In a bunch of movies, there’s a scene where someone says, “It’s quiet.” And then ominously, someone else or even the same person will say, “Too quiet.” And then you find out that someone has been picked off by the serial killer or the kids are doing something they shouldn’t or generally all hell is about to break loose.

In the last week, three separate people have poked me on Facebook and said, “Hey. Your blog has been quiet. Too quiet. What’s going on?”.

The good news is almost nothing is going on. No massive bad news, no pending crises, no silent killers stalking my office. I haven’t been blogging for a combination of reasons. Some sort of Venn diagram where I’m in the middle of 5 competing circles.

Work has been crazy busy of late. I’m in an acting director position for what works out to eight months (complicated story in there of 6m, then 4m, then 6m, then 12m, then 8m in the end). The job itself is great, I would love to keep it, but that’s not entirely how life works, and life intervened heavily way back in January.

We’ve known Andrea has had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma for five years, and the type she has, they don’t treat until symptoms show up. Well, they finally had enough symptoms to start treatment, just as I was starting my acting assignment. A few people have commented that it was sucky timing, but there’s a small nuance in there that I find interesting. They generally mean that it’s too bad that Andrea’s in treatment while I’m acting director. Except the nuance that is missed is that Andrea didn’t CHOOSE to do treatment now, I CHOSE to be acting director. The “variable” is me, not her. The issue is more that I made the decision to accept the acting director position before I knew she’d be in treatment.

But I had already accepted it, and if I had only that going on — i.e., the acting position — I would have knocked myself out to compete in any and every EX-01 competition I could find with the goal of making a pool and giving them the option of making me permanent. But with everything else going on in life, I didn’t have the extra bandwidth to compete in processes, to try to become an EX-01, to “go for the gold” so to speak.

And I’m okay with that. I don’t belief in regrets, but if I had to phrase it in that form, I would say that I wish I knew Andrea had been going into treatment, as I wouldn’t have taken the acting assignment. I know where my priorities lie, and I haven’t had the extra energy to really give my “all” to the acting experience.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m doing the job. That part is okay. And it has been really busy with some overtime on a few weekends, or late nights after dealing with other stuff in the day. We’re working on a major report due to be finalized in about six weeks, and then it’s just lots of approval stuff. It is a lot of work on top of a full job, and I do have to keep the lights on and trains running on other files while we put through the report.

I’ve done 80% of the job previously, but that extra 20% has been an interesting challenge, and I’ve enjoyed it. Not enough to say I want my EX-01 level for ANY job, but if I had a chance at specific jobs that were like the current one, I’d consider it.

And, yes, my wife has cancer. So there’s that. But that is not the giant time suck for me that you might think it would be. She’s on a four-week cycle — one week of chemo (appointment Tuesday, chemo Wednesday, chemo Thursday) — and during the week of treatment, there’s a lot going on. Jacob has been having problems with his legs and headaches, so I’ve been driving him to and from school most of the year. It’s about 25 minutes over and back, twice a day. During treatments, I also have to run Andrea to and from the hospital (I’m not allowed to go in).

The first month, I just took time off for the treatment days. The next four cycles, I’ve worked part days since I’m sitting around anyway. But the schedule is a bit fluid at times, simple things like appointments running late, and so there’s a bunch of juggling…can I get Jacob to school, then Andrea to the hospital, and get back home again to have a video meeting at 10:00? Or if I’m picking up Jacob at 3:20, what time will Andrea be done in the afternoon so that I could pick her up and then go get Jacob or get Jacob and then go get her?

Oddly enough, it isn’t the chauffeur duties or the juggling that is exactly the problem. It’s the bandwidth required to keep it all straight without stressing everyone else out too. Some days have been more successful than others when it comes to that. Sometimes we’ve had to reach out to friends, but even that is not always the simplest decision. Andrea is the priority, obviously. So what I really needed wass someone to pick up Jacob, not Andrea.

But then we would get into the dance of “Why can’t Jacob just take the bus?”. And admittedly he can. But it’s also going to stress him out quite a bit, struggling with a heavy backpack after a long day of school, and often with gym class just before he heads home. If he is running around for the full hour before school ends, then he’s often exhausted. There’s a reason why he missed almost a third of school this year for problems with his legs or headaches. Blood work, massage, counselling…it helps, but it doesn’t knock off the possible issues very fast. And if I’m prioritizing Andrea, then I would be trying to get someone to pick up Jacob, AND then I would have to explain WHY, which Jacob is a bit sensitive about. In an ideal world, I can cover all the appointments. In reality, it’s a source of stress for me.

