Growing up I had to build a lot of resiliency. This started at a young age growing up on the mean streets of South Vietnam. I have told this story before, but as a child I loved eating spicy food. A treat that I use to eat was pineapple with a spicy salt. As a young child they would not put the spicy salt on the food for me. I would stand there and refuse to eat it until the put it on. This was one of the first instances where I experienced such difficulties in life. I started out my life in high stress environments where street vendors would not cater to my desire to eat spicy foods. I had to navigate these difficult times with stubbornness until they caved and provided me with spicy food.
Resilience is something that was taught to me by parents. They were resilient facing all of the hardships in South Vietnam and on their journey over to Canada. I have said it many times, but some of the decisions and choices they had to make. I do not know if have the mental fortitude and strength to make some of the decisions that they and others like them had to make. I am blessed by what they have had to do and have learned resiliency through their actions. Luckily both of my kids are quite resilient. Over the weekend we went to a hockey tournament and the difference in play between the two goalies on our team is significant. Besides the skill/experience difference, resiliency is what truly sets them apart. The other kid once he lets in a goal, a quick rapid string of goals will occur. Nearly every shot will go in, deflating the team. His confidence deflates and he questions himself. Xavier will work with him on becoming more resilient and putting things behind him. A trait of a lot of goalie kids and their parents is that after a goal, whether it is bad or not they look into the stands to see the reaction of the parents. I am not sure what information is exchanged between them but Xavier knows better to look at me. If he looks into the stands all he will see from me is a scowl whether he has made the save or not. He never looks to me for affirmation. He is resilient and confident in his own abilities. He has been taught to reset, forget what happened and move forward. Control what is in the future and do not worry about the past. Later on we can debrief about the past and learn from it.
Olivier shows a lot of resilience in his own way that is similar to the way I work in a technical setting. I hear his frustrations when he is trying to code and he is getting an error that he can not figure out. His quiet screams of frustrations while he tries to find the bug. I cheat and use AI to find where my errors are right now, but as a lot of his coding is visual, it is not as effective and he needs to painstakingly go through. We try to not let him code at night because he will yell, just a minute I need to finish this up. I have been there before and Mel understands and we let him. On occasion he will scream out in frustration and if it gets too late we tell him to start again in the morning. Generally he does figure it out and he gets very excited. Resilience involves internal strength and having the confidence and optimism to know that you can figure this out. It requires some social support and a safe environment. It is not about trying to avoid stress but finding a positive way to cope, adapt and recover from the stress. It is important to cultivate positive relationships that provide encouragement and assistance, as this will help develop a positive mindset.
Resilience is something that I have had to face since a child and my family has had to endure a lot of difficulties in life. We are where we are now because we had internal and external ressources to help out. I am not catholic, but I have attended Catholic schools my whole life and as a family we have received a lot of support from the Catholic church. I do not practice any religion, but I appreciate the messages and what they teach. Positive relationships and external support. These are key aspects to helping build resiliency. It can be done without this, but it will be completely internally driven.
