I haven’t been blogging much in the last little while. Some of it is that I don’t feel I have much to share that is worth sharing right now. Some of it is a few practical constraints. And some of it is just life interfering.

About 10 weeks ago now, I apparently hurt my back. I say “apparently,” as I don’t remember specifically injuring it. No moment where I lifted a car to save a child and felt my back go, “Ugh.” No slipping on ice and feeling my back go in a direction it wasn’t meant to go. I vaguely recall putting on my left compression sock one day; I was turned a bit on the edge of the bed; and as I finished, my hip kind of popped. That’s a bad description, more just like the joint jerked briefly. It wasn’t like a joint cracking, nor something slipping out of alignment, more like my hip slipped back into the socket awkwardly. It felt odd, but it wasn’t painful. And it is only in retrospect that I wondered later if something happened. Because a few days later, my left lower back, just above the hip went crazy. Incredible pain. Settled down to regular twinging and spasms for 2 weeks, saw doctor, planned for physio. Then chaos ensued. I was going to the washroom, stood up, and it felt like my whole back was seized by a vise. I needed Andrea to come and help clean me up, then in the living room on a heating pad. A week later, I ended up calling an ambulance because the pain started again and wouldn’t stop. A solid 7-8 on my 10-point scale, with occasional 12s that had me literally screaming.

I got better drugs, I did some physio. But what made the most difference? Heat and a back brace / weight belt thingie from Amazon. It basically wraps around like a belt you would wear while lifting weights, and holds everything in place where it should. I’ve had twinges since then, but even on the first day of the worst pain, I could still move around if I had the belt on. Fast forward to the end of the ten weeks, and I’m feeling back to somewhat normal. I just did a trip to Peterborough/Lindsay for a funeral, and I was terrified by the likelihood of the trip plus a different bed screwing me up. Nope. I’m back home again, and feeling okay. Sure, I’m still wearing the brace a lot to be safe, but slowly emerging into movements without the physical support. Best investment I ever made.

But during that time, I’ve been spending a LOT of time on the couch in the living room as a couch potato. I definitely wasn’t looking for more time in front of a computer blogging. I barely was able to make it through my work hours early on. Quite a few days I finished work, hobbled up the stairs, and sat for 2h with the heat on my lower back. The weird part? After about 5w, the left side was fine — just in time for my right side to flare up. Sigh. Anyway, I haven’t been able to be at my computer much, so no blogging. I haven’t even really been responding to email or texts, just short notes.

Which brings me in part to the title of this post. You’ll occasionally see amateur philosophers trying to wrestle with some ancient themes like the difference between a life well lived and living well. Or in my case lately, more like “well, living”. In my brain, I am often thinking about growing, learning, goal setting, etc. Instead, I’ve been figuring out which show to binge that I would not get bored with quickly. ST: Voyager, ST: DS9, CSI: Miami, Lucifer, The Flash, and another 20 or so are in my on-going queues. Andrea has even joined me for NCIS: LA, which back when it was part of my live watching, was always at the bottom of my list compared to just about any other new show. It’s okay. Pretty formulaic, interspersed with soap opera crap that I would normally fast-forward through but you can’t really do that when watching with someone else if you want to stay married. Put the remote down! hehehe

But this past week, we had to go to Lindsay for a funeral. Uncle Scott, Andrea’s mother’s brother, passed away 2 weeks ago and they scheduled the service this week to give time for everyone to make it over. I’ll share some links in the future, probably a whole separate post about his life, but while I was sitting in a pew reflecting on his life, and my own, I came back to the old chestnut. Is it better to live a life well or to have a well-lived life? They are not the same. One looks more like living every moment to the fullest, grabbing every opportunity that comes your way. The other might look like someone who is happy with their life in whatever form that is (a warm family, healthy bank account, big house, or lots of friends). For what it’s worth, Uncle Scott did both. Andrea’s eulogy talked about how if you ever wanted to see someone learn to water ski by sure force of will, regardless of whatever obstacles the universe had placed in his path, it was seeing Uncle Scott do it. And his infectious smile that made everyone feel better just being near him. An innocence of spirit that we all lose over life, but which Uncle Scott kept. More on that later.

But for me, I don’t feel like I’m doing any of the three. I am not particularly living well, ensuring a well-lived life, or even “well, living”. My sense of mortality is stronger than it used to be. Some depression has lingered longer than it should have been allowed to visit. And some of that is just a series of things…the pandemic. Andrea’s cancer. And a ton of stuff over the last six months for Jacob. With no clear answer or cause.

