DISCLAIMER: I wrote the below some time ago (Sunday June 10th to be exact), so some of my references may already be out of date. I guess I was too tired to hit "post" at the end of it. Nonetheless I present it to you now, complete with extra CHEERS! See? I'll do it again... CHEERS! That was worth the wait now wasn't it? I think so. Cheers to ye all eh?
--
Tom
So most of you probably thought I'd dropped dead long ago, but guess what??? I'M STILL HERE!!! Turns out I'm just lazy! That and life seems to still be keeping me busy (what with all the taking of the pills and all). I'm thirsty, so I'm going to get myself a glass of cold water... BRB! {I've been told by "the youth" that "BRB" is a clever abbreviation for the phrase "be right back". Someone else told me it was the ISO 3166-1 three-letter (alpha-3) code for Barbados, but they were a computer nerd and thus not to be trusted in knowing modern slang}.
Ahhhh... Very nice. So where were we? Oh right... Acronyms, lol... jk ;)
Always good to start with the medical updates right? Am I still alive? I think by writing this very sentence I have indirectly answered your question. How am I doing? Wow you ask a lot of questions! Doing quite well actually. I'd complain about the chemo and how it has made me feel ill over these last few days, but the fact that I'm here and actually able to complain about it... reminds me that I really shouldn't complain about it. I was nauseous and ill this past round of chemo (with today being day 5 of 5... yay!), however my wife/doctor/nurse/bestfriend/chauffeur/consultant/nutritionist/green-loving-significant-other thinks that may have had something [more] to do with me giving myself food poisoning. She might be on to something there. Nicole and I have come up with some "rules" which are really a list of things to do in order to "stay alive". Among these are to:
i) always take my pills
ii) always take my pills on time
iii) always eat PROPER meals on time (with pills where appropriate)
iv) never leave the apartment in the morning without having fulfilled the above three points
Being on day #2 of chemo I managed to break those rules. I did take my Ondansetron (anti-nausea pills), as well as my Temozolomide (chemo meds), however in running late for work, I simply grabbed my "other" pills (Dexamethasone, Phenytoin, Valproic acid, and Ranitidine) and hit the road. For me "hit the road" means crossing the street to the good ol' #50513 Bus Stop to wait for my #55 or #59 to take me to work. Don't know if I told y'all, but I'm pretty much the king of the Winnipeg Transit System. I'm so good I rarely get lost getting to/from work these days. I got to take the Rapid Transit the other day! Turns out it's just a road that only busses go on. It's not that long, and I don't really see the point of it all. Is it cool? I guess. Is it $138 million cool? I'm not so sure. But I digress...
My rush to leave in the morning meant I missed the last bus that would get me to work on time (for 9:00 am). My next best alternative was to use my Winnipeg Transit App Combo Pack (which is nothing more than three or four free or really cheap apps I downloaded for my iPhone to calculate routes, find stops, and see when busses will be arriving). My best alternative route to work had me dropped off in front of a Burger King at Osborne Junction. I learned that "Osborne Junction" is really just another name for "Confusion Corner" adding to my confusion about that particular intersection. I saw an ad on the BK window that read "TWO ORIGINAL CHICKEN SANDWICHES $5!" and thought... hells ya!
This is where my mistake(s) began. I've been told by my wife that the "chicken" in the name "chicken sandwich" could be considered something between "massively deceptive" and "false advertising". It really didn't taste all that great (after eating only the healthiest of foods for well over a year, I guess my body was unprepared for the low quality food of a "2 for $5" deal at Burger King for breakfast. The chemo I'm on technically poisons all of the cells in my body while trying to focus primarily on the brain tumour cells. Nicole explained to me that the 2 OCS's could be considered a "poison for my body that make no differentiation between tumour and regular cells". My second mistake turned out to be keeping my second (uneaten) OCS in my backpack in the office (which was quite warm on this 30 degree day), very unrefrigerated. Mid-afternoon I went into my backpack for my cell phone charger only to find my uneaten OCS! To throw it out would have been a waste (ignoring all principles of "sunk cost" I learned in Economics 101), and did the only logical thing... and ate it. Nicole then had to explain to me that "mayonnaise" is made out of eggs which don't tend to keep well in warm climates over long periods of time, and that our bodies don't tend to react well to having this (along with "fake chicken") in our stomaches while already suffering the effects of being on chemotherapy. This is probably why I found myself with my head in a pail around 8pm this past Thursday. I have promised my loving wife that I will never again eat an Original (or in fact ANY) Chicken Sandwich from Burger King, and that furthermore I will stick to our "rules" in the aim of keeping me alive. Once again... my apologies love, and thanks for looking after & out-for me :)
Another update... WE HAVE A CAR!!! Those of you who don't talk to us regularly might not know we've been sans car for quite a while. Way back in the fall of 2010 my sweet sweet Hyundai Tiburon (Tim would surely agree) was falling apart. It would have been an issue had I remained healthy and in need of a car. As luck would have it, I was diagnosed with a terminal illness! That and the following seizures meant I would have no need for a car! It's what we call a "silver lining" (or what the casual reader might call a "twisted sense of humour"). Meanwhile Nicole managed to see her Honda Accord flooded and written off in the months prior to all of this. He parents (also known as my "in-laws"), who happen to be wonderful fantastical people!, lent her their Chrysler Concorde (a vehicle we liked to call "the boat"... I assume because of its submersible nature?) as they had just upgraded to a life of luxury in their new Lincoln MKZ. The Concorde would remain in our possession until a lady driving down corydon decided the car was far to undamaged and thus drove her car into the side of it when Nicole was on her way to pick me up from work, causing around $4,000 worth of damage to the car. This meant we were once again out of a vehicle. I'll gloss over the fun time of MPI deciding the car was a write-off, then changing their mind and wanting us to fix it for a lower cost, and then changing their mind and paying out the value of the damage on the car. Nicole's parents with their ESP decided to upgrade their truck in advance of this event. This meant that when the Concorde (that belonged to Nicole's parents) was written-off they were attempting to sell their Ford F150 Pickup Truck. Given that they are ridiculously and inexplicably nice to us, they lent us their truck while we searched for a new vehicle. One would question them on such a decision given our track record with vehicles and keeping them in an un-written-off state.
I could write a whole blog entry on the "fun" process of trying to buy a used car, and perhaps I will soon enough, but it is enough for me to say that we have finally found one from a reasonable person for a decent price, and so for the first time in well over a year Nicole and I are driving our very own car! Provided I can stop having my damn seizures I'll be able to drive it on the road!!! Nicole was kind enough to supervise me while I took it for a spin around a parking lot... it is a NICE car!!! What kind you ask? Again with the questions!?! It's a 2008 Ford Fusion. What colour? Do you not know my wife? It's green (of course). I should put a disclaimer that it's not as though Nicole is some unreasonable person who restricts my freedoms by keeping me from the joys of life, such as driving a new (preowned) vehicle on the road. Such is a decision I have made for a few reasons.
#1) I'm not spending all of my hard work & energy (and your taxpayer dollars... thank you Pharmacare & Today's NDP!) fighting terminal brain cancer, just to have a seizure while driving and get killed in a terrible automobile accident.
#2) Nicole is always with me, and so the choice between someone prone to seizures and someone who has never had one, the choice is clear.
#3) I really don't want to kill anyone else on the road, or even some poor innocent bunny. Just because it can't perceive the dangers of pavement that is decorated with those white and yellow lines, and my brain has neurones firing off in an abnormal and frequent fashion does not mean it deserves to die.
So both Nicole and I would love it if I could still drive, however we both realize the practical and moral obligations as good citizens.
