Stair SMASH Starts with you !

Good afternoon peeps,

So as I promised here are some of the more light heart moment from crazy radiation mind. Thank god for the most part we had nurses that laughed this stuff off. The first night I spent in Sudbury I buzzed the nurses into my room gave them a 10 minute speech about how I wasn’t a trouble maker (since I had a reputation at St. Margaret’s as pulling my IV cords out) at the end of the speech I once again apologized and then asked for a carry on and a boat (which was my sister Kerrie and a bed). I also announced to the Mount Sinai ICU unit and all the nurses standing by that I wouldn’t be on American Idol. My family was responsible for growing all the olive oil in Israel. I would also get convinced that certain groups of people were going to punish me and I would be terrified out of my mind, among those were my aunt and uncle because I couldn’t go down hills on my bike, or sending people away because the paranoia got to me Kerrie and Danielle got spent to collect pamphlets so they weren’t around when I thought I was going to die.

It’s nice to be able to joke about it now but my first night in Sudbury I woke up with a girl sitting in my room covered in blood (she did the same thing I did and pulled out the IV) and she was whispering about how the nurses are going to kill her, I just kept saying over and over that she would be ok but I think at that point there isn’t much logic left in their brains.

So back to today. Let’s start off with our Lovely friends over at Palliative care, If there is anyone in the world that needs a rebranding lesson it would be these fine folks. Most people when they hear that it usually comes off as the place where they go to ‘turn the machine off’ that is until Palliative Care decided to go bad ass and took over all pain medicine. And ta da for the first time since April I was almost entirely pain free (I won’t get picky, I have a feeling that this is as best as it is going to get I still get some of the head tricks at tee wrong time but right now the mix seems to be working wonderfully I’m sticking my noise in as a co-contributor but the last part of the was totally my idea (and well mom helped a bit) The day wasn’t an entire waste however I did build a bird feeder (which Nemo moved into) , went on a two story wheelchair run of the hospital, and walked way more then I was allowed to with the cane (I’m such a bad ass like that the cubs would be proud.) and the usual walker/walk. “Flowers grow in sand I can do anything”

Hope everyone is enjoying this as much as I am, as always if you think of any questions or comments you can leave me here or on facebook or via dancing telegram, I know there is about a week that only some of you know what happened so I’m going to put on my big girl pants and dig into that starting tomorrow because even I don’t remember that week for the most part.

Thanks for reading J

Of and just out of curiosity is anyone interested or a member or a online book club ?

Thanks

Monday Part II

Since I wrote this morning blog last night I decided to go back and do another one for this evening. The rest of the day was pretty quiet, we decided to mix up my pain medication a bit (which is really a super delicate act when you get to this stage) but I need to get me some more relief in the afternoon and hopefully sleep better so tomorrow will either be a fantastic day or me being a puddle of tears (for the third day in a row). My main problem is I tend to get very paranoid, sad, and loopy but also I am in pain and the meds are part of each others problem, so the mix right. This morning I was able to get some work done on my bird feeder though, but spent most of the day in an attempt to sleep off the pain or just brush through it. Eventually got all the meds switched over at once. This ended up working well because all of a sudden I am high as a kite with a sore arm, we can just assume that is close enough for now.

It’s funny that the mind things have made such a huge impact on my status of life going through cancer is the mind games that it starts to play on you. I remember it started very early on with the treatment. For some reason when I was in the car going to treatment I didn’t seem to fit right. I would either have my eyes close picturing myself in a bed that was 20 times the size of me or that I was in a box car, I began to lose all sense of perception. It usually happened on the way to treatment but occasionally when I was trying to sleep as well. After a while they became more vivid. My cousin Courtney bought me a giant balloon that said You’re the best !, except that I would insist that it said Happy Birthday, I would get really angry when my mom would disagree with me. I wanted to write this blog when they were around since I can’t remember I also kept talking about Dutch kids and war boats. It took me forever but it turns out that I was trying to rescue children from WWII. At one point we were moved to a room at Princess Margaret, I was convinced that the room was run by grape raisin children, but my job was to protect the second group which were the cantaloupe children in order to do this I very careful I took off all my hospital panamas along with pulling all my iv out so when I finally came to I was covered in blood still desperately trying to protect the cantaloupe children. I kept getting my two friends named Erin/Aaron mixed up and would be really angry when someone corrected me (which they did often since only one of them was female and pregnant). I began to write pages of notes at night which to this day still do not make sense.

