Thursday 19 June 2014

I'm a bad blogger part II

Hmmmmmm........where did I leave off?  Oh right, this is supposed to be a blog about my cancer adventures so I guess I will leave Belgium behind for a bit and think about cancer.
I had a CT scan in February.  I was a little stressed but the fantastic news was that I continued to be stable!!

During the month of March I suffered from cyclical feel like total crap syndrome. I would be totally sick for about a day and then start feeling better to the point that I was pretty much normal then the next day I would be totally sick again. It was a couple weeks before we left for Belgium that I decided it was time to get it checked out. Good thing I did, turns out I had a rampant C. diff infection. Huh.
C. diff is a bacteria that is normally found in hospitals or retirement homes and can kill people with lowered immune systems. No idea where I got it from but fortunately it was easily treated with antibiotics. 

Just as we were leaving for Belgium we put our condo up for sale.  Ian had the opportunity to transfer to the Victoria office and we decided it was time for a change.  Our condo is now sold and we leave Vancouver in a week!
We haven't found our new home yet so my parents have generously opened their condo to us as a home base while we do our search.  We want to try out house living and have actual space to do things and not risk pissing off the neighbours with Ian's smoker.  
We are pretty sure Jasper wants a pond and his own room.
Orchid just wants to go back to the kitty kennel.

As a part of the planning for the move, my oncologist has been organizing who my new oncologist will be.  We also decided I was due for another CT scan.  I have a small bump right above my surgery scar that appeared suddenly not long before my last CT.  It shrank a bit a couple days after I first noticed it and it hasn't changed since.  It did not show up on my last CT so it is just being monitored.
This time around when I went in for my CT I was surprisingly calm. It has been almost 2 years since my original diagnosis and things have been going so smoothly that anything could happen. 
And something did happen, 2 enlarged lymph nodes were noted in my right armpit while everything else remained stable.  The nodes were only about 1 cm each but my oncologist thought that it was worth doing further investigation just in case.  We had a discussion about possible treatment changes as it is possible that any recurrence will not have the same genetic markers as my original tumour.
I was put in the queue for an ultrasound and biopsy, and I was expecting it to be at the end of June.  Instead, I only had to wait about a week.
I managed to remain calm while the tech was doing the initial scanning.  She took some pictures and told me that based on what she saw nothing appeared to very abnormal.  She left the room with the pictures and a report to consult with the radiologist and I waited about 10 minutes.  The tech and the radiologist returned and the radiologist told me that the lymph nodes, while appearing slightly enlarged, did not appear abnormal.  There wasn't even a suspicious area for him to target, so........No biopsy!!!
Yay!!!!

I went to Victoria for a few days last week to hang out with my mom, to meet my new oncologist, and to check out a few properties.  I had some wonderful weather for the ferry trip



My current oncologist picked my new one for me and she did a fantastic job! I already love my new one.
I scouted out a few properties for Ian and I to go look out once we are actually in Victoria but I didn't do any spontaneous offers on anything.

Now that the move to Victoria is completely official I have started to tick off my list off things that I am doing for the last time as a Vancouverite.  I had my last Medina Cafe brunch with Grace a couple of weeks ago,

 
the week before she participated in the Ride to Conquer Cancer, a 200 km bicycle trip to fund raise for the BC Cancer Foundation, the fundraising arm of the BC Cancer Agency where I received all my treatments.
I had my last lunch with my friend Donna today, and tomorrow is my last volunteer shift at the Canadian Cancer Society, another fantastic organization to support.  I have felt such a wonderful sense of family while I have been volunteering there and it will be sad to say goodbye tomorrow.  Friday is my last Kadoya day......might have to get a volcano roll, it has been a while.

The move to Victoria is one that I truly make with mixed emotions.  I moved to Vancouver in June of 2002 and I have had an amazing 12 years here.  I met my wonderful husband and I have gained one of the most spectacular and supportive circle of friends.  Without the people I have met in Vancouver I don't know how I would have made it to the point I am at now.  So many people tell me how amazing or inspirational or strong I am.  I am that way because of the support of the people around me.  It is like all the endless condos being built in Vancouver, I can only stand tall if I have a strong foundation.
At the same time Vancouver is where I was diagnosed and Ian and I are both ready to make the next step with the hope that my stable status will continue for a long time.  Leaving Vancouver helps us to close the door on all that initial shock and fear and open another door to whatever our future is.  I know that I will be back in Vancouver on a regular basis, but visiting is very different from living.