I often hesitate to talk too much online about Jacob’s stuff because it is not my story to tell. I try to focus on how I’m dealing with other people’s stuff, what I’m thinking, what I’m dealing with myself, etc. But it is difficult to do so without talking about him and the load he’s facing. Basically, to the extent this is the diagnosis, Jacob likely has a concussion. Some symptoms fit, some don’t, but he never really had a head injury. We know he fell about 2w before the symptoms started, he was coming out of school, missed a step, and fell hard on his upper body. A good jolt that maybe did something else. But he had headaches constantly (now diagnosed as tension headaches) and increasing dizziness, along with fatigue etc. We’ve dealt with most of the headache stuff, at least to the extent that it wouldn’t be as debilitating, but the dizziness is messing him up. What does that mean in the grand scheme of things? It means he’s been out of school almost 5m, attending 2-5 days per month at best.

Separate from the stress of the injury, we have been dealing with a lot of chaos. Every day is a game-day call. Is he okay today? Can he go to one class? Two? All day? Nothing? Does he need a lunch? A ride at 8:30 or 10:15 or 1:30? Or rides home at 10:15, 11:30, 12:30? 1:53? Is Andrea in the office Tues and Thursday this week? Am I in the office Monday / Wednesday? If he’s home on Wednesday, can he be by himself? Is there nausea? Does someone need to stay with him? He is struggling with day to day stuff, is it fair to ask him to take a cab one way by himself? Can he handle the mental load of his own transport, on top of everything he already deals with?

For those who like sports metaphors, most of the time, it comes down to a game-day question…is he in the game today or on the bench, and am I taking him to the stadium or not?

Andrea has been handling most of the load for scheduling things, I handle transport. We switch off for who goes in with him, but since she’s been with him for the neuro conversations, often it is better for her to do the next specialist too so she can answer what the neuro said. Some we do together, if they’ll let both parents in at the same time (some are still on single parent accompaniment because of COVID protocols).

I’m not sure how much of my beliefs as a parent are derived from personal experiences and how much professional, but they are both being challenged. I have a strong personal belief in self-empowerment and helping Jacob have the best information to make good decisions that are his own, up to the level of his capacity.

In my work-mode, I would say that it is a strong belief in human rights and the right to self-determination, to make the decisions that affect your life rather than having them made for you. I did a lot of work on the UN, and interacted with children’s rights issues, as well as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. You often see references to these rights being simply summarized as “No decisions about us without us”. It often finds itself in the realm of guardianships, the role of the state for children or persons with disabilities who cannot “stand for themselves” legally for whatever disqualification is in the statutes…age, infirmity, whatever. Yet it could equally apply to reproductive rights or MAID. Nothing about us without us.

For Jacob, that means I strongly push for him to be the person they see as the decision-maker, with Andrea and I more and more as trusted advisors. He is smart and has a good head on his shoulders, with a good heart. I trust him to be him. Yet when it comes to 8:00 a.m. in the morning and he is saying he is too sick to go to school, the V&E questions hit…do I trust him to be judging that completely correctly, that he really can’t go, or do we disregard it as mere teenage resistance and “force” him to go? A concussion is not something you just beast your way through, but you also can’t just wait until your brain feels better. If you don’t push at all, you don’t heal.

Some days it is draining, other days it is stressful, most days it is both. And we’re not even the one with the issue.

I have been feeling a sense of loss of control in recent weeks. That we don’t have a handle on his recovery. However, to be more accurate, I mean that I, myself, do not have a good handle on his recovery and what we’re actually accomplishing. Andrea’s doing awesome for her contribution, but also struggling under the load. I feel like I want to push more, do more, see better results, help him more than I am. I want to manage things more, maybe with no better results, but at least less of a sense of helplessness and less of a sense of deferring too much to Andrea’s mental load. The back stuff knocked me off my game for 10w. Hell, there were days when, even with the back brace on, I couldn’t load the dishwasher or do laundry (two of my main household tasks). Andrea’s been picking up my slack too. Sigh.

Anyway, where was I going with this? Oh yeah. We have some glimmers of what’s going on, we have some plans we can implement to make things better. And while we have a bit more uncertainty than we would like for some possible surgery over the summer (unrelated to the concussion), I am primed to take leave to help J with rehab. In the meantime, I’m trying to organize my thoughts on how to help him. And we can’t keep juggling work schedules and personal schedules.

So, I’m going to take three weeks off to do almost nothing except help Jacob when needed. Even if that means taking him to school for an hour and sitting in the parking lot waiting for an hour or two until he has to leave. After that, we’ll hopefully know what is happening for the surgery. But, for a short break, at least it will alleviate some of the juggling.

