ONTARIO!

WOO HOO!

One More Day

Another day on the road brings us one day away from Ottawa and our new home.

Our day began at sunrise in North Sydney on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. We had picked up some baked goods for breakfast from the grocery the night before so along with a fresh thermos of coffee for J, we were ready to hit the road.
A few hours down the road and we’re on the mainland, officially, having crossed the Canso Causeway that connects Cape Breton island to the rest of Nova Scotia and Canada.

The roads were quite clear so we were able to make good time. There was the occasional snow squall and some ice build up here and there but generally very good weather.

Ten hours and 6 gas/stretch breaks later, we pulled in to Edmundston, NB at sunset.
Tomorrow promises to be a shorter day, relatively. “Only” about 760km to cover… But our hotel offers a free full breakfast so we’ll start off again well rested and well fed.

The adventure continues!

All Aboard

J, the cats, Buster and I are all on board the MV Highlanders Marine Atlantic Ferry this afternoon, bound for North Sydney, NS.  The last few days which brought us to this point have been busy, to say the least.
To say more, the adventure began the morning of Tuesday, Nov.25th. Our day began with a trip to the cancer clinic for my pre-chemo blood test to check my neutrophils.  All went routinely; interestingly, the nurse who did the blood test was same one as when I was first diagnosed by Dr.McCarthy 2.5 years ago. After the test, on to my drawing group for a few good byes and final drawing session.  Thanks to Barb and Marlys for the treats, and John for the jam, and the well wishes from the other artists.  I’ll miss drawing with you!

Back at home I called the clinic to find out that the Neupogen is doing it’s job very well. My neutrophils have spiked to a healthy 38.8.  Occasionally such a high number can indicate illness, as neutrophils rise to fight infection, but in my case I’m feeling great so the high number is a sign of healthy bone marrow doing it’s part to create more infection fighters.  Chemo is on for tomorrow!
Tuesday afternoon was spent finishing packing; there is always more to do than one thinks.  Cleaning the fridge, sweeping floors, all the last minute packing of things that are needed right up to moving day… plus an assortment of stuff that ends up being packed because you don’t know what else to do with it!   Around 6pm J and I went to pick up our moving van and trailer.  We booked a 20′ truck plus vehicle trailer to tow the Jeep on.

Our truck and trailer parked in Port-Aux-Basques

J drove the van and trailer home while I took the Jeep and made one last visit to my local yarn shop for a souvenir of local yarn.  A couple regulars were there so I said a quick emotional good bye and booted it back home.  It was a mild evening so J took the opportunity to run some errands on foot while I investigated the cab of the moving truck to figure out how our daily gear and pets would fit. A truck cab is much smaller than expected so some reassessment of pet crates was necessary. Initially Buster had his own large box and each cat was to travel solo but turns out there just wouldn’t be room.  Things were going to be very cozy!   At this point, we’ve had the truck home for about 45 minutes, J is out, and I have just managed to lock the only key INSIDE the cab.  OH. MY. GOSH.  Seriously?
So, on the phone to U-Haul. On the phone to CAA.  Strangely, I was connected to someone from the States… with CAA.  Anyway, a wonderfully helpful woman named Joanne sent me a locksmith in about 20 minutes who jimmied the door unlocked in about 6 seconds flat.  Had I thought about it I would have unpacked the hangers and tried it myself.  Lessoned learned. Never, EVER, set the only key down inside the vehicle.  That’s why someone invented zippered pockets.
Next on the list of things to do was to prepare Buster. He had his pond cleaned and emptied, the rocks thrown in the garden and the sun deck dismantled.  He spent an uneventful night in the laundry tub while I customized a packing box to become his new, smaller, four-day travel crate.  The cats, meanwhile, were sequestered in one bedroom to minimize their stress for the next couple days.  We left their cat crates and favourite blanket with them for comfort.  They seemed content enough.

