Why am I blogging at 3 in the morning on a late Saturday night / early Sunday morning? Because blogging often helps me organize my thoughts and get them “out of my head” so I can focus on other things. It’s not a long post, don’t worry. The last month has been interesting for progress and pauses on progress on various projects, so maybe it’s more that the month has been a roller coaster and this week just accentuated the variability. I’ll talk more about the month later, but this week was enough on it’s own.
I started off sick. The previous week, I seemed to be fighting something. I had a bit of a scratchy throat at times, a bit of a headache, I was more tired than usual, often sleeping after supper, even though my stomach and other stuff seemed fine. I wasn’t sure what it was as I generally felt “okay”, but the sleep was more unusual in style/form than incidence.
Friday afternoon, I started to crash and all weekend I was sick. The only thing that helped was sleeping. Some bit of flu, no COVID result, all good. I was off Monday and Tuesday from work, which was part of the coaster ride, trying to keep some big projects going that my team is leading, while trying to make sure that my being off wasn’t going to delay them. I worked a couple of hours each day, but was otherwise down for the count.
On Wednesday, I was back to work and we had some good news to celebrate at home. Andrea’s latest bone marrow results are in, and while there are three elements for her type of cancer to indicate “status”, she previously had already passed two of them with flying colours. The last test / element was to see if her bone marrow was cancer-free or not. TBH, most of the time, people with her type of cancer do NOT get an “all clear” sign for this element. There’s almost always SOME residual signs of the cancer in the bone marrow. Andrea’s results? All clear. Which means three green lights = full remission. We were expecting “ALMOST full remission”, but there was no caveat on the results. She hasn’t heard “FULL” from her doctor yet, but as her sister said, “Be the unicorn!”. The one that gets a full remission diagnosis. She still has some pills to take as part of the protocol, and three more tests in the next five months, but then she’s “done” everything for now with the hope of a very long wait to potentially have to have another round when it comes back. We’d like to dream “IF it comes back”, but well, that’s not a realistic dream for this type of cancer. It is generally “ALMOST always” coming back at some point, anywhere from 3 to 10+ years. We’re obviously hoping for a new record. Go Unicorn, go!
Unfortunately, our excitement was tempered by the news that Andrea’s aunt had been taken to the hospital with abdominal pain that ended up being quite serious. Extreme surgery later, she was in an ICU; more complications, back to surgery, back to ICU. And then the reality that she was not going to recover from this experience. She passed away on Thursday around lunch our time. We did not see that one coming. She was 73, and far too young for us to lose her. I know, cuz my dad was only 69 when he passed. Hey! There’s a thought! Maybe her and my Dad can play some card games. That would be a hoot. 🙂
And just for fun, I’m still sick, Andrea has gone off to Peterborough for the night, there’s other stuff going on around us in the family for nursing homes and things, we had a leak in our dishwasher that dripped into our basement onto the freshly patched drywall area we just had done, we’re planning for a large bathroom renovation project, etc.
Not my favorite week by a long shot. And I keep expecting to break a rib every time I cough. I don’t even REMEMBER buying a ticket for the roller coaster, I don’t even like rides. How’s your week been?