It isn’t living well, nor even well-lived, but hopefully it is something better than simply “well, living”. Fingers crossed (btu hten I typf lke hist, so maybe I won’t cross them).

Somewhere in this universe, if life after death exists, my father is rolling over in his grave. Or rolling his eyes, shrugging his shoulders, throwing up his hands…whatever the ghosts do when they see their descendants doing stuff that they think is ridiculous.

And it is NOT my father’s fault. Let me be clear. He tried to raise me right. He taught me the rights and wrongs at an early age, the benefits of doing things right the first time or at least having duct tape nearby. Well, to be totally candid, industrial duct tape or white fibreglass tape. But he taught me. Ish.

To wield a hammer, to build sheds, etc. None of them were particularly PRETTY when done, but his builds were at least presentable. Mine? Not so much. My poor workman abilities are not limited to carpentry. I suck at drafting, machine shop, plumbing, automotive, bird nest removal, eavestroughs, Xmas light mounting, etc. About the only thing that I’m decent at for some of this stuff is electrical, and I know enough to know how dangerous it would be for me to do actual wiring. For something like a ceiling fan, I could, in fact, work out the wiring, but I wouldn’t have a clue how to ensure the fan itself would stay mounted on the ceiling.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I understand the theory. But everything I do in this regard goes slightly, umm, awry. Let me digress for another minute. In my bathroom, aka our main bathroom, there is a simple brushed nickel towel rack. If you’ve ever put up a towel rack, you’ll know that there are 3 or 4 main designs for how the rack attaches to the wall. One of the most popular is a plate that attaches to the wall at each end, and the brackets that hold the bars themselves actually “slip” over the plates like a sock/sleeve to hide the screws and hardware underneath. Nice, tidy, pretty and functional. Well, unless I put it up. Then it isn’t very nice. It definitely isn’t tidy when I screw up the holes in the wall and have to use larger anchors that I expected to make sure the stuff stays in place. It isn’t pretty since the sleeves don’t go all the way to the wall to sit flush, no matter how much I fiddle with it. And it is functional in the sense that if you don’t pull it too much one way, both bars will stay up. I’ve thought about using some super glue to make sure the bars can’t move in the brackets, which would also make the whole thing more secure. But I haven’t.

That towel rack? It’s about a 5-minute job. Maybe 10. I think it took me close to 90 minutes, and it looked like crap. We can do IKEA stuff, and assemble other things, all good. But designing my own stuff like a bookcase? Sure, it’ll be functional. But it won’t be something you want in your living room with your nice furniture. I’m a “functional garage bookshelf” kind of carpenter.

And even if I could get past the quality issues, the frustration is always off the scale. I dread doing any of these projects as I know they are NOT going to go the way they’re supposed to…if this was a sitcom, I’d be the guy who attempts to fix his toilet to save $30 and ends up with a $600 plumbing bill to fix his mistakes.

Enter the simplest project that I can’t do well

If you think of all the little things you could do around the house and then rank them for ease, most functionally-literate trades laypeople, aka homebodies who do things themselves, would rank hanging pictures on a list of things anyone can do. Oh, sure, people will say they have no idea how to do colour schemes, or things won’t be level, but they generally are willing to do it and adjust.

My experience has been more one of frustration with anything bigger than a calendar. I frequently will plan ahead, particularly as I am frequently hanging on drywall. So, if it’s small, a simple nail will do. Beyond that, the only thing that has consistently worked for me is to drill a small hole, put in a wall anchor, put in a screw, and voila! One wall plug/anchor to hold everything! Well, almost everything. Oh, who am I kidding? Most of the time it doesn’t hold ANYTHING I wanted it to hold. Not shelving units to the wall, not shelves on the wall, not heavy stuff that hangs. It just doesn’t stay.

Flash back some 11 years, we moved in, and one of the things we wanted to hang was a painting we bought in Hintonburg a few years ago. We had it hanging over our fireplace at the old house, and to be honest, it worked as I drilled holes in brick and used hard-core plugs that could have been used to mount exercise equipment. The whole house would fall down before those things came out. Anyway, it was up. But when we moved, we weren’t exactly sure which room we wanted it in, the family room or the living room, but likely the living room. Yet I have had no confidence that whatever I put in the wall would hold. It’s not super expensive art or anything, but it’s significant to us both for the cost and the sentimental value. We bought it ourselves while doing a local art tour, and we enjoyed buying something “together” for our new home at the time (two houses back).