Wednesday, November 26th was another busy day, starting again at the cancer clinic.  This is my last meeting with Dr.McCarthy and my last chemo treatment for this round, and in St.John’s.  I’ll miss Dr.M; as I’ve said in previous posts, she always took time for her patients. That means she was almost always behind schedule but it also means she cares… which is worth more than the time spent in the waiting room.  It was a quick meeting; I’m doing well and my charts have all been sent to Ottawa so there wasn’t much to discuss.  Well wishing from both sides, a few choked back tears on my part, and then on to chemo treatment.  Strange coincidence: J found me a semi-private space which turned out to the be the very same space in which I received my first chemo treatment, AND I had the very same nurse who administered my first dose almost a year ago.  It was a great way to end my treatment here.  Chemo went well; the leaving was actually the hard part.  All the nurses have been so good to me and seemed to know me so well… Plenty of hugs and a few more tears as J and I left the St.John’s Cancer clinic for the last time.  Thank-you to Megan,Karen, Jennifer and Stephanie (admin); they all, always, remembered my name.  Thank-you to Eleanor, a volunteer who delivered snacks (cheese!), warm blankets and smiles. A huge thank-you to all the nurses too: Anne-Marie (first and last!), Renee, Gina B, Jocelyn, Shirley, Colleen, Melanie, Heather, Lisa, Danita, Laura, Gina S, Murielle, Bertha, Annette and Alison. Unfortunately there are a couple more nurses of whom I only saw once and, apologetically, can’t recall their names.
Chemo done, back at home it’s now time for the post-chemo nap while J schlepps the heavy furniture with a hired mover.  We booked two men for 3 hours through U-Haul.  What we ended up with was one man, with a cold, for about an hour…  Oh well.  He did what J needed which was to move the furniture he couldn’t move by himself, mainly the living room furniture, mattresses and all my packaged up art boxes.   At 5pm we had to boot over to the lawyers to finish signing some paperwork to complete the house sale, then back home to finish packing the truck.  Post-chemo isn’t really the time for manual labour but J needed my help, and I couldn’t sit back and let him do all the work.  It’s not my nature.  It’s hard, coming to terms with a change in performance.  Once upon a time I would have carried stacks of boxes and done so much more… but with my spine under attack (cancer is in over half the vertebrae) I can’t risk carrying too much at one time.  So, slow and steady, I carry one thing at a time as long as it isn’t too heavy and I did as much as I felt I could do without causing harm. All evening we stuffed and rearranged and packed that truck to the gills.  J has an amazing ability to puzzle piece things together.  After the U-haul mover left, we thought we would be making some major donations to the thrift shop but J pulled out his Jenga-Master skills and fit everything in. Including the 150gallon turtle pond, all our chairs, and his computer desk. Amazing. I’ll have to post a picture of the inside of the van… it’s impressive. Sad, how much stuff we have and felt we needed to move, but still impressive that it all fit.
Thursday dawned bright and early.  Well, not that bright, as it’s November in the rainiest city in North America… but it was early.  5:30 to be precise.  Too early.  We both dozed until just after 6 to try to squeeze in a bit more sleep but when there is a big day ahead it’s hard to fall asleep again. More last minute packing… how can there be anything left?
Loading the Jeep on to the trailer was Stressful.  The U-Haul guy shows you in about 5 minutes what to do: chains here and here, tighten this, use these ramps, more chains here and here, don’t forget to tighten here, lock this.. etc.   But then at home, early in the morning, in the cold rain when your hands are beyond frozen and covered in grease, you question your memory, and load the jeep without fully tightening and chaining and the trailer nearly rams through the moving van door.  It was an event, definitely.  No harm done, just our pride hurt that we didn’t get it right on the first try.  All the initial chains and things to tighten done, J takes a few runs at the ramps up on the trailer and then begins the fun with more chains and tire wraps and even colder hands. Eventually Buddy (our Jeep) is all strapped in and secure with no extra chain or webbing to spare. Whew!  Now we load the pets into their respective boxes (Hazel and Fini are not pleased that they are sharing one box) and load ourselves. 8:30am and we’re on the road.  Port-Aux-Basques, Here we come!

Hazel enjoys some time outside the crate, while Buster and Fini travel in their boxes.

St.John’s up to Gander wasn’t too bad weather wise.  Lots of rain so the ruts in the roads were deep with water which made changing lanes interesting.  From Gander across central was when things became slightly treacherous.  It seems that Central NL doesn’t understand the concept of salting the roads so even though it was above 0, and a snow storm had been forecasted for days, the roads were a mess.  The trans-canada highway wasn’t moving at more than 65km at times.  Oh well. At least we were moving.  It wasn’t until we reached Cornerbrook that the roads improved, even though it was snowing. After nearly 12 hours on the road we pulled in to our hotel on the west coast of Newfoundland.  Looking forward to a good nights sleep and a restful day.  All people and pets accounted for; the cats enjoyed being able to stretch out and Buster enjoyed a little dip in the hotel tub.

