Weekend

It was a lovely day today, although somewhat overcast.  It was warm, not humid and with a lovely breeze.  My friend from Vancouver raided a garden for these lilacs and gave them to me before she left yesterday.  The house is full of the scent of lilacs and they’re wonderful!  I’m enjoying them so much!  Jerry spent his time making me into a dog bed and ball thrower for a good part of his day, and then arranged my thighs to make himself comfortable.  Because that’s what he does.  Don is doing pretty well, although we’re both having difficulty breathing.  He’s been watching the international games and was not too happy with Canada’s performance, so I’ve heard all about that!  Otherwise he’s in good spirits and I’m nervously scanning for Amazon delivery packages, as he’s received several of them lately, and they don’t seem to have anything for me in them… at least, they arrive, he opens them after I go to bed, and I see empty boxes… 😁

I slept through the night last night, with absolutely no interruptions, and woke up late (to see a pair of teddy bear eyes and a furry paw poking at me) and rested.  That was so good… plus today I’m hungry and craving sweets, which is also great.  I’ve swung from hungry to not wanting food to back to hungry today!  I’m actually planning to do some cooking tomorrow — if I remember to take the meat out of the freezer to marinate tonight!  I plan to stuff myself to try to regain a little more weight.

May I fantasize a bit?  I was talking with someone about the possibility of my joining their team as a patient partner, which is something that is of interest to me.  We discussed that treatments can be hard on the body, even though they’re helpful and beneficial to the person.  I thought about it, and here’s my vision of patient care; please feel free to critique as you see fit.  I’d like it if there were a way to do a simple, routine evaluation of each person, and could quickly pinpoint any incipient diseases, so they could be treated accordingly before things get bad.  But if there is a persistent cancer, then it would be wonderful if a tumour biopsy could be turned into a specific drug that treats that tumour without affecting the surrounding healthy tissue.  The drug could be administered in a vaccine in a pharmacy, and the treatment begins immediately and effectively.  Same for other autoimmune diseases, that we could sample their blood, develop a specific treatment and give it to them.  There’s this scene in Star Trek IV where Dr McCoy is walking through a hospital and gives a woman a pill, and shortly thereafter she’s yelling that her kidneys are working again, and the doctors are buzzing… I want us to get to that stage, where many lengthy, painful, but necessary procedures become irrelevant.  

I’m fortunate enough to have interacted with many wonderful, caring, talented and competent doctors, nurses, technicians and other medical professionals.  I think that they see me as a whole person, not just a cancer, or a particular symptom and work with me to develop a treatment plan.  I’d love to replicate them and make them universally available… that being said, I’ve also seen some of the research underway and I’m hopeful that much of it will come to fruition as there are a number of incredible developments in progress.  I’ll keep dreaming.

I’m dropping off to sleep… I love heading out with friends, and enjoying time with them but it is really fatiguing.  It’s an observation, not a complaint.  I will learn to balance time out with rest so that I  don’t drain all my energy and be unable to do these outings more.  It’s early, but I hear my bed calling.  I’ll take out the meat, put it to defrost, and go to sleep!  Good night!