In hospice I remain, but this series has run its course. I can no longer express to you the strangeness of a place that has become mundane.
Hospice was a liminal space in which I have been trapped, trapped until my personal avatar of death, of passing on, of transition and freedom comes to me and sets me into the whatever comes next.
I'm beginning to think it's liminal all the way down.
Output will continue, but like Cancer Selfies, Hospice is completed.
Consider donating to St Joseph's Hospital in Elliot Lake, they do excellent work for a small community. They're working on improving their oncology area, which is very close to my heart. These improvements will allow more patients to recieve their treatment in the community they live in, rather than traveling two hours each way to the nearest cancer centre.
If you want to keep your money closer to home, then please consider donating to a hospice. The one here has given me and my family so much joy and comfort in a very difficult time in our lives time. I don't think I'd still feel as alive and vibrant, and I would not still be creating, without the care this hospice provides. Hospice is a gift we all deseve at our appointed hour.
Last night, I had a brief crisis of faith, so to speak, as I looked out upon my hospice suite and saw not the cozy, whimsical little nest we had constructed over the past weeks, but a hospital room, fancier and better appointed than most, but sterile and lacking.
The feeling passed this time. It wasn't too difficult to challange. But a single datum points no where, is this a bad night or the look of things to come?
I know not, but know that I have all of you on my side, and I'm confident that is enough.
Consider donating to St Joseph's Hospital in Elliot Lake, they do excellent work for a small community. They're working on improving their oncology area, which is very close to my heart. These improvements will allow more patients to recieve their treatment in the community they live in, rather than traveling two hours each way to the nearest cancer centre.
If you want to keep your money closer to home, then please consider donating to a hospice. The one here has given me and my family so much joy and comfort in a very difficult time in our lives time. I don't think I'd still feel as alive and vibrant, and I would not still be creating, without the care this hospice provides. Hospice is a gift we all deseve at our appointed hour.
Hospice is a liminal space, a place between life (and those skilled in the healing arts) and death (backed, in my case, by one of the most feared phrases in the English language (cancer, stage four). It's an easy space to get lost in, an easy space for the truly horrifying facts of life to set in and become mundane (the last time I truly consumed food was July 5th, the last bowel movement shortly after.
Todau the metastable system we had developed over the past month collapsed a bit as my partner departed the hospice for the real world of primary school teaching. It's been inevitable since the 5th. The whole group, Alicia, myself, friends, family. We've all known. And so far, while it's only been hours, it feels right.
I genuinely don't know if I expected to last this long. But I have, and I'm still relatively sturdy. I'm now looking forward to spending more time with my brothers and parents (and poodles and Thomasin).
Consider donating to St Joseph's Hospital in Elliot Lake, they do excellent work for a small community. They're working on improving their oncology area, which is very close to my heart. These improvements will allow more patients to recieve their treatment in the community they live in, rather than traveling two hours each way to the nearest cancer centre.
If you want to keep your money closer to home, then please consider donating to a hospice. The one here has given me and my family so much joy and comfort in a very difficult time in our lives time. I don't think I'd still feel as alive and vibrant, and I would not still be creating, without the care this hospice provides. Hospice is a gift we all deseve at our appointed hour.
Consider donating to St Joseph's Hospital in Elliot Lake, they do excellent work for a small community. They're working on improving their oncology area, which is very close to my heart. These improvements will allow more patients to recieve their treatment in the community they live in, rather than traveling two hours each way to the nearest cancer centre.
If you want to keep your money closer to home, then please consider donating to a hospice. The one here has given me and my family so much joy and comfort in a very difficult time in our lives time. I don't think I'd still feel as alive and vibrant, and I would not still be creating, without the care this hospice provides. Hospice is a gift we all deseve at our appointed hour.
Consider donating to St Joseph's Hospital in Elliot Lake, they do excellent work for a small community. They're working on improving their oncology area, which is very close to my heart. These improvements will allow more patients to recieve their treatment in the community they live in, rather than traveling two hours each way to the nearest cancer centre.
If you want to keep your money closer to home, then please consider donating to a hospice. The one here has given me and my family so much joy and comfort in a very difficult time in our lives time. I don't think I'd still feel as alive and vibrant, and I would not still be creating, without the care this hospice provides. Hospice is a gift we all deseve at our appointed hour.
I'm no longer writing Cancer Selfies, that project didn't finish where I wanted or where I expected, but it did finish at the right place. People have used the final post (hospice, sticky on my profile) as a place to leave nice messages for me and my family, which I appriciate more than I can express. This is a good place for them. I've enjoyed reading them all, and keeping them together makes them easier to find in the future.
Consider donating to St Joseph's Hospital in Elliot Lake, they do excellent work for a small community. They're working on improving their oncology area, which is very close to my heart. These improvements will allow more patients to recieve their treatment in the community they live in, rather than traveling two hours each way to the nearest cancer centre.