Today, Friday, is so much more relaxed.  We left the hotel at about 9:30 this morning, drove the 3km to the ferry terminal and are now enjoying our private cabin.

Our private cabin

No pets are allowed in the cabin so the cats were left loose in the cab of the van with their big cuddly blanket.  There is no listing made of turtles being prohibited on board, and I didn’t ask, so Buster is also enjoying the luxury of cabin cruising.  He has thoroughly explored the perimeter at least 10 times, and has managed to climb up and into the garbage can once.

Buster exploring the cabin

Leaving Port-Aux-Basques.

Decent weather heading out to sea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a couple of hours we’ll pull into North Sydney and drive a few km to our rest stop for the night.  Tomorrow is another biggy though.  We were planning on stopping near Halifax to visit with J’s sister but our new house has paper work to be signed Monday morning so we’ll need to cover Cape Breton to Ottawa in two days.  It can be done. Two more full days of driving but J will be well rested and we’ll be on “home turf”.  We’re definitely going to miss things and people from NL, but we’re coming ‘home’ and that means a lot to us too.

Well, this is obviously a much longer post than usual. But its not very often one crosses so many provinces in such a short time.
Thanks for checking in and travelling with us, remotely.  Another update should follow in a day or two.

Up, up and on my way!

Chemo went ahead today!
It was down to the wire though.
Last week I had blood tests on Thursday and Friday; both found my neutrophils too low (1.4 & 1.3). had another test yesterday, still too low (1.3 again) so we tried again this morning at 10:20 before chemo due at 11. The nurse called at 10:48 to say chemo is a go; neutrophils at 1.6! Way to go lab team; fastest test return ever!
By 11:20 I was hooked up through my port and treatment was underway.

At treatment with my crazy fro

This is great because I’ll most likely be able to finish this round of treatment before the move. I’ll feel confident in taking a little break before starting up treatment in Ontario. It’s also great because I know my liver has been responding well to CIS-Gem; more drugs could bring further tumour reduction.
Today we paid for and signed release forms for my chart and CT scan images to take with us to Ontario. Of course we had to have a look.   Below is a view from mid-way up in my torso, looking from below, so everything is reversed. The bulk of the image is the liver (actually on the right of the body). Various other organs (spleen,some stomach, maybe some kidney) to the right. The large white area is the spine and I think the white areas in the liver are blood vessels, not tumours. Cool, eh? Ok, maybe that’s just me…

Moving preparation is progressing well. We have a large collection of boxes in the living room and almost everything outside the kitchen and main bathroom are packed.

The photogenic stack of boxes

Buster’s tank will be among the last things to pack up. His travelling box,  a clear storage bin, is standing by. The cats are well accustomed to their cat crates through treat bribery.

This time next week we’ll be packed up and on our way the day after…  Very exciting but bittersweet too. I’ll save the appreciation of all things local for a later post.

One last thing : Thanks to all of you who have been leaving comments and sending emails. I’m sorry I haven’t responded. Things are a little crazy. I’ll get back to you… eventually…

Schedules

Surprise, surprise, my neutrophils are too low for treatment, again. They were too low last week as well. Following the post about the exciting news of our upcoming move I wanted to keep the blog upbeat so kept the delay to myself (and mom). J has been keeping track of my delays and tells me that I always receive day 8 once day 1 is successful. I haven’t checked my paperwork but will trust him on this.  These delays were completely unexpected. Clearly I overestimated the continued success of Neupogen. A question for my doctor will be why I don’t continue with the neupogen shots during my week off from treatment; that seems to be when my neutrophil struggle the most.  I gave myself a few shots during the last cycle so I would happily continue to do so if it would keep me on schedule.
Speaking of which, moving day is fast approaching. If I keep to my “chemo on Friday” plan I will be on the road before finishing this cycle. Fortunately my nurse today understood our predicament and made a call to my doctor about changing my treatment day.   Since I’ve had these delays changing the day isn’t an issue. The nurse found a space for another blood test on Tuesday with chemo scheduled for Wednesday.  If all goes well, this new schedule could mean I’ll have my last chemo in St. John’s the day before we hit the road… Long road trips usually make me sleepy anyway so maybe I’ll nap my way across Newfoundland. The inconvenient part of the timing is that the 26th is when we booked guys to load the truck.  I might be able to have the chemo scheduled for the morning and then the movers will arrive in the afternoon. It will work out. I hope!

