To escape Vietnam, you had to bribe and pay people to take you on a boat, and the boats were jam packed with people. When my parents decided to leave, they left with not only us, but 3 of my aunts and my grandmother on my mom’s side as well as my two cousins. They saved up and paid to get us taken away, and a story that I was told was my father was almost killed because someone thought that he had not paid. They separated the males and females and my mother was on another boat with my grandmother. My grandmother was trying to shield my mother so she could not see what was happening on the other boat as one of the people did not think that my dad had paid the fees. Luckily someone on the boat stepped up and said that he had paid and he was fine. The lives of the refugees were not a big concern for the smugglers are they packed the boats full so that there was barely any room. This was the first step in our adventure in leaving Vietnam and from the onset my father was almost killed. It is stories like this that makes me see my parents in a whole different light. To have the strength and resiliency to endure things like this in the hopes of a better life without knowing whether you will make it or not. You are sacrificing a lot in the hopes that you make it.
I think that some of the hardships that my parents endured make what I am going through seem easy. While we were at Costco today, I ran into a random parent on another hockey team that we had played against this year. He came up to me and said that last time he saw me I was not in the wheelchair and he asked what had happened. I told him that my cancer was back and that it was too difficult for me to traverse through Costco. He informed me that his wife’s dad had just passed away from cancer and that people do not understand the how difficult it can be unless they have someone go through it. You do not realize some of the little things until you have it taken away from you. When I could not maneuver myself and I had to rely on people pushing me around in the wheelchair it was difficult. Today I worked I think a bit longer than I should have and exhausted myself a bit this afternoon. To sustain myself today I kept on popping energy chews and energy gels as I felt my energy fading fast. I managed to get everything that I needed done so it was fine in the long run.
I ordered the pig for my pig roast on my birthday. I ordered the smallest size I could because I was not sure how many people were going to come. I woild have made it a spectacle, but there is too much fear of whether I will be able to handle things or not. I have started looking into what this all entails. I had the pig stuffed to make sure that the size of it is fairly even. I do not know much about what the BBQ pit looks like and I was too exhausted when I was ordering the pig to ask questions. He was asking me questions and I was barely answering them. At one point I thought that he was asking me why I wanted to roast a pig, but he had just asked when. I should go back in the next couple of weeks and ask some better questions so I know what is going on. He recommended that we pick up the BBQ on Friday and then the pig on Saturday morning so it can go straight from the fridge onto the BBQ so we do not need to store it. That is a wise idea because I do not have the fridge space for such a large item. If I knew that I would feel ok then I think I would get a 50 or 60lb pig and invite a lot more people, but Mel wants to err on the side of caution. We will probably end up making some chicken and if I feel well enough maybe we can smoke some brisket on the smoker as well.
My weight is increasing and today I received a phone call to schedule my ultrasound for next Monday at 10:30am. I need to fast and the point is to see if I should get drained or not. I feel that I can get drained on Tuesday and be good to go on Wednesday. I have a heavy reliance on Mel for my medication and she forgot to add in my steroids yesterday and today so we will see test to see the impact it will have when I take my white blood cell injection tomorrow. I am not sure if it will help or not, but Mel had mentioned before that I reacted better when I did not have the steroids. I think that it makes me more tired, but it does not seem to impact my appetite as I have still eaten fairly well. This is why I am not sure if I am concerned right now about the ascites build up as it has not impacted my food intake. My doctor said that the downward trend of the cancer markers has stopped and it increased slightly but we are not necessarily worried about that as the increase is just a small amount. But it makes me wonder if perhaps another trip to Spain will reduce the cancer markers more or not. It is something that is worth exploring if I have a break in my treatment here. I am supposed to have August off, so it is a potential possiblity that we go and do that treatment again. We will need to talk to all of the doctors and see what they think and hopefully the CT scan will tell us something.
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