But also a source of joy. I LIKE being able to take Jacob to and from school. I’m the first to ask how his day went and hear his summary, not second-hand after Mom already put him through the grilling. Yet when I can’t do it all, I feel like I’m letting him or Andrea down.

Fortunately, I haven’t had to compromise on the home life THAT much. In six months, I think we’ve used alternate transport three times. Maybe four. Not bad. I should be just taking those days off though, I fully admit. They often are complete sh**shows for scheduling. But work also serves as a distraction too some days. For the first three treatment cycles, Andrea was having trouble with one of the drugs. And I couldn’t be there after the first time. So she was on her own, I was worried about her, and sitting in the car outside twiddling my thumbs with nothing to do was not the best way to ensure I was in the right headspace.

The stress level is pretty high right now, even as Andrea emerges from the six-month treatment period. She’s completed five of the six treatments, they’ve ditched the one drug she kept having adverse reactions to, her symptoms are abating, and her stats look great. She’s still pretty tired and sleeping like crap after each treatment cycle, but she’s three weeks away from being done chemo and seven weeks from being done her primary treatment periods completely. She still has two things to be removed for injections and drainage, and she is REALLY looking forward to those.

But she has weathered the storm with some chauffeuring support, love and emotional/mental support, and a lot of company. Mostly she’s done it herself, she doesn’t NEED me that much to DO things, she’s pretty self-sufficient. Yet, as I said, the stress in the house is still high. Jacob finished grade 7 and is now home for the summer. For me? That’s a huge release as I don’t have to drive over to the school twice a day or even make him lunch in advance. It’s a sweet deal.

Family outings take up some time too, in a good way. We’ve also tried to re-emerge from our shell — both the cancer shell and the pandemic shell. Andrea can’t see people inside, and we cancelled a trip to the cottage this past weekend as there were going to be way too many people there for her safety and our comfort levels. Probably okay is not the same as safely okay. And afterwards, one tested positive for COVID, so yeah, not completely safe.

Instead of the cottage, we’re doing some family outings. A few weeks ago, we went to a friend’s house and sat in their backyard for an afternoon. For my birthday, one of my birthday twinsies came over and we had Thai food on the deck together. This past weekend, we went to fireworks at Arlington Woods on Friday night for Canada Day, played board games, went to Chelsea for mini-golf and ice-cream, went to Wakefield to see the covered bridge, and went to the twinsies’ house to use their neighbour’s pool and sit by the water and relax on Sunday. We also checked out the Golden Palace for dinner one night, testing out the claims for fantastic egg rolls (good, not awesome), sweet and sour pork (possibly the best I have ever had), pineapple shrimp (pretty solid), lemon chicken (definitely the best I have ever had, even with a bit too crispy skin), chop suey (meh, it’s chop suey), and pretty solid won ton soup offerings (I’ve been without a good source since our favourite Vietnamese place closed).

We’ve played more board games in general of late, trying to go for a walk regularly, watching some TV together (White Collar, American Ninja Warrior, West Wing), etc.

Aversion to the basement also plays a factor. Soooo, just over two years ago, when we started working from home, I moved my office to the basement. It wasn’t an option for Andrea and I to share the big office upstairs when both of us would be on the headsets regularly for video meetings, so Andrea kept the office, Jacob went to the first floor for his schooling with a separate desk and laptop setup, and I went to the basement.

I’ve tweaked my setup over the last two years, and I have a pretty great layout overall. One complete desk for my work computers, a three-monitor configuration (two monitors plus tablet laptop). And another for my home personal computer, with two monitors, full keyboard, laptop to the right, plus my scanner, and a printer over to the left. I’ve tweaked it a bit here and there, added a new printer not too long ago, and it all works.

But the problem is that I am working so much that by the end of the day, I just want to go upstairs and get “away from work”. Yet that same reprieve of going upstairs is also the same block to going back downstairs. There are things I SHOULD be doing, most of the days I just don’t feel like it.

Blogging isn’t the only thing. I’m even behind on opening and processing mail. A cheque I got back from the health claim company last fall just went stale as I never got around to depositing it — and I have MOBILE DEPOSITS. I literally just need to take a picture and it’s done. Nope, too much like work. And it piled up on the desk. This isn’t just a “me” problem, we were behind on filing our taxes too as we knew we had money coming to us, no penalty involved, so not super urgent. Andrea’s “free time” of late, plus her need to file for EI, sparked her to finish those for both of us. My other mail? I cleared it out recently, but I’m still behind on a few key things. Including following up on the health claim stuff.

