Cancer Selfies

Monday July 10, 2023

A trip to Espanola

There is no desernable improvement in my incision healing over the past few days, but I've learned that's the wrong time scale to measure it. Since it isn't infected, or seperating to an alarming rate (we have a home care nurse three times a week, monitoring it), it's best for me to really look at it once a week. You can see the improvement on that timescale.

Much more importantly and excitingly, the reintroduction of previously forbidden foods continues. Tomatoes and pickles are still out, but I enjoyed a bacon cheeseburger with the works, less those toppings, today. It was magnificent. Relish was the major addition, but onion was also forbidden until recently. Photos are from the lunch spot in Spanish, Ontario, at my favourite chip truck north of the French River (aka in Northern Ontario).

Today my mother and I visited one of my cousins (with his parents), which means that today officially kicks off me working through my activity list. He's got some ducks and chickens, two delightful dogs and four wonderful cats. Genuinely, the sort of life I'd have loved to have. I've got no pictures, and forgot all the names but one, because there was a mighty orange cat named Doug, and I spent most of my animal time with him. We'd all be lucky to have a cat as aggressively friendly as Doug.

Given my limitations and situation, which is going to be a caviet implicit in anything I say from here on out, today couldn't have gone better, or been more enjoyable. I saw people I wanted to see, ate one of my favourite sorts of food, pushed myself as hard as I have since the surgery, and pet lots of cats.

The appointment with my oncologist, like the sword of Damocles, hangs over all this. I'm starting to build anxiety about it. I tell myself that anything I learn doesn't suddenly become true by me learning it, and that whatever my fate is has been true since the evening of June 9th, after we all learned the surgery had been cancled, and realistically, also true on the second of August, last year, and perhaps further back, depending on how you feel about free will and cosmic determinism. August second is as far as I dare go.

I look forward to becoming more forward facing, hopefully the appointment will help for that.

A man is dressed in a t-shirt and hooded sweater vest sits in front of some shrubs and Canadian shield bedrock A man is dressed in a t-shirt and hooded sweater vest sits in front of some shrubs and a small picnic table on a post

From the comments

James Petrosky: If any of you ever find yourself traveling the north shore of Georgian Bay, in a little town called Spanish, right on King's Highway 17, is a chip truck called Lucky's. Extremely strong recommend from me.

They use chicken gravy for their poutine, which is unconventional and not to everyone's taste, but it's the best chicken gravy option I know.

Nancy: Doug A large orange cat sits on a coffee table with a dog in the background, his fur looks golden in the sun