So, it got put in a box with a bunch of other stuff we wanted to hang but weren’t sure where or how, and we basically ignored all of it. For the last 11 years, the stuff has sat. Some of it was visible and enjoyed without being fully mounted; others were just in boxes.

And things probably would have drifted along that way with our naked walls until we eventually die or move. Or both. Except in the fall, Andrea and I were out running errands in Barrhaven, I wanted a small couch pillow, and there was a small furniture store in the plaza we were in, so why not check there? We did, found one, and all good. But while we were in there, we happened to notice a framed painting on the wall. It’s commercially generated, sure, but it was nice. A landscape by the sea that both of us noticed and thought, “Wow, that’s pretty good, actually.” We can afford stuff by real artists, I won’t pretend this is exceptional art, but we really both liked it.

So I went back in when Andrea was out another night and ordered it for her for Christmas.

Let me digress with a small story

The store called to say it was “in” and that I could pick it up. The lovely young lady who had served me called me and left a message, and then called a week later and got me, and was about to call a third time when I finally made it one afternoon after school with Jacob. The intent was that Jacob and I would put it in the back of our compact SUV, and it would be from the two of us to her. Great. Got there at 4:00, paid for it, picked it up and realized it was actually a lot bigger in person than the one that appeared on the bare store wall. No worries, we have a Rogue, we’ll be good. Nope. It didn’t fit in the back diagonally (it was off by about an inch to be comfortable), and it couldn’t go in across the back seat vertically (about 4″ too long). And you don’t want to “force” a painting to fit. 🙂

I called a cab, told them I had a large painting, and that I needed a van. Someone showed up with an SUV that was even smaller than ours. I called back and said a minivan would do, it didn’t have to be an actual van, but no joy. Talked to the store and the assistant manager, but not much in the way of options from them. We could return it and have it shipped from the warehouse directly to my house (which I hadn’t been offered originally and would have said no to anyway because I wanted it to be a surprise when it arrived), but that wasn’t going to work well for logistics or timing. What other options did I have? Oh, right. Home Depot rents vans so people can carry large purchases home themselves. Or wood sheets. They’re large enough to carry 4×8′ sheets easily, so the painting would fit fine. It was 4:45 p.m., and the store closed at 6. The race was on! I dropped Jacob at home, raced to Home Depot, rented a van, drove to the suburb in the rain and dark skies, grabbed the painting, took it home, dropped it off, raced back to Home Depot for a time duration, and turned it back over. All done. By just after 6:00, and a total rental cost of…wait for it…$28, including taxes. It was cheaper than a cab, actually. Anyway. Got it home, it was done, and hiding it easily for six weeks was out of the question. I had to tell Andrea not to go into a specific area of the basement until after Christmas.

But with Christmas over, and a new large painting to hang, along with other stuff that really should be on the wall, what was the poor excuse for a handyman to do?

Time to get noodling.

One gig platform

Many people use various gig platforms to find jobs, but lots of people use the gig platforms to find temporary workers for specific projects. I used Fiverr to find someone to do a cover page for a book ($12 plus some tax, as I recall). I had someone assemble my exercise machine last year from Task Rabbit. There are a bunch out there for various tasks.

And I have a bunch of things I want done this year without the time or energy (or, in this case, the ability either) to get them done. Back before Xmas, I got a friend to assemble my 3D printer for me, and I’m looking forward to getting going with it in February. I’ve got some other things that have to be done before I allow myself time to play.

But I was noodling if I might have the guy who did my exercise machine come back to reassemble an exercise bike that has been disassembled since 11 years ago, too, when we moved, along with two other things that he could put together way faster than I can with less fuss and frustration. Anyway, I went on TaskRabbit, wanted to make sure he was still there, and I realized something.

I had forgotten that I ended up on TaskRabbit because that is what IKEA uses for local assembly. They basically just refer people to TaskRabbit to find someone to assemble furniture if they need that help. But they have people on there who do TONS of stuff.

Garden setup. Eavestrough clearing. Leaf raking. Assembly of furniture. Some painting if need be. Plus, a dozen other household chores.

And…wait for it…hanging stuff in your house. Drapes, curtains, pictures. Ding ding ding ding ding! We have a winner, folks!