I just don’t have the mental energy to go back downstairs at night to do anything. Instead, we eat late, finish close to 8:00, and then I tend to vegetate in front of the TV for a few hours with Andrea and sometimes Jacob, or read. What I don’t do is go back downstairs to get organized for anything productive.

Which is a long way around to saying I’m nowhere near my computer to do any blogging. Occasionally, at lunch time or after work, I will check on my email or FB feeds. Not actively, but long enough to pop in. Occasionally there are questions about HR on Reddit and I’ll chime in. Most of the time, it’s snoozefest.

I also decreased my social media footprint, as I blogged about earlier. I am an analytical introvert, so I’m not the type to have thousands of friends on FaceBook. I’ve often held it to around 100 people, and earlier this year, I was up to about 125-130 or so. Then I had the “incident” with an exchange with one of Andrea’s friends that carried over into my own relationship with Andrea. I decided such a trigger wasn’t worth the risk any more and so I did a social media purge. I liken it to some version of a FaceBook divorce. I cut ties with 100 or so people, generally people who were more Andrea’s friends and family than my own, and left mostly just my friends and immediate family. But in doing so, I also have far less “interaction” options with FB too. I’m out of a few groups that had me tied to the computer, I’ve joined a few others, yet overall, it is far less compelling than it used to be. I catch up maybe once a week and scroll through, or if something pops up in my notifications, otherwise I’m not really on there.

I also realized that some of my past blogging was almost driven by my social media engagement. I would decide to post something, for example, and change it to being a blog post instead. Or someone else’s post would trigger a thought for a blog post, and I’d write that. I used to share comics and things too, but with only about 25 people in my feed, some of the people I would “tag” in my sharing are no longer in my friends group.

It’s strange, I admit. Andrea has posted updates on how she’s doing with her cancer treatments, and I don’t see any of them. I don’t know what she’s telling people, or even how she’s framing it. A number of friends have shared updates on FB that she’s seen, but since I’m not online friends with them anymore, I hear nothing unless Andrea happens to mention it.

In a sense, my blogging was an innocent bystander of my social media reduction. Some of the things I would “share” are now shared with a much smaller group, and even fewer are likely to comment. Which means I’ve even questioned if keeping my blog going is worth it or not. Would it be missed if I killed it entirely and just left my HR guide running? I could even just share that on Reddit, it doesn’t really need its own website. But I ultimately end up in the same place each time. I like blogging, I like having it, so I keep it going. At least for now.

Even if I’m not that active right now.

And I’m okay with all of it. I’m hardly “zen”, but I’m not too fussed about it. I do what I need to do, the lights are on, trains are running, we’re surviving. I’m looking forward to a few upcoming milestones…

Jacob is off for two months, that’s a big change for all of us. I’m pushing for him to do things with his friends, even if it means I have to run him somewhere.

Andrea’s last chemo is in another two weeks. That’s pretty big. Sometime around then they’ll remove two insertions too, so that will make her feel better too.

My work project will be submitted in mid-August or so, if not sooner.

And I’ll take two weeks off in September. The timing isn’t perfect for Andrea and Jacob, he’ll be back in school, but I’ll take some holidays before then too, days here and there, maybe a week if the project is done.

But the big news for me was that although I don’t continue as acting Director, I accepted a new job with the Provincial / Territorial Labour Market Programs in our branch. We transfer billions — yep, with a b — to the PTs for labour market programming and then monitor what they do with it. Another division is responsible for the policy files, but my new division is responsible for the operations side. I had possible options to do a coordination role like what I’ve done before; perhaps a more technical function with systems and data that has some ties to things I’ve done before; or the one I actually went for, the team responsible for transferring the money and monitoring everything they do, a pseudo-program manager / policy manager / stakeholder relations manager function. I’ve been managing small teams since 2017, except for the division I’m currently managing (13 but with two managers handling day-to-day), and my new team will be 8-10, so a step up in responsibility of sorts. I like the director and the director general, so when they had an opening and an offer, I said yes.