Yesterday during the meeting with my Oncologist we did not have the full picture as of yet. We had a chat about different options and what was being done. Some tissue from my original biopsy were being sent away to see if one of the new drugs to treat gastric cancers would be effective or not. The results should come in within a couple of weeks. We had mentioned to him that we did not even receive notification that we had an appointment and had to find out from other sources. He agreed that the system in its current state is broken, as we will one day receive a physical mail telling me of our appointment date. In this day and age it is ridiculous to send it via physical mail. He had mentioned that he did not call us as he knew that we were aware of the cancer and he had nothing else to add or tell us. He informed us that he did not know what to say. I was amused by this, as I think we have a good relationship and I agree that the phone call was unnecessary. If the patient knows, what are you going to do, call up and say so I know you have cancer. It sucks, but I am not sure what the next course of action is. I will see you in a couple of weeks. I am sure that for most that would not go over very well. As we went through all of this and we discussed options I was not very stressed out or too worried. I saw the lack of spread on CT as a positive. The PET was not ready as the person reviewing it had to step out for an emergency so it was available during our meeting. The results from the PET would be one of the biggest determining factors on what we were going to do. If that was clear then the next step is to do something called a peritoneal lavage. I used that title to make it sound more technical and complex. What they do is insert a tube into the abdomen in search of free floating cancer cells. In the even that there are free floating cancer cells they may not do the surgery as it may not be helpful. And this is the crux of the situation. If it is free floating in there, surgery may not be done as there is the likelihood that it may spread somewhere else. At this point I would like to re-iterate we did not know the results from the PET. So me being me, I asked in worse case scenario what would the prognosis be if it had spread and it showed up on the PET. I am sure that a lot of people ask this, and it is probably something that I probably should not have asked with Mel in the room with me, but at this point I was feeling confident and upbeat. The doctor hesitated as there are a lot of factors that come into play. I was worried he was going to say a couple of months. His reply was 1 or 2 years. Now those that know me or have worked with me tend to know that I can be a bit of a workaholic. What I am going to say next is something that is going to reflect poorly on me, but is something that everyone who knows or understands me would not be surprised with. The first thing that popped into my head was work. There is a project that I am working on with a go live date of next year. I know that this is going to be ridiculous, but my first thoughts were, “Oh I will be able to complete this project on time.” My second thought, which I told the doctor and Mel was that this is great news! That means that I would have 1 or 2 years for a new trial or something to come along to hopefully resolve this.
The matter at hand that hit Mel hard was surgery was the only method of removing the cancer completely. If we can not do a surgical intervention everything else is palliative care and reducing the impact of the cancer from spreading of containing its spread. In this instance there is a finite timeline that is unknown. I have spoken about resiliency already. In this instance all I see is the positive. CT is inconclusive as we can not see if it has spread. That is what we know now and what is in our control. If it is in my abdomen that is a problem for tomorrow. We will worry about what are options are then. Since he had not seen the PET yet and was unsure when it would be available he had indicated that he was going to set a date of Monday to get back us about a treatment plan. Luckily I have connections and I received the results of my PET after our appointment. This morning my other contacts who are experienced in this also sent me a message. The results indicate that it seems to be localized to that one site and to where they stitched things back together. My other oncologist, who is awesome by the way, said that he is going to recommend surgery. He is going to talk to the surgeon and the rest of the team to see what they think and how we will move forward. This is where external resources and having these positive relationships come into play. I have a sense of purpose of something that I want to accomplish and I will accomplish my goals. It is one of the reasons why I refuse to stop work while undergoing treatment. I look at challenges, not as an insurmountable setback but as an opportunity for growth. When the doctor said that options were limited I looked up alternative treatments and one of them involves the use use of eletromagnetic fields to kill or suppress the cancer. Luckily for me this happens to be a field that I am an expert in. Like I had said before, if they are not going or are unable to cure me. I will do it myself. With 1-2 years as worse case scenario it is more than enough time for me to figure out a treatment that will work. The hardest part is imaging to measure effectiveness of treatment, but I go so often it is not that big of a deal.
What yesterday taught me was that I have a lot of external resources that will help me out. I have a positive mindset with an understanding of myself. Positive intent is very important. I will probably state meditating again and do visualization to help me keep focused on positivity. Writing and interacting with everyone helps. All of the positive comments and support strengthens me. A strong community is powerful in building resiliency. I know that if I stumble, I have a lot of people that will catch and help me. Throughout all of this Mel made a remark that I did not seem stressed at all. She said that she was stressed out enough for the two of us. She is right though. I am not stressed. I see multiple pathways opening up that we can take. As long as I can see a vision forward I have not fear.
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P.S. – I love you all. Everyone who is reading this and sharing in my journey. Even if I have never met you or know you. Hopefully my inner dialogue has entertained you.
❤️