After we were rescued by the oil tanker we were brought to Malayasia to a refugee camp. The stories that were told me by my parents were that the conditions were tough and difficult. They had some shelter, but the conditions were not great. It is difficult to think that you escape from Vietnam, survive being attacked by pirates, surviving long enough to get rescued and then entering a refugee camp where the conditiions are poor. At this stage there is no going back and you need to figure out how you are going to survive and what the next steps are, My dad had managed to smuggle some gold and things that he sold to the market for food and things. Within the camp, they would provide some rations, but the rations were the bare minimum for survival. Water and food had to be brought in and rationed for the whole community. A black market existed for things and you could trade for what you needed. I think that we were in this refugee camp for a couple of months. It is not something that I really like to ask my parents about because I find it difficult to think about what they had to go through to get my sister and myself to where we are today. Some people might want to know and understand the hardships, but I think I would rather remain in bliss. I do not like the thought of hearing stories how my parents suffered and what they gave up for us. I have seen some documentaries of life here and of the last days of life in Vietnam after the war and I personally found them difficult to watch when I see what those people went through and think that my parents were part of that group. As difficult as life was during this time, people focused a lot on hope and survival. It mirrors a bit of what I am going through now. Hope that the cancer is under control and surviving day by day. When we were in these camps they were at their most dense and I think that we were shielded from the worst of things and my parents tried to make things as good as they could for us. This is when my father changed our actual birthdays to random things he chose. When filling in paperwork he arbitrarily chose all of our birthdays. It was not until much later when my mother calculated it against the Gregorian Calendar that I found out that my real birthday is August 9th and not July 20th. I was born on August 9th at 7am.
Within Chinese culture, the dragon is an auspicious symbol and parents try and have their kids born in this year, except it only happens every 12 years so sometimes it is quite difficult. If you look at my chinese astrology I am born in the year of the Fire Dragon, in the month of the Fire Monkey on the day of the Yin Water Snake at the hour of the dragon. Fire dragons are intense with vision stubborness and refuse to live life quietly. The main signature of the fire draon is ambition, force of identify, vitality, leadership, impatience with weakness and the vision that life should mean something bigger than just surviving, The fire monkey adds cleverness, adaptabiligym problem solving, humour and mental speed. The yin water snake adds in privacy, intelligence, memory, intensity and emotional containment. The dragon hour shapes internal drive, ambition, protection, pride, legacy and the desire to build something that lasts. It amuses me that a lot of what I did in academia, within work and with my kids is my desire to build legacy, a trait that defines them. Amongst a lot of the students and employees that I have trained is increased confidence in themselves. I have grilled them so much daily that they have no fear of what questions or situations people throw at them. They believe that they can overcome any of the problems. My kids are the same way that they have inherited my genes and both of them can be quite stubborn in this sense. Kids born in the year of the dragon are prized and as first born male it was ideal and probably why I was the favorite growing up. Mel is a Wood Rat, born in the month of the Fire Ox on the day of the Yin Wood Ox. The Wood Rat is intelligent, observant, practical adaptable and quietly strategic, while the Fire Ox provides steadiness, responsibiity, endurance and a strong woth ethic. The fire provides warmt, whike the Ox gives stubborness and the ability to carry on when others would give up or complain. The Yin Wood Ox is flexible that bends and adapts and survives through persistence. Mel has the intelligence of the Rat strengthebed by the endurance and persistance of an Ox. Rat and Dragon are a strong pairing where the Dragon generates force, direction, ideas and systems while the Rat will hold the emotional and practical ground. What this would translate to, is that i bring the vision and force, and she bribgs the strategy and steadiness. I push the future forward, while she makes sure that the future has a home to return to. I am not a believer in astrology but it does amuse me to read it for entertainment. They are written so generically that they can apply to so man people. What does entertain me though is that what her horoscope says is that one of her strengths is making suring that the people within the home are held together. This is something that she does and I quite appreciate her intelligence and resilience through everything. She is quite practical, she loves planning, but when things go awry she is quite adaptable and things are never much of an issue.
I always hate fasting as it really messes up my day. I had to for my ultrasound today and the end result of it was that I missed 3 meals in the morning and since I eat a bit later in the day, it messes up my afternoon schedule as well. My evening meals will generally not be as impacted and I will be fine for that stretch. I asked the tech about the ascites build up and at first she said mild to moderate, but by the end she said that I had moderate build up. I think that I will try and have something schedueld for the Monday when we get back from Ottawa. The radiologist needs time to read it and I am gone for Thursday and Friday. I do not feel that it is impacting me all that much at the moment, but the colour of the fluid is a bit of a concern still. I am not sure exactly what that means and hopefully with the results of the CT scan we will know more about what is happening. Taste texture is not too bad today and by tomorrow I think things will be more or less back to a normal situation. I will need to check my weight today to see how it is. This morning I decided to pack up the wheelchair in case I had to park far and have to navigate through the hospital. I was lucky that I did not have to. Something I did notice which is a bit annoying is when there is a small gap between handicap spaces, cars try and squeeze into them. It happened today because it just so happened that the way tha the cars parked there was space, but it also makes it difficult if you need to get a wheelchair or something in between the vehicles. Sometimes you might be parking closer to a line to give you more space on the other side for an accessibility device.
I have a busy day tomorrow and I will need to prepare for that day accordingly. I need to make sure that I am eating every couple of hours and that I have enough food for me to last throughout the day. Sometimes I get distracted and forget to eat or drink, but what I have done is on my Mac I have it announce on the hour what time it is. This helps remind me that i should be eating or drinking. I should do this on my Windows machine as well but I am not sure if it has that functionality or not. I could write a script to do it on my phone as well, but it is only really a concern when I am working and I get too immersed within that work. This treatment cycle was actually easier than the other ones and I did more this week then I have in other weeks. I am not sure what that means exactly, as I should be more tired and in theory I should be crashing at some point but I have not as of yet. We will see how the rest of the week goes and if I have overextended myself at the beginning or not.
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