That was a weird week, I confess. I found out on the previous Friday that the job that I had left and was theoretically moving back to was changing, and while I had A job waiting for me, the exact details were up in the air. I was totally comfortable going back, giving it a go, see if it was something I wanted or alternatively could turn it into something I liked. But I thought, “Why not poke around?”. See what else was out there.

I’ve blogged before that the last time I did a big job search in 2017, I was looking for something REALLY specific and it was pretty demoralizing to have little interest or take-up. The current environment? It’s way more of a seller’s market this time. I sent seven emails out and had four pretty strong expressions of interest, with three of the four going almost to full job offer instantly. Within two days I had three offers that I could have pursued, but the one I took firmed up even faster. I wonder if there was some part of me that was like “Thank god, take something, end the extra stress of a job search”, but I didn’t feel that way. It seems like a good match with my skills and experience, I like my new boss, I’ve known her for a while, everything seems like a good fit and it is definitely a solid job.

It’s more work than I would have been doing in the other positions, most likely, but that’s not a bad thing. Andrea and I met with a financial advisor recently, and I may not be retiring as soon as I had hoped. Depends a bit on our own goals and the market, I suppose, but we’ll revisit in a few years. So a big file is likely a good choice, something I can dig into for a few years potentially.

Soooooo if I look at the other mental draws on my time and energy, the circles that are intersecting around me, blogging isn’t ranking very highly these days. I barely remember to log in and check email. I like to aim for “inbox zero” fairly regularly, almost every week, and my regular inbox has hundreds of unfiled emails sitting in it. I’ve read them all, I think, mostly on my phone, but that doesn’t mean I respond immediately when something shows up. And I do find it hard to remember non-pressing commitments, even when they are in my calendar.

Yet I’d say I’m doing mostly okay. Even without taking much time to blog.

I have a few things that I’m worried about. I am REALLY emotional some days. In the middle of reading a YA novel, the death of a character (think Harry Potter and the first “good” character to die) almost wiped me out. TV shows can create waterworks. That often happens when I’m really tired (I’m sleeping like crap) or just completely stressed, or both.

Equally, I had a weird-ass dream last week — I was lucid dreaming, half awake / half asleep, I knew I was dreaming, and then out of the blue, the phone rang in my dream and it was my father calling, as he was dying, to ask for help. What the F*** was THAT? I haven’t been thinking about him or anything, and that event never happened, but wow. That could mess with your mind pretty fast. It didn’t, I woke myself up pretty fast to move away from the imagery, but that was weird.

Some days I do feel it is quiet, too quiet. Like in some ways I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. I don’t actually think any shoe WILL drop, I just know there are a few out there. In the meantime, I’m reading more, hanging out more with the family upstairs, and spending a lot less time on my computer. In the short-term, that’s generally a good thing. At least until I need some “me time” with my projects. I have a 3D printer I haven’t assembled yet. My goal is to get that done before I start the new job.

Stay tuned!

Today marks a bit of a milestone, although perhaps only to me, oddly enough. My wife started her official chemo 4 weeks ago, and she’ll go through six cycles. While the routine is “meet with the doctor on Tuesday, have dose 1 of chemo on Wednesday, and have dose 2 on Thursday”, that first meeting isn’t really part of the “round”. It’s leading up to the round. So Wednesday is the first day of the cycle by most people’s calculation, including my wife’s. Which makes today, Tuesday, the end of the previous round.

I wondered if my wife would embrace the day somehow, feel like it was a “closure” of round 1. That the allergic reactions, some nausea, aches, pains, headaches, and fluid in her lungs were all part of Round 1’s symptoms and that she had survived to come out the other side. I wondered if she might want to “mark” the occasion somehow, perhaps I was wondering because I felt like if I was her, I might want to mark it. Even as her support and advocate, I want to help her to celebrate any milestone that she can. Walking around the block again after not being able to breathe well enough two weeks ago. Going in and out of the hospital on her own, not needing me to push her in a wheelchair, or fearing collapse. Finishing Round 1 and starting Round 2. Nope, she didn’t seem to be feeling it, and with the two days ahead of her to gear up for, that’s probably not surprising. Her results from R1 are encouraging, things are doing what they’re supposed to in her bloodwork, but as I’ve noted before, that’s her story, not mine.

This round is going to be, I think, a bit harder on me as her support. For R1, I was allowed to go into the room with her, sit there while it went drip, drip, drip, talk to her, distract her, notice the rash on her neck to signal a reaction had started. For R2, they don’t want to risk any infection of others, although there were obvious partners there last time for lots of people who weren’t first-timers, so I don’t know why I can’t go this time. So she has to do the two treatments by herself. I can’t say that I’m a fan of that, feeling a bit like Hoke in Driving Miss Daisy.

