the surgery, and while I was still reeling from all this information I had a consent form dropped into my lap to authorize that I wanted the procedure done. I was stunned. I mean, I’ve said all along that if this surgery is what’s required to continue living, I’m going to do it, but it’s another thing to have it go from hypothetical to reality. I would have really wanted a minute to just sit with the decision, but I really, I was always going to sign the paper. So, I did.

I was promptly wheeled back out so I could get dressed again, wait for the scope report to print, and have a cry while I texted Lori updates. It was a heavy time.

So, that’s happening. I expect to get more details soon about surgery prep, and of course Lori and I have to figure out family logistics for the 4-5 days I’ll be in hospital. I’ve written before about being unable to really think or learn about life with a colostomy bag, but by degrees since Friday I’ve been having more questions and getting acquainted with the idea. We also had a good chat with Cassidy so that she had plenty of time to come up with questions or concerns of her own, which she has. Her processing has helped my own as well.

Relatedly, something about me is that I tend to get stuck on a particular image or idea for weeks or months at a time, like when I couldn’t stop thinking about the Mad Men intro. It’s not that I’m constantly obsessing, it’s just a thing that my brain will drift toward when I’m bored or have an idle moment. Lately it’s been retro video games. It’s no secret that I love games, and I enjoy keeping up with modern ones (the new Indiana Jones game is great!) But when I’ve been unable to play for a period of time I start fervently wishing I was in front of my old CRT TV playing PlayStation or something. The picture above was taken at home after returning from my trip to Winnipeg on Friday — I needed, just for a little while, to play something familiar and comforting.

So that’s obviously a part of why this idea appeals so much — I’m treading through so much unfamiliar territory in my life that it makes sense I’d be drawn to something where I have control of what’s going on. I’m also pretty sure that it appeals to me because the time in my life when “Retro” was “Brand New” — i.e., the mid-90s-to-early-00’s — seems so much simpler in retrospect. Go to class, see my friends, come home and relax in the warm glow of a tube TV and Final Fantasy IX or A Link To The Past. I know I’m never going to get that back, and I thought I was at peace with that. Maybe I’m not, or maybe every previous chapter of your life seems less complicated than your current one.

Still, I read a great post the other day by a terminally ill person saying that you don’t actually have to stare at the horrors in your life all the time. Confront them as necessary, but make sure that between those times you are improving your own life or the lives of those around you. So that’s why it gives me so much joy to look at this picture I took, on Saturday, of Avery feeding my Dad’s neighbor dogs:

Today, a shortish update.

This week I had my follow-up CT and MRI scans done. The CT was on Monday and done locally. The MRI was on Friday and done in Winnipeg, at the St. Boniface hospital. This is the hospital my surgeon works out of, and he was adamant that the MRI be done there as well. Not sure why! We plan to ask him later.

If you’ve never had a CT scan, allow me to offer a brief description! First you are asked to get down to your undies and socks in a small change area, and put on a hospital gown instead. I’m not thrilled about the gowns because I can never tie them up properly. Then you’re led into the room and made to lay on a table in front of a smallish, ring-shaped machine. The tech starts an IV with a “contrast fluid” that’s meant to make certain parts of you show up more clearly on the imaging. Also, they’ll warn you that it will 1.) make you feel kinda warm and 2.)make you feel like you’ve peed your pants when in fact you have not.

Then they leave the room and the table moves to put the parts that need imaging into the centre of the ring. A pre-recorded voice instructed me when to breathe, hold, and exhale. And in just a few minutes it was done! Really, just when I was settling my mind in for the long haul, so I was quite surprised when the tech re-entered the room and said we were all finished.

No long-term side effects from the contrast fluid, though I was advised to drink plenty of water over the next day or two in order to flush the contrast from my system. I’d meant to take myself out for breakfast that day (to reward myself for being a Big Brave Boy). However, I needed to get back home because my sister-in-law was watching the kids who would otherwise have been unsupervised (not ideal).

If you’ve never had an MRI before, allow me to offer a brief description! It’s a lot like the CT, only the machine is a lot bigger, noisier, dangerous, and slower. Because you see, it works with extremely powerful magnets! I was asked three different times — one paper survey, two nurses — about any potential metals in my body as the result of injuries or implants. It isn’t rational, but I start to worry that I might secretly have metal in my body that I just haven’t remembered (I don’t). The process of preparing and imaging took quite a bit longer, not to mention the drive time. But the nurses were very pleasant and it turns out I have very little problem with confined spaces, so the experience wasn’t particularly stressful.

You have time to let your mind wander in an MRI, and in this one there were two things I really wanted to know, but I’ll sadly never get the answers. One was: how did that small dark smudge get on the inside of the machine? It almost looked like a fingerprint. What was the story there? And the second, which I noticed midway through the imaging, was: how did that tiny ball bearing get there? It was stuck to the inside of the machine because of magnetism, but where is it from? Is it important? Who knows.

In both cases I was assured that my doctors would get the results in less than a week, but I don’t think I’ll know any more until either the chemo doc visit in early February, or meeting the surgeon after that. So we continue to wait and hope for good outcomes. In the meantime, like I’ve said before: we try not to let our minds wander to dark places, and instead do things that bring you calm and joy, like LEGOs.

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.

---

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!