On the plus side, I continue to feel well; just a few naps here and there. This has allowed me to make some good progress packing up the house. The basement is empty as well as some closets, and most rooms have been disassembled in some way. Yesterday I began the slow process of packaging up all the art. Taping the glass where necessary, padding frame corners, wrapping in plastic, protecting with bubble wrap, and finally bundling a few together in cardboard. I’m sure I burned off a fair number of calories yesterday (makes up for all the leftover Halloween candy I ate!) . I’m glad I started packing a couple weeks ago because things always take longer than expected… But boy, do the walls look bare. Looking forward to decorating the new place! For the record, J isn’t sitting idle watching me pack.  He moves the heavy things and full boxes. Most importantly he’s looking after all the lawyer stuff and the paperwork and banking and paperwork and talking with the relocation company.  Did I mention the paperwork?  Thank goodness for digital technology. I forgot how many small forests it takes in forms and contracts to move.

Sorry about not including any photos recently.  I have some nicely stacked boxes that are beginning to look photogenic though… Maybe next week 😉

On The Road Again

I have to admit something… I’ve been sneaky.  For the last couple of months I’ve been holding out on all of you with some big news for J and I. We’ll, sort of. I think most of you have heard through the grapevine but now it’s official. I I’ve mentioned in a few of my recent blog posts about “the next time I’m in Ontario”.
Well, that next time is coming very soon.  December 1st, to be precise.

And it’s not just a visit either.

It’s true.  We’re finally moving.  Officially.  We’ve had many false starts over the years; the most recent being the ill-fated move to Italy earlier this year.  However, this time everything has fallen into place.  J and I have sold this house here in St.John’s and we have bought a house in Ottawa near the airport.  J also received the official job offer late last week.  This week’s big event was that J submitted his resignation to his employer.  Stressful, yes,  but that boss has been fantastic.  All through-out my diagnosis and various treatments he has given J complete support with time-off, a flexible schedule and the ability to work from home almost exclusively.  If you happen to read this, Mr.K, our fullest gratitude goes to you for your tremendous understanding and kindness over the last couple of years.  Thank-you!

Now the packing begins. And booking of the moving truck, hotels, and the ferry.  Deciding what to pack, what to give away, what to use up.  Fitting in visits to friends and maybe fitting in some quick trips to our favourite hikes and ocean views.  The next few weeks are going to fly by I think.

Among the packing and preparing to move I still have 2 more cycles of CIS-Gem chemo to complete for this round of treatment (Nov.7 and 14th).  Thankfully, now that I’m on the Neupogen shots, I won’t have any trouble staying on schedule.  My last neutrophil reading was 9!  Far cry from 0.8, that’s for sure, and with no side effects.  I’m counting myself very lucky.  I already have a new doctor in Ottawa that I should hear from this week or next for the schedule of the next round of chemo.  With the good news from my last scan we’re going to keep blasting those cells as close to oblivion as we can so I’ll have another round of 3 starting sometime in December.  I’m sad to be leaving the cancer centre here, in a way.  I know that sounds strange but having a sense of familiarity and comfort surrounding my cancer care is, well, comforting.  The nurses have been great, the receptionists all know me and of course Dr.McCarthy has been the best.  I’m still here so of course I think she’s done a great job in steering my treatment in the right direction.  Many doctors get a bad rap for being unfriendly and rushed, but not Dr.M…  Right from the beginning we got along and she was understanding as to how J and I like to hear all the options.  We had time to discuss my treatment with her and make decisions together.  And she always looked great – not that that really matters with regards to my care, but I don’t know… somehow her snazzy outfits (with great shoes of course!) brought a little sunshine to our appointments.

There will be a few more blog posts made from NL but I hope to make a few while we’re on the road too so that people can keep track of us as we travel to Ontario. For the record, the cats and turtle are coming with us.  And of course Jodie will come with us in spirit.

So on we go. Let the moving madness of getting on the road again begin!

Happy Monday

I’m writing this from my cell phone so I’ll keep this brief, but have great news to share.
The results of my CT scan from October 27th were revealed at my appointment today.   Here is the radiologist’s summary:
“1. Overall, there has been continued improvement of metastatic disease to the liver when compared to prior [scan]. Multiple liver metastases do remain, but many have decreased in size and there is indication of continued healing of many treatment responsive lesions.
2. Stable skeletal metastases. ”

Some people don’t like Mondays but I have to say that this particular Monday is a very good day!