On the positive side, as her potential advocate, we got a bit more info and perspective about her time in the hospital where it seemed like nothing was happening. In today’s meeting that I did by phone while Andrea was there in person, I asked her main doctor, and I said it was my Q as her advocate, was there something that should have been done last week that wasn’t — by me, by her, by him, by the ER staff, by respirology, etc. It seemed, to us at least, like she was in the ER but nobody was in charge of her care. So she sat there for three days waiting for someone to present options to her. Which they did, on Wednesday, and she had a procedure to drain fluids on Friday. Spectacularly so for volume. But while that Monday-Wednesday period may not have been ideal, the alternative to just go through her main doctor as the lead would have been way worse. If she had just had him treat her in clinic, he would have ordered the chest x-ray and then respirology would have looked at her somewhere around three weeks later; because she was in ER, she got seen in three days. And she was monitored while she was there in case it became more urgent.

Coming out the other side of that, there’s a game plan in place if the same issue crops up again i.e. she’s being seen in two weeks for ongoing monitoring and followup, as she still has fluid on the x-rays taken after the procedure. Which is great, not the fluid but the game plan, but my real question was if something NEW comes up, and we’re back in the ER, is there something more we should be doing?

Mostly not. While the doctor in the ER could have been more forthcoming in explaining what was or was not happening, the outcome would have been likely the same…even if she had been seen on Monday, the procedure would have had to wait for Friday for a drug to clear her system and for them to find room in the schedule. But three days is better than three weeks, so ER and urgent care was the best option we had at the time. And likely the best option for a potential future “different but similar” issue.

I think for me, I’m starting to see my supporting journey a bit more clearly in the three phases. Phase I is to help her get through the treatments. In that regard, she’s completed step 1 of 6, 28 days down, 140 days or so to go (the last one won’t exactly end at 28d, but well, let’s go with it). I don’t know all the bumps coming in the road for Rounds 2-6, but I have a bit more info after R1.

Phase II is likely to be the six months afterwards as her body recovers somewhat from the ordeal, as she gets some of her immune system working again without being attacked by chemo treatments. We’re thinking ahead to a potential trip, something big and commemorative perhaps for the three of us. We have some cash set aside from pandemic savings, so perhaps that’s not a bad way to use some of it. But I feel most of the phase will be slower re-emergence and just helping her on days when that re-emergence is more overwhelming to her than she might be ready for, than she used to be able to handle.

And then Phase III will be that post-treatment and recovery period, the dreaded “wait and see” era. With the type of cancer she has, we were initially told that it could go into remission relatively easily for up to ten years. That sounded very hopeful, but it is not necessarily the reality. Relapses can be as fast as 3 years for some, probably 5 on average. So she as an individual and we as a couple might have some other decisions to make in there about careers, retirement timelines, sequencing, etc.

For the part of the journey that is mine, I am struggling a bit to juggle everything. Not in the sense of I need someone to come in and help, although that has been appreciated too with people dropping off meals, or Andrea’s sister looking after Jacob for the R1 treatment period. If I divide my life into four areas, the three that are support for Andrea, managing life with Jacob, and carving out some “me” time, are all going okay. I’m tired, sure, but it’s mostly functioning at something resembling a sustainable level for the foreseeable future.

For actual career stuff and work, I am not keeping that ball in the air as much as I would normally like to do. I don’t mean with the individual files, I have a handle on what we should be and are doing, the work itself is fine. What I have a hard time doing is caring. I don’t mean “at all”, I care about my work and files, sure, but more that I am incredibly distracted. Late this afternoon, I updated my leave requests for the last week, which was a bit of a crapfest. Two hours off here, three hours off there, another two here or there. Nothing major, just distractions in the day.