Laying it all out first

So I knew we had about four big things that I felt were really beyond me. Two paintings in particular (new and old); a stone wall hanging from a friend that we have NEVER hung, it’s really heavy; and a larger poster in my basement (it’s a Star Wars reissue poster that references the original name for the third movie, Revenge of the Jedi instead of Return of the Jedi). But if a talented Rabbit was coming in to do those four, and there’s usually a two-hour minimum, we asked ourselves, what else could he hang? We unpacked everything we had that could possibly be hung, and laid it all out. Some of them required new frames as the old ones were cheap or the wrong colour. Others needed frames entirely, they were prints or hangings without any case around them. We weeded some stuff for quality and tastes changing over time. There may have been a few gifts that got purged in there.

Then we went around the house with it all and put sticky notes on the wall where the picture/print/painting/wall hanging would go. Then I made a list. How many were there? Well, let’s see.

If I start in the living room, there are only two, both large paintings. The hallway to the kitchen has a Hawaiian sunset picture printed on canvas, the powder room has a small Van Gogh print we bought in Amsterdam at the Van Gogh museum sometime around 2004 / 2005 or so, and a “welcome” sign was added to the kitchen wall, and the heavy stone artwork was added to the playroom. TOTAL: 6 items

As you go up the stairs to the second floor, we decided that the big walls we have there would eventually house mostly family photos. To that end, we hung one large constellation poster that shows the sky above Ottawa on the day our son was born, and two multi-photo panels on either side of that for four on one wall, plus three more on another wall. Not all of the picture slots are filled yet, but the frames are up. TOTAL: 8 items.

Once you are upstairs, there are generally four areas that got the “TaskRabbit” treatment. The hallway has a polar bear picture and one other I can’t remember at the moment, plus a new large bulletin board that will house a new world map where we put in pins of where we have been. Given Jacob’s interest in geography and history, and travel, that will likely see some good usage over the coming years. And the main bathroom has another Van Gogh print, plus while he was here, he fixed the “PolySpecial” towel rack. TOTAL: 5 items.

The master bedroom gained a print of a moon painting done by a local Indigenous artist that did a show at Jacob’s old school, I really like his Indigenous astronomy stuff, a print of 3 pandas on clear glass, a print of a sketch by a local artist in Quebec City of the entrance to Lower Town at the base of the funicular, a small Van Gogh print in the ensuite, and a large Van Gogh print over the headboard. Oh, and he fixed our curtain rod that had come loose at some point. TOTAL: 6 items.

The big room that Andrea uses as an office already has some decoration on various shelves around, but Andrea added a wall hanging, a print, and a wooden fish (all from travel in Asia, I think), plus a small painted postcard from Twillingate when we went to Newfoundland. TOTAL: 4 items.

The guest room gained four items from Andrea’s travels, with a Van Gogh print from Amsterdam, a painting of a house in Jamaica, a wall hanging of an elephant in fabric that we framed, and a wooden carving from Australia. TOTAL: 4 items.

We offered more options for Jacob’s room and office area downstairs, but he has lots of things up on the walls, mostly with tacks and things (posters, pennants, etc.), so he was good.

Which leaves me in the basement. I had him hang two diploma frames (Trent, Carleton), an achievement award I got from RASC for service to the astronomy club, the Star Wars poster I mentioned, a brand new large magnetic whiteboard, a picture frame with space for about 8 small prints in it that I will print on my colour printer soon, and a Van Gogh print in my bathroom.

Then I come to three kinds of special paintings to me that are not worth much money at all. I bought them in 1992 in Victoria when I was at law school. We went out for dinner one night and we all went downtown. It was February, and cold by Victoria standards, but we went and wandered around the harbour. There was a performance artist in his 20s doing spray paint art. Those who are handy in this type of endeavour consider it fairly easy as you aren’t trying to paint a realistic picture, but more representational art. I’ll describe the easiest painting as I saw him do it first in about 20 minutes.

First, he took three areas of the painting and painted a bunch of colours on top of each other to make three big blobs — one mostly green, one more yellowish and one more red. With some white mixed in, he smeared all three to give the sense of motion across the surface. Streaks basically. Then he put three small paper plates over them of differing sizes to cover what was under them. But the plates didn’t cover all of it, more of a subset of each blob. Then he sprayed the whole painting super dark black, going over the plates. When he removed the plates, he had perfectly round circles underneath that had these smeared/streaked designs on them. Then he took white paint (actually, I think he did this before removing the plates) and sprayed his fingertips and just flicked it at the black matte. It made it look like stars. He worked for 20 minutes and had this freshly spray-painted space image with three cool-looking planets, stars everywhere against a black background. I loved it. I think it cost me $15 to get it.

