Last night was a rough night. I woke up at 1:45am. At first I thought it was because Mel was assaulting me as I felt something in my chest. I grabbed Mel’s arm to stop her from assaulting me. But she was sleeping. It seems that I had some acid reflux and it woke me up and it is something that lingered for an hour or so. I had grabbed Mel a couple of times and woke her up because why should she get rest if her patient is suffering. She had to deal with Olivier while he was sick, so this is just more experience for her. I was concerned that I may throw up as it felt weird. I kept on drinking water and it seemed fine, but I wanted her to be aware in case things got worse. I am starting to put into place contingency plans for things now. When I shower I make sure she knows and I do not take too long so she can come in and check on me. I do. It want to be overcome with weakness and be in a compromised situation where Mel needs to figure out what is happening. Hopefully this was a one off and not a sign of things to come. Mel mentioned that nausea was one of the symptoms so this was to be expected. I think I disagree with her. Just because it is expected does not mean I need to accept it. I have realized that my appetite is going down and my weight is slowly creeping down daily. Previously I knew I had to eat and would force it, but it seems now that I can eat less with each session. I am not sure why that is. I do know that I am more fearful of pushing myself to the limit as it may cause me to throw up. In the past where I was more willing to flirt with that line, now with decreasing weight I am being more cautious. It may be a flaw in logic as it might be better for me to be on the more aggressive side of things. On the bright side I am almost done week 3 of treatment and there will only be 10 more. I can hopefully get through that ok.
I have a strong dislike for being late and arrived at my appointment 45 minutes early. If I would have left 15 min later I would have encountered bus traffic and less parking availability in the parking lot. There was someone before me and I had seen him here all week long. We got to chatting about hockey and his grandson is also a goalie playing U11. I know a lot of the rep goalies in Sudbury but generally not at that age. He also plays for Sudbury and not Copper Cliff. He mentioned that when he lets in a goal he gets frustrated and visibly shows it on the ice. I explained the science between resetting with a positive mindset and looking up instead of down. Xavier focuses on what positive play he can do next, and it does not always have to be a save. It can be from playing the puck or just something simple. He is a goalie that is resilient and generally does not allow a goal to impact him too much. Yesterday he had a private practice session before our game and Mel said that his coach was saying that he was not moving straight. Mel was worried that he had an inner ear infection as his lymph nodes are all swollen still. I told the coaches to watch out for him because if he looks bad to pull him. The goalies decided amongst themselves who was going to start since it was an exhibition game. Xavier started and was pulled. He failed to score a goal as I’m exhibition games they split the games, but he did play well and did not allow any goals in. He still made a couple of mistakes that he will vehemently deny that they were mistakes, but if I replayed it or showed his goalie coach he would see it. He has recovered well from his illness this weekend and watching him play last night he moved well and was in control. There were no dramatic saves and every save looked inevitable. It is nice to watch when he plays like that.
I need to find a way to reset and eat more. Today I will take my nausea pills and see if that increases my appetite and my eating. It seems to have worked fairly well as I have been eating better today. The issue though is I am craving freshness so I am eating food that is neither high in calories, protein or fat. I am also very thirsty today and have been drinking a lot of water. This is good at least that I have my appetite back by taking a pill. As long as I do not eat until I am near being full and eat a bit every hour or so then it is manageable. Something that does annoy me greatly though is when mother calls me. I do not mind chatting with her, but it does annoy me when she keeps on going on that I do not eat enough and I need to eat more. They do not like the amount that I can eat and have never accepted the fact that I can not eat anywhere close to the amount of food that I use to be able to eat. She seems to get offended when I tell her I physically can not eat more. I tend to end the calls earlier when she does this as it frustrates me to no end. For some reason she thinks that I am not trying to eat more and does not understand that if I throw up it is because I ate too much. It has happened at her house and then I get pushed to eat more. I know she has my best interest at heart, but I do not necessarily want to be told how much I am failing because I am not eating enough in their eyes. She sees I am losing weight and to them it is easy. Just eat more.
As we approach the end of week 3, the cumulative effects are more manageable and we have time off for a bit. There are some things that I will deal with for work and then try and relax a bit. If relaxing makes me fatigued because I am not engaging my mind I will do some work or play Scrabble against my sister where she tends to dominate me. She plays more than I do and it is safe to say a better player. I can beat her, but it is challenging and enjoyable playing against her. Mel does not enjoy playing with the two of us as we tend to play very defensively to prevent the other from making big scores. Whoever goes after Mel tends to win as she is trying to just get a word on the board where the two of us play more strategic. Sometimes to make it more interesting we play in French. Needless to say, we do not play much with Mel as she does not enjoy it. I think that Xavier would like playing against us as he has a large vocabulary, but I think we will beat him with strategy. I use to play against my friends and I can generally beat most of them when we have played. We haved in a group with my sister and a couple of them and they do not always like how we make a mess of the board. Strategically my sister and I never put down a word/words on the board unless it can provide us double digit points and prevent a big score from the next player. It keeps my mind active and we use to play 2 or 3 games at a time. It is amusing though when we play against others and it is clear that they are cheating, but it is still fun to play them as it is more challenging.
As I am sitting in my room I can hear Mel talking to her mother and she was using some Vietnamese vernacular that we my parents and I use. At some meals if it is just a random collection of food that is thrown together we use a term that translates to basically “this or that” or conceptually the same. I am not sure what they were talking about but they used that. When the kids were younger they use to mix Cantonese/French/English all together and it took some time and effort to figure it out. Now most of the family know what they mean when they mix all of the languages together and saw a word in a different language. Olivier always says soy sauce with the Cantonese name regardless of who he is with. That is all he has know. For Christmas next week we will have most of the get togethers at our place because it is quite tiring for me to be out and about. I can go rest in the bedroom when I get tired. I appreciated how well our two families have gelled together and the parents talk on their own without us. My parents will call Mel’s Aunt or mom if she sees a sale that they might be interested in. When my parents were at our house the other day my mom was taking to Xavier and he was paralyzed in fear. He did not know how to respond to a simple question. My kids know better than to blindly answer the question of, “Do you like this.” My mom was asking him about apple cider. He enjoys drinking apple cider, but he also knows that if he answers this question wrong we will suddenly have 12 1 liter bottles of apple cider arrive the next day. And as soon as one goes down it will be instantly replenished. He did not want to go down that road so he said the correct answer, I like it, but do not buy any. What my mother will hear is we will buy you two. You just give up that word and reiterate not to buy any and then accept it when 2 arrive the next day because they were on sale!
I have one more treatment day and then we have 4 treatments next week followed by Mon to Wed treatment for 2 weeks. Then I am free. Mel wants to come with me on the last day so she can watch me ring the bell. I do not like doing it as everyone can hear you and see you do it and i do not really want that attention, but I will do it for Mel because my love to make her happy is far greater than my displeasure of public displays.
Quoc Hao