The anniversary of when I found out about the cancer returming is approaching in 2 days. I was talking to Mel last night and today about it and the last year has been quite a journey. Once we found out about the cancer we had to convince the surgeon to even do the surgery, undergo radiation and then figure out a treatment plan once we realized the options in Canada were limited. Next was figuring out what we were going to do. There has been more than a lifetime of medical decisions that we had to research and find out on our own. The last couple of days have been a bit rough, besides the physical things that I have had to deal with, the mental weight of everything I think is what has been more of a problem for me. I have been doing this for the last year now and what we have now is the best treatment that we know of, but it is not a cure and what it does is provide status quo for me to do things. The issue is that before I had longer stretches of good days and when you have a treatment plan there is an end in sight. You can count down to only so many more weeks of treatment and then a reprieve. Right now I am missing that as I have 3 weeks on and then 1 week off. It seems that the cumulative effects results in a white blood cell count drop for me which does not make me feel good. This is one of the reasons why the treatment that I am on is altered as patients struggle with it. I have some options though, either get the injection to help boost my white blood cell count or we change up my treatment schedule so it would be two weels on and then two weeks off and repeat that schedule. We need to see how I react to it though. I think that is the part that I am stuggling with right now, in a 7 day span, I have 3-4 days that are tough., 1 or 2 days that are managable and the treatment day that I am completely incapacitated. It is difficult to see the end of the tunnel when that is the new normal in your life. So what brings me joy and distracts me though is for the most part still enough. I still have work during the weekday which makes the days go by and gives me purpose. At night I have Xavier’s hockey or events we need to drive him to. On the weekends and evenings I get to spend time in the kitchen cooking which contrary to believe I enjoy and find relaxing. Being in those situations almost becomes automatic and I do not have time to worry abou my how my body is doing or my mental state. The crash afterwards from fatigue and energy expenditure is something else entirely, but in those moments it is worth it. I am not sure if it is in my head or not, but I am feeling small things in my body that annoy me or bother me. This tends to happen more frequently right before I am scheduled to go in for a CT scan because I do not know what to expect in this situations and I am sure that I have some anxiety regardless of what I may think. Mel told me that I should figure out how to cure myself, and once treatments stop being effective I will probably start to do that.
For my entire life everyone always assumed that all the work that I do is involved in IT or computers when that has rarely been the case. We have had a lot of small things that stopped working in the house after we had the flood and power outages and I spent most of the day fixing all of those things. It took me a bit longer than I anticipated but all of the smart features in the house are now online and functional. Mel had wanted to make some edits for some photos that she had taken this summer so we used her computer and it was dreadfully slow and unusablr. We have a great network here that is probably overcomplex but that is not the issue as our cell phones, tablets and the kids computers all work fine. I had a similar issue with my personal computer earlier this year and it took me awhile to resolve as well. Mel and myself have pretty high end personal laptops with some advanced features and upgrades. Windows seems to do a lot of foolish things with our network adapters trying to be good, but it causes more issues than benefits. I do no see the issues as frequently on my mac or cell phone. It took me a while to fix but I managed to figure out what was wrong and resolve it. Soon enough I should finish the installation of our home assistant so we have a centralized control system by the door. I have built some customi things to make this all functional last year and did not continue with it. I may try and teach Olivier how to handle all of that in the event that I need someone to help out. Interestingly though both of the kids have always managed to fix their own issues that they have had with their computers or laptops.
We did not make fresh mozzarella as we needed 4liters of milk and we did not have that much. Tomorrow we will be going to my parents as well as going for a Costco run. My parents dropped off some food today and asked what I wanted to eat. What I told them was I wanted traditional Canadian egg rolls like they use to make at the restaurants with bean sprouts. I can not remember where we were or for what reason, but we had some and they were made with cabbage which is not the same. My dad said that he will make some BBQ pork and add it in. I think that they will also make some fried rice and chicken balls for the kids to bring to school. I told them that I have an aversion right now to chicken but I can eat meat that is crispy. That is how my dad came up with the chicken balls. Their chicken balls might be ok, but the texture of the meat worries me. I had some Ukranian pork skewers from the Ukranian church today and those were ok. I am going to have to get Mel to pick up some more and some cabbage rolls from there for some meals when we are being lazy. It amuses me that the kids now like those cabbage rolls and they prefer them to the perogies. We have also bought some mini-dumplings from Costco that we should have them eat. I have been more diligent lately of preparing small portions for the kids to have for lunches of pure meat. It will give them more options on what they want to do. Hopefully with the return of school things will become more routine and I can figure out a rhythm that works better for me. Once I know how my actions can influence and impact when I do not feel ok, I think that I can overcome the mental aspect. The lack of control and identifying why is what bothers me. it should be simple enough to overcome. As Xavier would tell me, I just need to Be Better.
Quoc Hao