Then he did another one while we watched. This one was a bit more surreal, where you were looking out at a universe from a watery surface of an alien planet, there were comets streaking by, but the foreground planet was really cool. There are some sci-fi and fantasy elements in it, the colours are quite different, as are the techniques. I had to own that one too. It was one of the coolest things I had ever seen done.

And then he did a third space one just before we left. It is a large circle (like a portal) at the top, and in the portal, you can see a lake/river, some small mountains, a giant pyramid behind them, a setting planet behind that in the sky, and a sun starting to emerge from behind the planet. But the portal drains into the lower half of the painting, where there is a surreal alien vista with weird mountain formations and a lake. And he used streaks downward to simulate a waterfall from top to bottom. Plus used his thumbnail to add some birds flying in front of the waterfall. It was an extra $5 to get that one, so I spent $50 in total for the night. Having no idea what I was doing, I just knew I had to own these prints.

Are they high art? Absolutely not. But they were amazing to watch, I’ve now owned them over 30 years, and this is the first time I have had all three up simultaneously. We replaced the cheap frames I bought 20 years ago for two of them with only slightly more expensive but nicer ones from Michael’s. The portal one? I had that framed way back in 2002 or 2003, and it cost me close to $100 on some big discount sale at the time, five times the cost of the painting itself. But it blows me away. I can’t look at any of the three without a sense of wonder of “what’s out there”. Long before I rekindled my love for space, paintings like these resonated in my soul. TOTAL: 10 items.

That’s the ball game, folks

41 items hung, and 2 hanging items were fixed. We spent about $300 at Michael’s buying new frames, even with their perpetual framing sale. And then another $260 for the 4 hours the guy was here today. A little over $500 and more than 40 items hung, many of which have been waiting for 11 years or maybe 30 if you include the space paintings.

A pretty good deal for someone who couldn’t do it right or well himself. A friend mentioned she thought it was good money too since her and her husband take an hour to hang one item!

Andrea supervised the roll-out today while I worked, but I popped upstairs regularly to check on how it was going. The painting in the living room was a big wow for me, and the pics in the stairwell were big for Andrea. Jacob hasn’t pronounced on it yet. I look forward to people being able to come over this year and not see naked walls everywhere.

Oh, and while he was here? I knew he ran a general contracting business of his own, he’s only been with Task Rabbit since last spring/summer as a client of his kept bugging him to join. In the first 4-5 months of being on the site, he made $50K. Less some basic parts costs, I assume, as he came with ALL the hardware for hanging things and chose different hardware for various types of items to hang. But I digress. I knew he was a contractor and did other stuff, so I had him look at a problem I have with my ceiling from when the air conditioner lines were removed by a young gun with no idea what he was doing. He’ll give us a separate quote, and we’ll probably have him come in next week to fix that over two days. We chatted about how to shape the ceiling, and he talked to us about our laundry room, too, all good.

He was awesome, and we’ll use him again. I just won’t wait 11 years to end up writing a cheque.

I’ve blogged before about what I call my “internal detection system”. I feel like I know myself pretty well, having ripped apart my psyche at age 29 and stripped it down to the studs before slowly rebuilding it and putting it back together. I did it on my own in the sense that I bounced ideas off friends rather than using a professional-trained therapist, and while it should have come with a warning, “Don’t try this at home. Closed course. Unprofessional driver.”, the real outcome was that my internal system responds to being poked by me.

Take for example something really inane like, umm, going to a store and being upset by something that happened with another customer going through the line. Most of life is pretty obvious why something bothers you, but maybe sometimes it isn’t. In those circumstances, when I’m reviewing my day mentally, I might go, “Hmm…why did that bother me? Was it because of X?” And then my internal system responds. If the radar lights up, yep, that’s what it was and why.

A lot of people have this, but for me, it is finely tuned to my own vagaries. I don’t want to know that it bothered me that a person was rude to someone else, that’s more of a level 1 response, I want to know if at level 2, was I bothered because I felt it was undeserved (even if none of my business) and the person was just being unreasonable. Or perhaps a level 3 type response where I had thought the second person deserved SOME sort of response, and yet I thought it was too rude, but then I sort of felt culpable because I thought they deserved something. Or maybe I am reacting at level 4 because it reminds of how I interacted with someone in the past, etc. While I am more than capable of turning myself into a squirrel, I can work through the various deeper responses in about 10 seconds flat. I’m not agonizing over trivial matters, I’m just reviewing why something bothered me to see if maybe my body or mind is trying to tell me something else. Occasionally, I joke with myself that is more of an “emotional resonance scan” (borrowing from MRI and CAT scan terminology).

