Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Tuesday, August 31, 2010: Update

I just wanted to give an update on Kristi. She has stopped taking her chemo pill for now. She spoke with her nurse yesterday and since we already have an appointment next week her nurse agreed that was the right thing to do. So physically she is feeling a little bit better each day. She still gets fatigued very easily and has to take breaks often. She over did herself today and when I came home from work she was crashed in bed.

Emotionally, she is also a little better but she still has several aches and pains and rashes all over that are concerning. Her nurse said that none of the symptoms Kristi described are common with this chemo. So that of course gets her mind going. Saturday (or Sunday - all the days blend together these days) we had a brief breakdown. Basically, we talked about how much reality sucks. Cancer sucks. Have I ever said that before? After nearly 4 years we have become excellent liars. When people ask "how are you?" we can reply "OK" or "good" in a pretty convincing way. I have to admit, Kristi is way better than me. I tend to wear my emotions on my sleeves, Kristi is the quiet one. You have to watch those quiet ones. Reality is we're not really OK. We're anything but OK. But what are we supposed to do? If we just dwelled in self pitty the days would be miserable. So we try to make each day better than the last. We know we only dwell in these temporary shells for a limited amount of time so we're thankful for every additional day we're here. That sure is easy to type. Now walking the talk is the tough part.

On a lighter note, the kids had their first day of school yesterday. We now officially have a middle schooler. Where did the years go?!

A couple weeks ago I went on my annual "man trip". This year we went to the Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario. We spent a week canoeing, hiking, more canoeing, well, mainly canoeing. We did of course find a nice 33' cliff that needed to be jumped from. I took a couple pictures during the week. This is one of my favorites. The loons were incredible!

Here's a short video (1 minute) of our jump. And for the record, I wasn't the only one that chickened out on their first attempt. But I was the only one that plugged my nose. Oh well. After hitting play, click on the 4 little arrows in the lower right corner for full screen HD.