This treatment is not going to be my favorite. I am going to spend treatment drugged up and falling asleep and sleeping through the afternoon when I return. The evenings are fine and then I am up all night because of the steroids. I ended up getting up and working a bit and doing some reading because I was wide awake and there was no chance of me falling back asleep. The funny thing is that today I was not tire d at all. I ate several times throughout the night since I was up and did my regular routine of 7:30 tofu, congee at 8:30 and then random snacks throughout the rest of the morning. Mel and Xavier went to help my father in law pour cement in their basement. I hung out with Olivier today and ran errands with him. We went to Walmart for some groceries and supplies for dinners this week, My Mother’s place to pick up some capers and then off to Tarini to buy some meat. I wanted to get some lean beef so we could make some beef burritos to freeze for the week. Olivier wants to make his own so I will let him and maybe we will do a family thing where everyone can decide what to put into theirs. Mel is going to get me to make hers so she has the perfect ratio of things. Xavier will make his own but I am not sure how well he will wrap them up. I may end up having to wrap up everyone’s burritos. We will see what happens there. I have been craving Burger King lately and I took Olivier today and got a Whopper Jr. Combo and Oliiver got chicken fries and regular fries. He took a bite of my burger and he said that he liked it and the chicken fries were a hit as well. It amuses me because for the longest time the boys have said that they do not like BK, but now that he has tried it his tune seems to have changed. Now we are not going to really go eat it more or anything now as it is fast food and a bit out of the way. My craving has been satiated as I have had my chicken sandwich and my whopper. My weight has been pretty consistent now fluctuating between 140 and 141 for the last week, which is a promising sign. I took a bath today and I notice a difference in my legs. Previously when I took a bath I was a bit disgusted as I could see the bones in my leg and my hips and now I have more flesh and muscle and I do not look like a skeleton now.
Tomorrow morning we are going to be going to Manitoulin island for a visit. I wanted some fish and chips so we will end up getting some for dinner. We will go to the falls and I want to try and do a walk and see if I can do it. Mel is a bit skeptical I think. I will grab the hiking poles and see what I can do. I really wanted to buy a large walking staff and wear robes and look awesome. I can not get a walking staff in time and everything I have looked up it is better to have walking sticks to have multiple points of contacts. I am not sure how much I will be able to handle strengthwise but I am going to make sure that I bring extra energy gels and things like that. I have been pushing myself a bit more each day and it seems to be getting a bit better. I think that I can try and start building up my muscle again. One of my nurses thinks that the fatigue is going to either hit me tomorrow or the next day. We will see what happens, as next weekend we have a hockey tournament that involves me driving to North Bay. I do not even have the schedule yet so that is a bit of a concern right now. Hopefully the games are late enough in the day that I can attend. If not we can send him with someone I am sure. He is the goalie on the team and he is a bit important. There will be more than enough people that will be willing to drive him.
I was thinking about how much my parents sacrificed for my sister and I today. When we were young, I am not sure who wanted it, but for Christmas we ended up getting a digital keyboard. I am not sure if I learned this from them or not, but I tend to either buy high quality or cheap and treat it as disposable. My parents bought us a Yamaha keyboard for that Christmas. They had a friend who was a musician and he went with them and chose the keyboard and it was a pretty good one with a full keyboard. At the time I am sure that it was cutting edge and neither my sister or I took lessons to play but I think that my sister ended up teaching herself somehow with some books and putting letters on the keyboard or something. The cost of the keyboard was probably a couple of hundred dollars and my parents did not make a ton of money. My mother made minimum wage and I am not sure how much my dad made. They would have had to save up money for months in order to pay for it. I had wanted a computer as well when I was young and they ended up buying me several. They bought me a Commodore 64 which was probably in the price range of $400 or so and minimum wage was under $4.00. In order to purchase this for us they would have to save for a couple of months as we had expenses to pay for and we were a family of 6 with my grandmother. I remember going to Kmart to pick up the computer and I was quite excited about it. When the PC came out I got a custom PC that cost thousands of dollars for Christmas. My parents enlisted the help of a friend of theirs that knew computers at the time to help them build out a system. I am not sure if my sister got gifts in those years or if these were “joint” gifts. I used the computers far more than my sister did. Most of the times I would play games on them, but I also learned how to program at a young age and remember making all sorts of programs and things. At this time Computerized Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) started and you could dial in and access different communities. I use to visit these and do random things. At the time of these computers it would take some time to load games on the Commodore 64, 128 and the PC systems. You would start loading a game, run off to go do something and when you heard that the game was loaded run back to play them. We managed to pirate a lot of games, and I am not exactly sure how we got them all. I appreciate everything that my parents do now, but at the time I do not think that I recognized the sacrifice. I remember when I was a teen and complaining about things my mother told me that my dad would not buy himself clothing or anything and would patch up his clothing in order to save money for us to buy things. He refrained from spending money on himself to provide for us. I have a reputation for spending money and buying expensive stuff. Even though I tend to buy things on the spur of the moment, most of the stuff is not exorbitantly priced. I struggle to buy more for myself and hem and haw about whether I should get it. If I see something that I think Mel or the kids will like I am more open to buying it. I really want a drone and a 3D printer but have been struggling to actually buy them because it is a want and not a need. There is so much more things that we will need to buy when we renovate downstairs that I am hestitant to spend the money even though I have enough cash saved up from my lucky money to purchase it. I will just add to my McLaren toy collection instead and keep them in their original boxes.
QHM