But, as I said, it works pretty well. About 95% of the time, I can exactly pinpoint what it is about something that is resonating. It’s not perfect, and I can miss stuff if I’m emotionally blocked for some reason (like with grief) or overly-emotionally invested in an outcome. But the rest of the time? Poke 1 — is it X? No. Poke 2, is it Y? No. Okay, Poke 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 is it ABCDEFGHI….?

A partial resonance response

This was a big week in Casa PolyWogg. As you will know from reading my blog, Andrea has been in chemo since March, going for back-to-back doses every 4 weeks for six cycles. This week was the last week, cycle 6. A big deal just for that alone.

But she had two other appointments on top of that, I had to go into the office one day, I was meeting a coworker for coffee while I was there, and oh yeah, I’m working on a huge report for work that needed to be finalized this week. A few other things on the list, but those were the main ones.

Yet as I started the week, I felt something odd. Fear and dread. Misplaced fear and dread, obviously.

So I poked myself…am I fearful of something with the chemo? No, not really. A small resonance, not strong, so likely partly related to it. Yet what would I be stressed about with her chemo? She’s already done 10 doses, she had adverse reactions for doses 1a, 2a and 3a, but that drug isn’t part of her regimen anymore, so no worries there. The remaining drug is one she handles fine, so definitely not a cause for worry. My body said, “Yep, totally agree, it’s not that.”

Okay, so I moved on. Is it work? My body said, “Sure, there’s a lot going on, need to finalize, it’s a fair amount of work, important stuff, but that’s just background noise. You’ve got this.” Okay, so not the work stuff.

Maybe going INTO work? Nope. I wasn’t looking FORWARD to it because I had to clean up a box of messy files to get them sent to storage, none of which were mine but I inherited them from someone else when I took the job, blah blah blah. Annoying but not anything to fear. And I was meeting a colleague and former mentor for coffee, first time in 2+ years, not stressful either. I was looking forward to it. I was’t working a full day, no batch of meetings, nothing to figure out for office space, etc. So not that either.

Something with Jacob? Nope. Nada. No resonance other than ensuring he’s doing SOMETHING each day instead of sitting on his butt playing video games. This week was a writing camp, last week was gearing up for mini-golf with a friend, etc. General parenting stuff, nothing that looks like fear.

I did a rough scan of other stuff on my mind, standard stressors around managing money, planning, my own health, but it was all noise. Nothing that should be producing a sense of fear.

Digging deeper

As I said, I got a partial resonance on Andrea’s treatment this week. Which, again, made no sense. It’s all good news, isn’t it?

She’s done six treatments. Her side symptoms for her legs and breathing are resolved. She would get her PICC line out this week. And her Pleurex as well (the side drain to get fluids from around her lungs out). All of it looks good, right? No resonance. Full agreement, there’s no reason to be fearful.

I stepped back and said, “Okay maybe it’s logistics?”. Was I worried about getting her to the four appointments this week? No, they were scheduled well enough in advance, I was pushing the envelope adding in some other errands on the margins, but nothing big. Not a scheduling fear, or worry that I would screw something up.

I wondered perhaps if I feared it wouldn’t happen? She had dinner with a friend last week, and two days later the person reported exposure to COVID. Andrea wasn’t sick, no symptoms, but when she notified the hospital of the situation, they collectively all went, “Hmm…let’s get back to you on if you can do it this week!”. A friend who went through breast cancer had commented about the stress of it feeling like the finish line kept being moved, but that wasn’t it for me, no resonance.

I poked the fear again. Maybe it’s not fear? Maybe it’s just stress? Nope, doesn’t feel like stress. Stress is a general tension, this was more acute. Like “run away, don’t poke here.”. What the heck? Maybe general anxiety? Small blip. What the HELL? A blip for general anxiety but not for everything else? How does THAT work?

When a blip gets louder

Okay, some sort of anxiety and related to her treatment. Huh? That made NO sense at all.

Okay, let’s unpack it piece by piece.

Big chemo on Wednesday, dose 6a. Anything with that? Nope, all good.

Final chemo on Thursday, dose 6b. Anything with that? Small blip.

PICC line removal? Small blip.

Pleurex removal? Small blip.

What else was she doing this week…oh, right, she had her final appointment with the doctor just before the last chemo to review her blood work and stats. Big blip.

Wait, what? A blip for cancer treatment, blips for final treatments, blips for things being removed, and a big blip for her bloodwork?

How could that be? All of those elements are positive. She was getting her final dose, the side symptoms have resolved, the tubes were being removed as not needed any longer, and her stats showed that by pure numbers, she’s officially in remission range. While the type of cancer isn’t curable, she’s ready to be declared officially in remission. Big giant blip.

