The last couple of days I have been working extended hours till the wee hours of the night on different side projects. Mel does photography on the side, but this year she only agreed to do 2 teams as it is approximately 2 hours of work for her and 7,000 hours for me to do the edits. It is great trade off as she makes the money and I am the slave labour who gets scraps. In reality I enjoy doing it and fix up small things that other people may not notice. If a kid has blemishes on his skin or rips in his socks I will fix them because Mel as a mom would hate that and would not want those in the photos. She is not a fan when we receive edits that she seems as subpar and she makes me go back and correct them.
Today the truffles came in and we had truffle pasta for dinner. It was delicious but while we were eating, Olivier mentioned that it could use salt as it was under seasoned. He was right, I had forgotten to salt the water in my haste. Xavier agrees and Mel mentioned that our kids were such foodies that they would notice and make comments about it. Mel then made me cry by teasing me about it as she knows that I can not stand making mistakes. My close friends and family will always try and tease me when I make mistakes because they are aware of how much it annoys me. Luckily I am pretty good at not making huge mistakes often and catch them most of the time. Even with my mistake, everyone enjoyed the fresh truffles. Mel does not always like the fake flavour of truffle oils or truffle infused things, but it is something that Olivier really enjoys. I wanted him to experience fresh truffles, but I am not sure if it is worth the cost, so in all likelihood we will not get them again. I was not expecting them to arrive and at noon I started prepping my backup dinner and had that actually completed by the time I found out about the truffles. We now have a meal for tomorrow that will be ready to go now.
Last night I had met someone who I think I had taught when he was in university at Laurentian. When we were chatting and I mentioned my degrees he perked up at Neuroscience and he remembered being told not to take a certain course with Persinger because it was not good for your average. It was known as quite the challenging course. During the conversation as he found out more about me, his perception of me increased and by the end he was calling me a genius. Perspectives are interesting because I have always been surrounded by very bright friends throughout high school, university and especially in grad school. I view all of my friends as either equivalent of better than me. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses and I think that is what I appreciate the most out of my friend group. Right now when I have required help we have had a lot of people step up to help us out, from people dropping off food, neighbours shoveling our driveway or people providing rides to either Xavier or myself, it is greatly appreciated.
I have motility pills that I am supposed to take 30 minutes prior to eating. i have managed to actually take them about 50% of the time. I am not sure if they work or not however, but if I do not take them Mel tends to nag me about it. Over the course of the day I think that I have managed my eating fairly well and have maintained liquid intake as well. It seems that if I eat something a bit more at one of the meals it has an impact a bit later on as I am actually not that hungry, but I force myself to eat because I know that I should. My weight has been stable for the most part, which is a good and a bad thing. Good that I am doing fine with maintenance, but that it seems that I can not eat more after several weeks. I am not sure what is going to happen once I start treatment. I think that my stomach has shrunk a bit over time but that the ascites is having an impact as well.
I have been receiving calls from the hospital all week and today I received one from the person who helps arrange transportation. She gave some information about travel but said that she can not help me as she organizes navigation to the Sudbury location. I was informed that there is a lodge at Princess Margaret. Mel knew about it and she had not mentioned it to me because it is shared accommodations with someone. I am not fond of having a room mate if I have the choice. There is also some funds available for people but it is dependent upon income and it is something that we would not be eligible for. I think that we are also in a position where I do not think that I would want to use that money when I know that there are others that are not as fortunate and will struggle to just make ends meet. I have and will be working the whole time so we will not have a drop in income. I could choose not to work, but then you are stuck there with nothing to look forward to. Unlike me who can look forward to editing photos for Mel. Tomorrow the tumour board meets at Princess Margaret and we will hear whether I will be undergoing further testing or not in the next couple of weeks.
QHM