Midweek

Another birthday crown that arrived in the mail from a friend in Vancouver.  It reads “birthday princess” and is heavily bedazzled 😁  It was a difficult choice as to which one would get worn to dinner.  But my niece edged out the competition… (the judges may have been biased!)  It’s much cooler today than the last two; it rained heavily again yesterday and there were some on and off showers during the day today.  It’s overcast now, and there’s still smoke in the air from the wildfires, which makes it hard to breathe again.  The smoke is forecast to last for a few more days, and so (thankfully) is the rain, which should help with the air quality index.  Jerry was going into his zoomies mode today, and was barking at nothing — I went to the door twice because he was sniffing at the door and looking back at me.  I made the mistake of opening the door, and he shot out and raced down the hall.  Luckily he just investigated the hall and then came back, nub of a tail proudly in the air, and went back home!  Don says that he’s not feeling great today; his breathing is also affected and he feels sluggish.  He’s resting on the sofa, relaxing and trying to feel more energetic.

My sister is on her way back home now; she had meetings this morning into the mid afternoon, and she’d planned to leave before the start of rush hour.  She came over just as I finished my second day of application reviews, and I made sure she ate before she started the 7-hour drive back.  It’s a long day for her, and I hope that the drive is easy (preferably with no storms!)  I had a lot of trouble sleeping last night, and didn’t really fall asleep until about 5am but I still got up at 9 so I could be awake for my meeting.  FTR, a Zoom meeting that lasts for almost 5 hours is difficult, and I’ve done two in a row, so 10 hours over 2 days.  At least the meetings were productive… in any case, that’s why an early post tonight, as I’m struggling to keep my eyes open and I’m just waiting to be able to take my meds before I go to bed!  

We finally finished reviewing papers today.  There were a few extras that were “rescued” from the triage pile for us to evaluate, so we did all that were assigned plus.  Yay us!  I made the observation that about half of the applications related to breast cancer in one form or another, which seems a little lopsided (no pun intended) to me.  Of the rest, they were split fairly evenly among lung, prostate and brain cancers, with some outliers of some rarer types.  As I’ve mentioned, I learnt quite a bit about things like the blood-brain barrier, various proteins that affect the proliferation of the disease, the role of T-cells and about some immunotherapy.  It’s encouraging to know that there’s this much work happening to address the effects of cancer at different stages — from noninvasive methods of diagnosis, to more efficient treatments to non surgical approaches and getting an understanding of how the disease progresses.  I know that in the nearly 11 years that I’ve been dealing with this thing that there have been advances, some of which have formed part of my overall treatment.  It’s really fabulous when you consider how many people are working to improve the quality of life for so many patients.  

Anyway, I just realized that I dozed off in the middle of a sentence, so it’s clearly bedtime, never mind the time!  I’ll love you and leave you while  I have a quick shower then head to bed!  Good night!