Ohhhhhhhhh.

I know what it must be, seems obvious right, I’m afraid it’s not all done and I’m waiting for the other proverbial shoe to drop, right? After all, tons of people experience that, it’s normal. Zero blip. I don’t disbelieve any of the tests. I don’t disagree that it is all good news. I don’t believe there’s another shoe to hit the floor.

Soooo, I’m just afraid…of the good news? Giant fucking blip, bang the gong, that’s it, stupid, took you long enough (my resonance scanner has a cruel, snarky side).

The fear that cannot be named

I realized what it was, poked myself, full resonance, yep, that’s it. I’d read about it. I’d heard of it. I’d never really experienced it before.

Researchers themselves have trouble naming it, partly as when they do see it, it’s part of a giant spectrum of situations, and most don’t know if it’s the same thing or something unique. Take child abuse victims who go through the foster care system, the proverbial “stereotype” of the outcome that you see in books, and TV or movies. The person comes out the other side numb sometimes, even with potentially anti-social behaviour. They then meet someone, the person appears to love them, but they have trouble believing in it. They can’t trust that what they see is real and not a giant prank from the universe, and so they run the other way. They have trouble letting themselves be happy.

Trauma specialists see it too. Soldiers coping with PTSD, unable to see a day when things will be better. Similarly for severe depression, the sense that things will continue as they are, that things are beyond your control. That fate will kick your ass regardless of what you do. That the gods laugh while man plans. Meds can help alter the way negative assumptions control your views of outcomes, but the struggle is real.

Those are obvious extremes, of course, and my role in accompanying Andrea on her journey is not so acute. Yet I knew what was bothering me.

It was all good news and I didn’t trust any of it. I don’t mean, I thought it was wrong, I believe it is true. Objectively. But subjectively, I couldn’t let myself trust it. I wouldn’t let myself trust it. Because if I was wrong, my psyche wasn’t likely to survive.

I feared hoping too much, too soon.

Andrea believes me a pessimist, and in comparison, I am. But in this case, I fear that what I’m looking for is a sign. Lots of people complete chemo, doesn’t mean they’re done. Lots of people have good stats, doesn’t mean they’re done. Same for the elimination of symptoms.

A release

For me, naming fears is my first step to releasing them. Once I know WHAT I’m feeling, and why, I’m not afraid of it. I can lean in, I can compartmentalize, I can stare it in the face and say, “Hello fear. What are you up to today?”. Emotional fears, at least. I may choose NOT to do that at times as I might feel it will be more destructive than creative, but I don’t have to hide. Once named, I’m good to go. Rumpelstiltskin, perhaps, applied to emotions.

And with the naming, I could unclench my jaw a bit. I knew what it was, and it therefore has less control over me.

Then, for Andrea’s last treatment, I joined her at the hospital. I was there for dose 1A, but for the rest, I wasn’t allowed in. To some extent, I know that made it seem less real to me — I dropped her off but I didn’t sit with her while she did it. The rules for visits have changed and I was allowed back in.

For the last treatment, the Medical Day Care Unit has a small internal ritual. In this case, it’s a small gong that you bang with a small hammer for your last treatment, the staff and some patients clap, you celebrate, and you head for the exit! Start the car!

The gong made Andrea release a bit, but then we were out the door quick, and as soon as we were out in the waiting room and alone, we both released completely. A long sobbing hug to celebrate that she has done it. She has kicked cancer’s ass, we think, and she’s done. At least for now.

Sure, the realist is still there. 3-5 years average remission rate, maybe 10. Still highly treatable but not curable. No impact on life expectancy. We had ice cream to celebrate, we’ll do cake on the weekend, a nice dinner next week, maybe other celebrations with friends and family in the weeks to come.

Yet I want the doctor to examine her in 3w (as he will), check her stats, check her xrays, check her bone marrow, and say, “Yep, it all worked as it was supposed to, no signs of anything.”

Until then, my stress is down, but the fear of hoping too much remains. It’s not rational, I know that. Everything says, “Hurrah”. But my heart won’t let my head and my head won’t let my heart get too far ahead of each other. I don’t know which one is lagging behind, doesn’t really matter probably.

I just know for me it is a fear of hope. And that is the second scariest fear I’ve ever seen.

The first of course is the fear of losing Andrea or Jacob. But this one runs a pretty close second in its perniciousness. But if Andrea can kick cancer’s ass, maybe I can kick my own.