Over the last couple of days since I have found out about the spread of the cancer I have been doing well with my eating. For the most part I have erred on the side of caution and kept my intake low at each meal. This morning i decided to push it a bit more and I think that I may have pushed it a bit too far. A lot of this is mental where I can seem to control things if I actively concentrate on it and relax a bit. I am not sure if the ascites buildup is increasing, stable or decreasing but besides this morning I was able to handle this all fairly well. Knowing what the cause was has made it easier mentally as it provides me something to focus on. Within 5 or 10 minutes of just relaxing and focusing on my breathing I can get it under control and the nausea reduces significantly. While I was working and randomly looking things up I had seen some quotes. I saw a quote from my old friend Confucius, “The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” There are stories about people who have built trails through mountains one stone at time at the benefit of their village. I think that rings true when you go through something like this. Do not worry too much about things that are outside of your control, and what are the small repetitive things that you can do to slowly erode the problem away.
Once treatment starts with chemo I am going to lose my hair. Once upon a time I had thick hair that was super coarse and now I have this fine hair like a newborn baby. When the treatment starts I will get my head shaved. I had purchased some wigs last time. Long luxurious white locks so I could look like one of the old Asian guys in the Chinese action movies. I do have a robe somewhere and I was planning on going into treatment with the Buddhist robes. If I can find them then I will wear those in. There is the possibility that Mel got rid of them since I have not worn them for a while. I remember the fatigue from chemo and I use to bring my laptop in and work from there. A portion of the fatigue is a physiological response as your body is fighting and trying to recover while another is mental.
Today’s entry is going to be a bit later than I anticipated. Xavier had a migraine today and did not go to school. He spent the whole day sleeping in his pitch black room with the lights out. I went to check on him a couple of times and he was sleeping. In the afternoon I went to pick up Olivier from school and Mel worked from home in the afternoon. Luckily she did and she answered a call from a private number. We received a phone call from Princess Margaret Cancer Research to come in for a visit Friday morning at 10am. We rarely check our voice mail when we are not home and luckily the phone call was answered. This proceeded a bit faster than I had anticipated as we had just spoken about potential clinic trials on Monday. It may take up to two hours so the trip may be 4 hours. My sister has the day off and will watch Olivier and Xavier will be taken care of between several parents. We also have some food for him so he could make food for himself at the hotel or I could order food in for him. Hopefully this goes well, but if it does it means that I will be traveling to Toronto on a regular basis for treatment. We are not sure how that is going to work yet, but we will figure it out. The thing with clinical trials is that not everyone gets the treatment and you may end up a control. If I am a control I am going to be an outlier and break the norm and get better. Regardless of which I get, I will overcome this. The intent is to see if the trial is better than the known treatment option. With any treatment I plan to beat the odds. Since my vomiting incident on Monday I have been able to manage food intake and regulate everything. This will continue as long as I can and when problems arise, I will figure out the adjustments required.
I know that people want to reach out to Mel and myself but they are unsure if they should or not. If you have my number you are more than welcome to contact us. If we are busy we may not answer, otherwise hearing a friendly voice is always a positive. If you are not positive and need cheering up than you should 100% call and we will do all that we can go help you out. If you got my number randomly from graffiti on a wall or you purchased it from a scan list, you hit the jackpot and I will always entertain talking to you. I love chatting with scam callers. I try to make their day by going along with the script, but they tend to hang up on me when I show excitement for the phone call. I am just trying to spread some joy in the world. It is evident that we have a lot of support and love from everyone. We can see it through the little actions that are unseen by people d as well as the grand gestures of love. Tomorrow is going to be a hectic day but I will give an update when I can tomorrow. It may end up being late like today. People who have subscribed to the premium update service will get notifications prior to others. Please like and subscribe to my Patreon for minute by minute play by play by Mel.
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P.S. Just a note that her play by play is verbal and you need to be standing next to her to get it. It is not very good for remote….that is probably why we are making so little money on it. I do not think she is reading this anymore so she will not defend herself.