I am gaining weight, and it is not a good thing because the increase in weight is a bit too fast. I have gained I think 3 lbs since my last weigh in and I am concerned about that because rapid weight increase may be due to increased ascites fluid. Mel wanted me to contact the cancer center right away, but obviously the right move to do is to sit and monitor to see if my weight continually increases. If I go up another pound or two today then tomorrow I am going to call in and see. There is not much you can do to reduce the fluid buildup except having a surgery to reduce the amount of fluid. It could be what is causing me to vomit a bit more than I have been. Most likely also explain the discomfort I have in my abdomen when I stand around or do a lot of things as they are new developments. When my sister’s friends read this and suggest she takes a leave of absence to come home and help me out, I think she is useful in Toronto where she can send me food home that I can not get here. She has not done it yet, but the possibility is still there. For now I think I am fine as I tend to work all day so having her here right now is not super useful. If she stayed with my parents it would create more issues as they would wonder why she is home and would be overly concerned with me. She could stay in our office, but then it would be tough to do work. Right now I think that I will be ok. I think food intake has been maintained and has not significantly reduced. I will monitor my weight daily and see what happens.
Last night I went to bed and then woke up a bit later with a bit of acid reflux and felt like I had to vomit. Mel suggested we raise the head of a bed and she gave me the bed remote. It worked quite well and made things much better. We are now sleeping with the bed elevated a bit. Mel said that when she was pregnant that this helped her out. Her advice was great and worked well. I wish someone would have provided me advice to not get stomach cancer prior to 2020. This would have made my life so much easier. Another friend suggested a gel seat and that has worked well. One of the doctors told me to wear compression gloves or something during treatment to help reduce neuropathy during treatment. I have some heated warming glove liners arriving tomorrow that have openings for the finger tips. We will see how those work out. I am not sure how many sessions of chemo I will have at the moment, but do know that it will be for the rest of my life at I think either a 2 or 4 week interval. It is hard to say if more or less is better at this point but hopefully it helps to keep things in check.
Yesterday we had people from Mel’s family attend Xavier’s hockey game. He was not on his game yesterday and was fighting the puck. His saves were not clean and he was giving up rebounds or not always tracking where the puck was going properly. The warmup that the team does is brutal as the team does not warm up teh goalie properly, players try to pick the corners and score, or do not have great accuracy. They should be giving lighter shots on the goalie and hitting them to get a feel for the puck instead of trying to score. His first shot was a breakway to low blocker side. A difficult area to save and where they tell most players to shoot. He did adapt and stopped several shots to that area afterwards. He should have saved it but he had drifted slightly to the side was was not necessarily at the proper angle. Last year we had a grandparent in the stand that would always say, “holy moly, we’ve got a goalie.” What we noticed was whenever this person said this, within a minute or so they would score. When they scored it would not even be a good goal, but some weird goal or a screened or something that the goalie would not have an easy time scoring. This happened for both kids and there were times when we heard her say that and I would like at the other goalie parent and cringe. Inevitably there would be a goal and we would go from having the lead to a tie or loss. At the game, my brother-in-law said that and he did not think that it was going to be an issue. As soon as I heard I screamed no!!!!!! He asked why and then Mel told him why and they thought well maybe they will not be cursed this year. Well 1 minute in they scored and then a minute later they scored again. They concluded that the curse was true. I am not superstitious, but whenever I hear that change I cringe now and am just reminded of last year. It was a very clear pattern that happened, but realistically they were bound to score because it happens when our goalie is keeping the team in the game and the team is not providing any support. At some point the armor is going to crack and a goal will occur. It is still a curse and I always associate it with such negativity.
Sudbury has a lot of Italian immigrants so a lot of the food that is prepared is generally along pasta and that. Our fridge right now is stocked with different pasta, and it is great. One of my favorite dishes is actually very simple spaghetti and meatballs, but I can eat so little of it and depending on the pasta it sometimes sits well and sometimes does not. Higher quality pasta normally is fine, but cheaper mass produced does not. I am not sure if it is the preservatives or what but the more natural food that I eat sits much better. I need to remind Mel to go to the Ukrainian church to pick up cabbage rolls for us and pierogies for the kids. I much prefer Ukrainian cabbage rolls as they are mainly rice with some meat as opposed to the ones you generally get from other places which is primarily meat with a bit of rice. My best friend growing up was Italian/Ukrainian so that is what I grew up eating. It is like when my parents make some Spring rolls. He grew up eating them made with rice paper which is a completely different texture as the spring roll wrappers. Spring roll wrappers have a different flavour and texture and are far easier to make, but the rice paper is superior. What you grow up eating is what your preference is. Mel’s family loves their butter tarts super runny, while Melanie and myself prefer ones that do not drip and run out of the butter tarts. I think that I am craving simple food from my childhood that gives me warm memories. Tonight we are going to my parents for dumplings and tomorrow I will make something with chicken. What we have been doing is I cook the chicken breast really simple in just salt and pepper and then I slice it up thinly. I will use it in a meal. but then the kids use the leftovers for their own food and it goes relatively quick once we have it in the freezer. My mom always tells me that she can do it, but when she does she always add sugar to the seasoning and I tell her repeatedly no. It is fine when it is for an Asian dish, as the base sauces are soy sauce and oyster sauce, but not as well for other cuisines. She never remembers and keeps on doing it so it is not as useful. One day hopefully she remembers. I need to make sure I learn how to cook things from her or the kids can learn from her. My sister and myself know how to do a lot of them, but not everything. Time flys by when you are not looking.
Q