Mel is leaving in a couple of hours, and she is a bit concerned about leaving me alone for a couple of days. I told her that I am fine but she does not believe and says that I always say that I am fine. I could be almost dying and I would say I am fine, it is just a minor inconvenience. The kids have taken after me a bit in that regard. As she is always helpful she tried to look up my symptoms to see if there was anything to help out. She found that a lot of others has similar symptoms where they say that it is an intense bone chilling ache that runs deep. I have a high pain tolerance so I probably just tolerate it. I would label it as discomfort and an annoyance rather than painful. While reading on what helps it reaffirmed what I do. Not moving helps alleviate the pain, so lot of the time I will sit in my chair or lie down and try not to move. At these times I do not want to really interact with people as talking and moving makes the chill run more. The bright side though is that this is common and it only lasts 48 to 72 hours. Saturday’s suck, but Sunday is more bearable and the evenings are the worse. I think that is when I will miss Mel the most. She gets me a warm water bottle to put on my chest. That was also a recommendation from others and it works well as it warms the blood and helps with circulation. The kids will help out and they are both responsible for making their own lunches this week. They already do their own laundry so we just need to get them to start paying rent and they will totally understand what it is like to be an adult. I think Mel is prepping to send them down south to private school and having them ha r their own apartment. They can learn to go grocery shopping on their own and have a budget. Xavier is 15 and Olivier is now 12. I remember growing up in the jungles of Vietnam between fighting the war I had to work to survive on my own. The kids can start a bit later than when I had to at 3. Currently my energy levels for the most part are fine, I am just very cold and my body is still aching. Knowing that it will be better tomorrow helps as I know what to expect. When this chill breaks, I will all of a sudden be hot and sweating. That normally happens in the middle of the night and I wake up wondering if I had peed all over myself to only release that it is dampness from the changing symptoms. Knowledge helps because it is no longer an unknown and I know how to plan for it better. Yesterday I bought a bunch more base layers to help with the coldness. We also looked for a cheap winter home in Bali, but it is a bit pricey. I am not sure if I will be able to go watch Xavier play hockey on Saturday nights this year as that is by far the worst for me.
I have work to do today as a friend of mine is applying for a job where he would be my boss. I would like him to get it and have helped him out with his presentation. Mel was listening in on me as I was talking to him and I was just waiting for her to interject. She normally thinks that I am harsh and can be mean but she surprisingly agreed with everything that I said. Both of us have been in senior leadership roles so understand the requirements and she understood the politics of knowing what to say. It is a skill that you need to learn if you want to get into leadership and it is something that Xavier actually does really well. Over the last 5 years he has heard me on many work calls as I drove him to things and I wonder if he picked up on it. He can be quite eloquent and can talk at a level far higher than his age. Olivier does not have that skill and we keep on telling him that he needs to learn how to play things a bit better. On tests he will still answer that he did not learn anything from what the teacher taught because he learned it before. Xavier laughs and tells him to make something up. We need to walk a fine line between telling him to lie or to give a different version of the truth.
As the day progresses I am starting to feel better, but I have been conserving my energy and managing my physical output. Last night it was a bit tough as everything required me to calculate whether it was worth it to move at that time or wait. Today that is going away and things are a bit better. Mel and I discussed that yesterday, that not moving gave relief but I can not do that all of the time as my muscles would start to atrophy if I do it too much. There was a lot of food prep that I had to do for tomorrow and when I am in the kitchen I am not too tired, but I do pay for it when I am done. Mel cleaned up the kitchen for me after we finished that all up. I was going to make dinner, but we have so many leftovers that everyone is going to figure it out on their own. I will be a single dad for the next could of days so I should probably get all of the meals delivered. Monday it will be my parents and I will figure out what to eat later. Next weekend it is Thanksgiving and I think that we will end up having everyone here as I can rest here comfortably afterwards. My sister will be around to help out as well so either both sets of parents and my sister we should be well covered once we figure out what the menu will be.
Xavier has had a lot of hockey the last week or so and he has practice tomorrow as well. Mel has told me that I am not permitted to drive him out to practice so friends will be driving him. It might be a safe idea as I am not sure how I will be at the end of the night. I think that today will be a good test to see if I can handle this or or not on my own. It is nice that we have so many people helping out. Tuesday morning I need to drive him to school in the morning and then pick him up after. Mel will drive him and our teammates out later when our schedule comes out. I am not sure if he could have chosen a further team, perhaps Ongoing would have been further, but he gets to play with his friends which will be worth it. Final tryouts for high school are on Tuesday and that will dictate what his schedule will look like for the winter. High school hockey does not travel on the weekends and I think that most games are on Friday which makes things a bit more consistent. I am not sure if I will be able to keep any stats or setup cameras for him this year. Even if I can set it up physically I am not sure if cognitively I will be able to track it all. I think that I need to go through a couple of treatment cycles before we figure out Spain. Tomorrow I will be meeting with my oncologist to probably discuss how this treatment is going. Mel will not be there so everything will be awesome. In reality I can deal with these inconveniences and will figure out a way to get through some of the harder things. For this weekend if I struggle I will have the kids to help me out. I am posting this earlier today for my fans who read this at night, now they do not need to wait as generally i try to post by 10:30 which is when I try and go to bed. A lot of it is dictated by when I can write down my thoughts.
Dr. Mach