I began to freak a little, hair loss and the other things that is what you sign up for, completely losing your mind is something that no one get prepared for. It was the oddest of places though that helped me get through it. I ended up with an old Vogue Magazine with an article about someone who was also going through brain cancer, the more I read the more I understood, she had her made up frogs that needed protecting just like my cantaloupe children. Bits of history became jumped up. I remember being confused to the point of sobbing that I couldn’t explain avatar using shapes. We both had books that we knew existed and that these books held the cures but they were written. I have thousands of explains.

Anyways since this turned into a bit of heavy blog (more than I intended on anyways) I’ll leave it with that and see if my parents or Kerrie remember any of the funnier stuff.

So far new pain plan is working; this could be the start of an excellent week J Not much of a stair update today, the regular physio was off so I just spent some time on a bike and then went for a long walk will be tackling again tomorrow so fingers crossed for some excellent STAIR SMASH.

Sunday, Sunday

So we busted out again on Sunday, again the quiet and comfort of home really relaxes me same with seeing friends outside then hospital.

The first time I came to Princess Margaret I had half a newspaper in the back of the car with me. When I went to open it I realized that is was an obituary for Leanne Copeen who was writing a living with Cancer Blog for Chatelaine and how she had lost her battle that night. Thinking that this was a bad omen I got rid of the paper right away but once again literally found myself running into her blog posts. She was talking about how there is a image of the s an interesting idea about cancer and that was there is an image of the stoic noble hero of a cancer patient and then there are the coach potato ones. Those are the ones that see Cancer as the big bully knows that sometimes the sadness seems overwhelming and you are allowed to take that one day to stay under the covers and be sad I think that was for most of the day

Woke up yesterday to complete fog it was beautiful outside to look at I couldn’t see a thing from outside my window. Got up right away and went through the physio exercises to get myself ready for the stairs again. I increased everything up to 10 reps to get myself a little stronger. Got home and nothing exciting was happening so I took I a quick nap which ended up being almost two hours of me just lazing around the house all day, cancer was being it’s little witch so I was o and us just lazed around the house all day.

Anyways after that Aaron and Steph stopped by followed by the TenEyckes and I finally got to meet the baby Caledonia. And apparently Toronto burnt to the ground or something (I wasn’t really paying attention but I did find out if I was still in ICU I probably would have been locked in the hospital) Nana and Clarence also came in which was great because it was the first time that I had seen them in over a month.

Ended up having (for this place) a surprisingly quiet night, I was determined to make it as hospital free as possible so I watched Saved! And Shut and Sing and in honour of the Lilith Fair made myself a hemp bracelet which is now acting as my stair climbing good luck charm.

Hope you all had a terrific weekend J

.Laurie

Home Sweet Home

Well I made it through my first home visit; the parents are going to spring me again tomorrow and a few more days until I get my final discharge. The morning started off so relaxing, it is amazing how loud hospitals can be but once I got out I napped (which I never due anymore) for a few hours. Unfortunately there was a brief what the hell do I do melt down but lounging around on the couch seemed to take care of that (unless this is Stephanie from physio reading then you should know I was walking ;) the stairs continue to be man’s most terrifying invention but I’m determined I just need some sort of climbing stairs motto or song.

Spent most of the afternoon out in the sun which was beautiful, it was still pretty wintery when I left Edmonton so I haven’t had much sun time this year (whiter than Conan you could say). Towards the end of the night we went to Chapters and I got some hemp so I have something to pass the day. It was so nice to get out even the running out of morphine didn’t seem to bother me. Only draw back of the day was the fact that I lost one of my World Cup teams (South Korea). Nothing eventful happening tonight either.

During the time we spent in Edmonton/Toronto hospital I snapped a few pictures I thought some of them would be fun to share. I don't really know what I am doing here though so bare with me and I can add some life to some of these posts.

Spiderman, when I moved into my apartment in Edmonton I also gained a cat, but we had to say goodbye when I went back to Ontario and he went to live with his brother again. Kerrie made me a Spiderman 2 and this is a picture of him actually sitting in Clive.

So just as I am finally finishing this post up they make a call yellow which means missing patient. Strangely enough it fits my description almost exactly (and........never mind they just found her). The first night I was in Sudbury I woke up and there were about 6 nurses in my room at 3:30 with another patient who was telling me the nurses were going to kill her. I've been on the other side of the coin as well, convinced that the nurses were trying to kill me, it really is a terrifying thing to go through I just end up feeling bad for them.

I know that these posts are a little all over the place, but I have to say it is getting comforting doing normal things like writing and reading and going over some foggy weeks, so like I said I am doing this blog more for me then anyone else but happy you joined on for the ride. Also since it is out there I have no problem sharing with others.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Saturday night, see you tomorrow.

Kilbys :)