Category Archives: cancer

Be Out Of Your Mind

In this intellectual age where we stick six year olds behind desks to ‘school’ them, where most people work in dreary incandescent lit offices and we eat fast food because it is fast and easy.

Today, I throw out a direct challenge – BE OUT OF YOUR MIND!

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Tonight, my mind fights for every ounce of sense to understand what my mom is going through. But instead, I choose to FEEL deeply as her body heaves and moves. I choose to hold her close and just be present.

Tonight, my mom fights to think of any food that will soothe her weary GI tract. I choose to be OPEN and not push. I let go and allow her space to listen to her body.

Tonight, as we think the cool north wind is threatening of snow, we FIGHT the cold together. Mom hunkered down under a beautiful quilt warmed up in the dryer and a warm cloth comforting her numb feet.

Tonight, I choose to STAY close even if the smell and sounds make my mind want to flee.
I choose to be.
To pray.
To listen.
To be God’s servant.
To serve the woman who birthed me, who loves me unconditionally and who wiped my vomit stained mouth many times.

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Tonight, I AM where I am.
Out. of. my. mind.
Some things do NOT make sense. Don’t even try!
*this might take longer than five minutes.

Be Climbing Your Mountain

Mom is climbing a huge mountain this week. This is probably one comparable to her first week in the hospital. We are at the very least in the same formidable mountain range. We are hoping to head down into the valley for a rest soon. Soon. When? No one knows.

This mountain involves nausea (oh how she hates getting sick!), pain in her lower abdomen, inability to eat or drink much. Mom went in on Wednesday to the cancer clinic to get a couple of bags of IV fluid.

Mom is now in the hospital again, hopefully just for the day. She is getting great treatment in the ER – more fluids and good ol’ morphine.

Update: mom went home at 4pm after two bags of fluid. Still nauseous though.

Climb your own mountain today. You can do it one step at a time. Trust God. Look for Him. He loves us all.

Here’s my new favourite mountain in Ktown and my peeps who have made the trek up in the last few weeks.

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Be an ‘Old’ Friend.

A friend sticks close no matter the weather.

A friend tells you when they are in town even if they can’t see you.

A friend uses her professional singing voice to sing your boys a bedtime song.

A friend drives ten hours on their holidays to come help you.

A friend asks about your mom and listens to the answer.

A friend loves you AND your family no matter the behaviour.

A friend bakes spelt buns just because.

A friend delivers food to the hospital and home.

A friend phones to check in, but doesn’t say “how are you?” because this makes you bawl your eyes out.

A friend cries with you when you get the prognosis.

A friend lets them hug you for a long time.

A friend pray unceasingly, even if it is the same prayer over and over.

A friend helps even if you haven’t seen them in twenty years or two hours.

A friend brings wine.

A friend climbs a mountain one day and walks with you another day.

A friend loves.

A friend is lovingly brutally honest.

A photo of just a few of our dear friends that have touched our lives and kept us strong through this time of change.

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Mom started her third chemo yesterday. She is struggling with nausea, eating and the extreme fatigue. Surgery is booked for October 31st in VCity.

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Be Wordy on the Weekend

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This quote reminded me of my dad’s comment this week about our family being in God’s hand. This is the billboard from the church down the street.

Mom met for the first time yesterday with her Gyno-oncologist from Vtown. We received both good and bad news and continue to live in shades of grey (in God’s hand of course).

Here’s the play-by-play recap of the appointment: (my friends always laugh at my sports lingo, so I had to throw some in here to lighten the moment.)

– Mom’s cancer is responding “excellently” to the chemo. (Excellent was what the CAT scan report said.)
– they still cannot give us a diagnosis til after the surgery.
– the goal of the chemo is to put the cancer into remission for as long as possible. (At least until baby OC gets married?)
– mom is moving forward with chemo on Tuesday
– mom will have surgery 500 kilometres away in Vtown. I am not sure how she is getting there – anyone want to loan us a motor home?
– I am sad and optimistic.

Life changes quickly.

Enjoy the one YOU have.

Consume less stuff.

Be with YOUR peeps and consume them.

What a gift my mom and dad are.

Be Diagnosing and Prognosing

Tomorrow, my mom will finally receive her ‘official’ diagnosis and prognosis. I am not sure what they are going to tell us.

I am going in completed blind.

I sit in fear and trembling, with a humble heart at all the possibilities of this disease called cancer.

My dad told me the other day that God has us in the palm of his hand.

In preparation for tomorrow, I have my list of questions. M, my sister, has her list. My mom wants to know her surgery date in Vtown and my dad is hoping to hear mom’s prognosis.

Friday.
10:45am Pacific Standard Time.
Let the healing journey continue.

Be Going for a Walk

I have managed to gain over twenty pounds in the last three months. Quite a feat as this is approximately how much I gained during my nine months of pregnancy. And no I am not pregnant this time around for those wondering folks.

I am happy to say that mom’s weight has stabilized in the last two days. She also ate pizza with us tonight. We had to replace the tomato sauce with pesto and she gobbled it all up. (Tomato is hard on her mouth, esophagus, stomach.)

After dinner, mom rested while we played downstairs. Then JC convinced Nana to go out for a walk. No sooner did I have my shoes on then mom and JC were at the end of the road and into the field overlooking the lake.

Beautiful.
Peaceful.
Incredibly inspiring.
Going for a walk.

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Papa and his OC.

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Did we hear a snake? Nope just a quail.

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Super fast CC is hard to get a photo of these days.

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Now, if my mom can get off the couch to go for a walk, I know that I can at least do that as well. Thanks for the continual inspiration mom.

Be Putting Your Microwave in a Corner (on the floor!)

Having guests in your home always helps you to look at your habits and why you do what you do.

I have never felt good about possibly one of the greatest inventions of our time: the microwave. I rarely use it, probably less than once per week. You can probably tell this by the placement of this machine in our home.

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As my mom struggles to eat, we are challenged as a family to get the MOST nutritious high protein foods in every spoonful that goes into mom’s mouth.

This week, I have been personally challenged to find out about this machine that I didn’t really understand.

But here is what I found out:
– it uses microwaves (this made me laugh) to bounce around in a metal box to heat things up.
– creates hot spots in food or “steam explosions”.
– microwaving in plastic has shown to release toxins into the food.
– decreases the nutritional value of food that is heated up
– differences in opinions on whether it changes the food on a molecular level.
– great for disinfecting you kitchen dish cloth.
– for a product that sits in nine out of ten homes, there is little research on its safety in terms of how they are made or even work.

What am I going to do? Me, I am going to continue to use it as little as possible. How about you? What do you do when you read something like this?

Update: Sexy Neck has moved the microwave to the unfinished basement. I haven’t seen it since. It is now amongst the sea of boxes. I do see him head downstairs with a cold cup of coffee every once in awhile that mysteriously comes back hot.

Be Looking for Balloons and Book Clubbers

I dropped our middle guy, CC, off for his first day of preschool and then saw this out the window.

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Tonight, I was able to see light and hope in my mom’s beautiful blue eyes.

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Then I was fortunate to end the evening with my magnificent book Clubbers sitting in a candle-lit garden talking about a book, life, kids and other miscellaneous topics. Glory.

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