Alright, enough with the heavy stuff.  Here are a few more pictures from Belgium:

Baby ducks in Oudenburg



The Saint Niklaas statue in Sint Niklaas


The Antwerp train station




Tuesday 17 June 2014

I'm a bad blogger part I

Hah! I had every intention of becoming a really awesome blogger this year. So far you could say I am a gigantic failure. Now, I would like to say that my life has been a little busy, which is true, but the reality is I just got freakishly lazy.
In no particular order here are the things that have happened since I last posted anything:
1. Jasper was diagnosed with Addison's Disease
2. We spent 3 weeks in Belgium
3. I have had 2 CT scans
4. We are moving to Victoria
5. Our condo has been sold

I'll start off with the tale of Jasper and his Addison's. We started having a few issues with Jasper not liking his food last year. He had been eating the same dry food for the previous 5 years so we thought perhaps he had just gotten tired of it.  Also, it was dental food, so large kibbles, and maybe he was dealing with some pain in a tooth.  We decided he was due for a teeth cleaning so at his annual exam in October he had a full panel of blood work done. Everything looked fine so we went ahead with the teeth cleaning a couple weeks later. He handled the anaesthetic very well and for a week or so after he was eating better. By December he was back to being Mr. Picky.
We were in Victoria at Christmas time with the whole family and Jasper was exhausted when we got back to Vancouver. We expected after a couple days he would catch up on any missed sleep and be back to normal. Nope. He got more and more lethargic, to the point that he would snap at Ian sometimes when Ian would try and get him going for a walk. At that point we decided it was time to go back to the vet.
More blood work was done, including a lipase, and it was determined that he had a bit of a campylobacter infection and he had pancreatitis. The pancreatitis could be secondary to the infection and could cause enough pain to limit Jasper's appetite. We came home with antibiotics and painkillers and something to increase the appetite. He had been eating poorly enough that his albumin was down to 17 and it shouldn't really be below 28 (look at that!! No units! I assume g/L but what do I know these days?). A urinalysis was also done and his kidneys were leaking protein which could be the partial cause of his low albumin.
At that time, the vet hoped it was all infection caused and we didn't need to take Jasper in again unless after the end of the antibiotics there wasn't significant improvement. After about 3 weeks it was back to the vet again. More blood work. This time Jasper's album in was down to 10!! If he got surprised or overexcited there was a possibility he could go into hypovolemic (low albumin causes low blood pressure, hypovolemia) shock and die. Crap.
And by that point he had lost almost 10 pounds from his 55 pound frame in the previous month.
As an addition to his blood work we also had an ACTH stimulation test done as by this point we were all suspicious about Addison's Disease, something that is just starting to be recognized as relatively common to some lines of Duck Tollers. His stim test results came back positive for Addison's so that means pills twice a day forever.
At that point, Jasper was still not eating well so I was getting a little desperate to get anything with protein in him in an effort to increase his albumin. Yogurt and peanut butter were utter failures so I got my best bud Keetah's recipe for puppy meatloaf. That worked like a charm.
Now, with his daily pills and puppy meatloaf Jasper is pretty much back to his old self. He still needs to gain back a couple pounds and rebuild some muscle he lost but overall he is doing fantastic! Thank goodness.  And every time I don't let him to something he really wants to do I can just see him thinking "I almost died and you barely figured it out, obvious you should let me ______" and fill the blank with eat goose poo, have second helping on dinner, or pretty much any other food related dog thought you can think of.
Purely by coincidence, just after Jasper got all sorted out, Ian, my parents, and I packed up for a 3 week trip to Belgium with a few days in The Netherlands to start off. Keetah and David took control of Jasper who loved getting the chance to hang with his dog friend, Satori


and Orchid got to go to a kitty kennel. Any cat people that need a good kennel......Urban Tails (http://www.urbantails.ca) on Commercial Drive are awesome!!! I think Orchid was a little ticked when Ian and I came to pick her up after the trip. She didn't seem overly pleased to see me.

The trip was so fantastic!!!! I ate so much and drank so much.
We flew into Amsterdam and stayed there for a couple of days. We spent 3 hours in the rain lined up to get into the Anne Frank House. So totally worthwhile. Anyone going to Amsterdam really should go there.
Of course, since pancakes are one of my favourite foods we had to have pannekoken......


We went to a gigantic tulip park, Kuekenhof Gardens, that is only open a couple months of the year. There were a lot of flowers and a few goats......


Then there was Brussels and Mannekin Pis.........


And lots and lots of waffles. Unfortunately I seem to have lost the picture of my first Brussels waffle.  Here was a waffle from Antwerp:


And beer. There was lots and lots and lots of beer. And fries, lots of fries with dipping sauce.

We rented a boat and travelled the canals for 10 days so there were also a lot of locks:


and some cool bridges:


As we travelled the canals we had the opportunity to spend a couple of nights in Ypres,  a sight of so much fighting during the first World War.  We heard from a taxi driver that about 600,000 locals were killed during the war.
To this day there is a ceremony every night to remember everyone who died and it includes the playing of the last post. I happened to find a great YouTube video someone has posted:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td3yNH4ixhg

We also made it out to the Canadian War Memorial, The Brooding Soldier


And here is a closeup:





There are lots more pictures and of course I need to cover items 3, 4, and 5 on the list.  I will get to those with the next post. This one is long enough.