For Wednesday and Thursday of this week, I have no real role during the day other than as Hoke, the chauffeur to take Miss Daisy to her appointments and bring her home again, and to take care of her once she is actually home. So I don’t NEED to be off work during her treatment, I might as well clock in, but I won’t be surprised if I’m too distracted to do anything and I’ll just clock out again. My bosses and coworkers are great, they know what’s going on, and I’ll cover what I need to cover or someone will cover for me, if need be. But it feels different from even when Jacob was born and we were dealing with all the early health issues for him. Once I was AT work, it was like a separate world for 8 hours. When I emerged again, it was chaos, but there was calm in the world of work. Some others have described it as work being a refuge from the storm of your personal life at those kinds of times, and while the metaphor doesn’t totally work for me, it’s not a terrible one. That isn’t happening now. I feel no sense of distance, maybe it’s the WFH thing that’s different, or more that when it was Jacob, Andrea had him covered during the day, while now it’s her, there’s no spouse other than me to take care of her. It’s not quite right in its description, I don’t feel alone or anything, it’s just with Jacob we had two primary caregivers, now we have just one. Our bench strength is down a peg, so to speak.

So while things are generally going okay at work, if I’m brutally honest with myself, I wish I wasn’t acting director right now. The timing is just wrong. It’s a job I’m ideally suited for, I love it, I would like to keep it long term, but all things being equal, I’d rather just be plain old manager again, and not have the extra concerns to worry about every day. I also feel something odd, and this is a bit insidious and thus I have to stop it from going too far in my squirreldom, but I feel like I’m not really making the most of the experience.

There are a couple of files I would love to dig into, just to manage the heck out of, fix it the way I think it should be done, and then get the hell out of Dodge City. A chance to leave a lasting imprint on a few files where I would like to lock in the “PolyWogg approach to planning”, so to speak. Instead, I’ll settle for keeping the lights on and the trains running right now.

A missed opportunity, from a career standpoint, perhaps, but I have no regrets about it, I know what the right decision and approach is, and I’m doing it. Still, though, it is not what I thought my first sustained acting would look like, particularly if I was hoping to make it permanent. That seems highly unlikely at the moment with the timing we’ve got, and honestly, I don’t really care. Just not on my priority list, even though it’s the best shot I’ll likely ever have at it.

Somewhat related to that, I’m also in a period of mild uncertainty. My official acting ends May 17th or so, with the plan being to extend me to July 17th (4m to 6m). After that, I have no specific plan other than to return to my previous position. Which is a good job, and I’ll be fine with that, or something else. Although I have been thinking of something else, tied into the above considerations of Phase II and the end of Andrea’s treatment, perhaps I might want to take a few months off between gigs instead. A potential bit of recovery time for me too before commencing the likely final leg of my career.

The funny thing is that I am not that excited by the potential leave or Phase II or Phase III. Those are markers too far in the distance. I’m more jazzed by the calendar and that we can soon open up our deck and gazebo and be able to sit outside again. Even if, as Andrea joked today, we might have to wear our snowsuits while we do.

Come on warmer Spring weather! Where are my red-winged blackbirds, my harbingers of a long quiet summer? I’m looking forward to those too. They should show up just about mid-way through Round 3.

I confess, Wednesday felt like a VERY long day to me. And I’m not the one undergoing cancer treatment. Productive, sure, just long.

Jacob and I were out the door a bit late in the morning but I got him dropped off at school. Then I had to send a message to the school to let them know that he would be leaving early for an appointment. Good boy, I thought, I did it. But I should have sent it to MYSELF too as a reminder. I had originally thought, multiple times, that I would go to the school, pick him up, go to the appointment. Easy peasy lemon squeazy. Except of course that would mean pulling him out around 2:30, which is right in the middle of a period, which is preceded by a break, so the best time was actually to take him at 1:40. Do you think my brain could register that “tweak” to the schedule? Nope. I said, “Have a great day, see you at 1:40” and then POOF, the idea vanished from my conscious mind.

I spent the morning at work in meetings, got a bunch of stuff going that I’ve been working on, felt a bit pressed but productive. I did a very late lunch, closer to 1:00 p.m., and then like I said, completely forgot I was picking him up at 1:40. At 1:43, my phone beeped with a text from him. “Panda?”. Oh, riiiiiiight. I grabbed him 10m later, it’s not that far, but still. Sigh.

Okay, back home, he could hang out for 30m while I did some more work, drafted some emails, got a jump start on a file for later in the afternoon, and then time to go to the doctor’s office.

2:50 p.m. was the supposed appointment time. It was our first session with our new family doctor for something that has been bothering J and while we have an appointment for a full entry physical in April, we didn’t want to wait. Jacob has 3 or 4 issues at play at the moment, and this is the one he wanted to tackle first. Hence the appointment rather than a drop-in. At 3:35 p.m., i.e. 45 minutes after the start time, I asked the nurse if it would be much longer. Now, maybe that doesn’t seem like a long delay. And if it was at an AppleTree clinic with walk-ins, sure. Or perhaps for a specialist at a hospital with consults or emergencies, sure. Or a specialist who uses the terrible “block booking” approach.

