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Part of my hope with this blog is to start a dialog. I like to hear my own voice and see my own words, but honestly I much more want to be part of a conversation about what it means to have cancer and how people can both give and get support when they are on either side of that particularly ugly coin.

So don't be shy! Leave a comment, ask a question, share your own experience.

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I have your results...

"I have your results." There's nothing elegant about collecting a FIT (Fecal Immunochemical Test) sample. You poop on a piece of paper and jab a plastic stick into it, then screw the stick back into the little plastic container that held the stick in the first place. You then keep the poop/stick/container combination in your fridge until you can take it into your local lab. In my case I handed it to a young woman who I'm  pretty  sure not only went to school with my son but came to his tenth birthday party and has therefore been in my house.  But I digress. My point is, the test isn't elegant. It's not even particularly accurate. False positive tests - where the test is above threshold but no colon cancer is present - happen often . Fairly simple and benign processes like hemorrhoids can trigger a positive result. That doesn't mean that the test is bad, just that it might be oversensitive. Think about it this way, it's likely better to refer mo
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One lily pad at a time.

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Jaunty frog says "Ribbit." Ever seen a frog sitting on a lily pad on a pond? Okay - how about a cartoon  frog on a cartoon  lily pad? I bet you're hearing that frog singing "Hello My Baby", aren't you? Honestly, I'm not sure he was ever shown on a lily pad. Again, I digress. Lily pads. Once upon a long, long time ago I completed a certificate in project management. In one of my seminars the speaker showed a slide of a frog on a lily pad and explained that if a pond is too big for a frog to jump across in one go, they will hop from lily pad to lily pad until they get to the other side, breaking down an insurmountable task into a series of smaller tasks that are easier for them to achieve. "The same thing goes for projects; sometimes the whole concept is too big or the work involved is too great to do in one go. Just focus on the next lily pad. Jump there, get stabilized, and then set a new goal of the next  lily pad." He was a pre
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Several "lasts", in pictures...

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On October 4, 2019 I parked at my local cancer treatment centre for my last cycle of chemotherapy. I was connected to the poisons that I had come to accept as part of my life for what seemed like forever. In reality, it had been about eighteen weeks from the start of my chemotherapy to my last cycle, but it was such a significant change to my life as I knew it that chemotherapy came to define my life more than I had wanted. But that all changed that Friday morning. I received the nerve-damaging drug oxaliplatin for the last time, then had the last baby-bottle of the mucous membrane destroying fluorouracil connected for the last time. I would still feel the adverse effects of these drugs for the next few weeks - cold dysesthesiae from oxaliplatin and GI side effects and mucositis from the fluorouracil -  but that would be the last time I would experience them. My life, my normal former life, will soon be given back to me. I took a few pictures to commemorate the various "las
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