But he’s none of those things. This is a GP’s office, no walk-ins, appointments only that day, and running almost an hour late. And of course, when people arrived, they told us NOTHING about how backed up his schedule was. I talked to Jacob and he was tired of waiting too. We agreed to give it another 15 minutes, to take us to the full hour, and then we were going to bounce. It also doesn’t help that it’s a small cramped waiting room shared with another doctor, full of SICK PEOPLE, crying babies, and people talking on cell phones, etc. With the annoyance too that it is all paid parking that expires, but at least there’s an “app for that” and I could just click “extend”. I didn’t care about the cost, just the logistics.

Plus we were already stressed … okay, at least, **I** was already stressed about Andrea at the hospital … but they took us in finally within that time. Then we had to wait, saw a nurse, then finally him, etc. It was about 1h 10 minutes late to see him, in the end. We’ll have to make sure future appointments take place earlier in the day with the hope that the backlog will not be as long. Regardless, nothing earth-shattering for Jacob, pretty much what I expected, and next time we’ll follow up by phone. Okay, that won’t be too bad, I hope.

On the way back, we had to head over to the store to pick up pre-ordered groceries. However, I apparently should NOT be trusted with both making the list AND ordering. Normally Andrea does the list first, and I submit the order, but I did both, and ended up ordering a TON of food! Doh!

Back home, close to 5:00 p.m. but I had some work to finish up from earlier. So back on to the work computer, plowed through some stuff, and pulled my head out in time to figure out Andrea was likely to be spending the night, we (J and I) could go visit, but only until 8:00 p.m. Ack!

Let’s see — 5:50 p.m., a couple of emails to send, but no time. Leftovers in the fridge? No time. Jacob and I piled into the car at 6:00, rushed toward the hospital, grabbed McDonald’s so we could eat and drive at the same time, and got to the hospital around 6:30, checked in, up to the room around 6:45/7:00 p.m. Whew. With another bag of stuff that she had asked me to bring (delivery #3). I even remembered ALL of it this time. Except I took the wrong heating pad.

The plan was that we would hang out for an hour or so, maybe play a game. But the cub, who had said he was doing “fine” all along and seemed to actually be doing okay, went running towards Andrea as soon as he saw her and only wanted to cuddle for the first 45m we were there.

But he’s our good luck charm. After 2.5d of waiting to hear SOMETHING that looked like a plan, they finally decided that she should meet with the respirology team (I’m exaggerating only slightly, as it seemed very gong show-ish to figure out who even knew what the options COULD be). However, there is now a plan in place for “something” to happen on Friday. The specific choices are up to Andrea, but they FINALLY had options to offer and timings to boot!

I felt fortunate to be able to be there for the conversation too as she had generally been on her own for 2 days with no real movement on treatment options. But Jacob’s lucky presence worked well … the team showed up, presented options for Friday, and also gave Andrea the option of discharge-and-clinic on Friday or stay-in-house until Friday. Andrea opted to be “sprung”.

♫ Freedom’s just another word for they’re not doing anything else for her… ♫

Now, what it will exactly look like on Friday is anyone’s guess but it was a relief to have her back home. And Jacob felt the same (plus her too, obviously).

Which isn’t to say I didn’t also have two loads of laundry still to do, a few more emails for work, Jacob’s lunch for today to make, and a dishwasher to empty and refill (I punted that until the next morning). Seeing Jacob’s relief at seeing her at the hospital, and to her being home, I did put the idea in his head before he went to bed that if he did feel a bit overwhelmed for today (Thursday), he could consider a mental health day. Which he took. I suspect part of that was for me too — if he’s not at school, I don’t have to transport him, making my start and end of day for work that much easier. 🙂

It was a very long but productive day yesterday. I did manage to squeeze in some “me time” with an app I’m enjoying on my phone (Trainstations 2), a bit of DuoLingo that I started doing again, and reposting some old book reviews to my PolyBlog website instead of PolyWogg. I even watched an hour of TV late last night after Andrea and Jacob went to bed so I could decompress.

Friday will be a long day too but we will keep Jacob in reserve as our good luck charm if we need him to wrangle the universe for us.