If you want to keep your money closer to home, then please consider donating to a hospice. The one here has given me and my family so much joy and comfort in a very difficult time in our lives time. I don't think I'd still feel as alive and vibrant, and I would not still be creating, without the care this hospice provides. Hospice is a gift we all deseve at our appointed hour.
Today I'm celebrating my second Cancervercery. I don't think that, as a birthday like holiday, it's likely to catch on with anyone else, but it's important to me.
It marks the anniversary of my diagnosis, celebrates the months and months enduring chemo and recovering from surgery. It's an opportunity for me to look back at all the things I've done while under the shadow of one of humanities greatest nightmares.
For my first Cancervercery, I threw a squishmallow tea party, complete with a decorated Cancervercery cake. Whimsy and silliness were powerful enough then to contain the horror.
For my second, and final, Cancervercery, that horror is unavoidable and inescapable. I've survived and thrived during my time in hospice, during the time when the processes of death itself could not be ignored. I've prepared a tour of my hospice life, complete with the digression and discussion everyone who knows me has come to expect. It's a long video, but a nice length for a visit (1.5 hours). It's extremely intimate and emotional. But I chose to make it, and I chose to publish it, and I'm choosing to share it here.
My first Cancervercery (this is a genuinely fun and joyful video)
Consider donating to St Joseph's Hospital in Elliot Lake, they do excellent work for a small community. They're working on improving their oncology area, which is very close to my heart. These improvements will allow more patients to recieve their treatment in the community they live in, rather than traveling two hours each way to the nearest cancer centre.
If you want to keep your money closer to home, then please consider donating to a hospice. The one here has given me and my family so much joy and comfort in a very difficult time in our lives time. I don't think I'd still feel as alive and vibrant, and I would not still be creating, without the care this hospice provides. Hospice is a gift we all deseve at our appointed hour.
Consider donating to St Joseph's Hospital in Elliot Lake, they do excellent work for a small community. They're working on improving their oncology area, which is very close to my heart. These improvements will allow more patients to recieve their treatment in the community they live in, rather than traveling two hours each way to the nearest cancer centre.
If you want to keep your money closer to home, then please consider donating to a hospice. The one here has given me and my family so much joy and comfort in a very difficult time in our lives time. I don't think I'd still feel as alive and vibrant, and I would not still be creating, without the care this hospice provides. Hospice is a gift we all deseve at our appointed hour.
Consider donating to St Joseph's Hospital in Elliot Lake, they do excellent work for a small community. They're working on improving their oncology area, which is very close to my heart. These improvements will allow more patients to recieve their treatment in the community they live in, rather than traveling two hours each way to the nearest cancer centre.
If you want to keep your money closer to home, then please consider donating to a hospice. The one here has given me and my family so much joy and comfort in a very difficult time in our lives time. I don't think I'd still feel as alive and vibrant, and I would not still be creating, without the care this hospice provides. Hospice is a gift we all deseve at our appointed hour.
Remember literally ten weeks ago when I asked for questions? (No? Why would you!). Anyways, I finally made my video because I'm finally, hopefully, coming out of this depressive episode
After a month.5 break, I'm back to doing video blogs! There's no information in this one that I haven't talked about over here on Facevook, but it does have my voice and I cuss a bit, so it's not without its charms.
I took a walk just before sunset on September 6th, looking for small woodland animals. Video includes a walk through a marsh on a boardwalk, some leopard frogs and a trumpeter swan towards the end.
Across Ontario there are several outcrops where you can see the precambrian-paleozoic nonconformity. One of these is approximately 3km West of Burleigh Falls, Ontario, on Peterborough Road 36.
A nonconformity is a missing part of the geological column where sedimentary rock was deposited on a crystalline igneous or metamorphic rocks. Here our igneous rocks are from the Grenville province of the Canadian Shield, and our middle Ordovician rocks are from the Gull River and Shadow Lake formations (part of the Simcoe group). The point of contact between these rocks represents approximately 550 million years of missing geological history, the Ordovician rocks are only 450 million years old.
I said I was going to give you coordinates for the site. After seeing it, and comparing it to what Google StreetView has from a few years ago, I'm not going to do that. Tourist erosion is a real problem in hobby geology. It shouldn't take long for anyone interested to locate the outcrop with this information. If you find yourself there, please respect those who will come after you, and please don't be a nuisance to the people who live nearby.
Join me as I walk the length of the main dyke at Tiny Marsh. We see sandhill cranes, great blue herons, swans, some ducks and geese and a whole lot of frogs.
The first half, we talk about the wildlife, the marsh, and stories I have about these creatures. On the way back, we talk about Meg 2: The Trench and other magnificently stupid movies.
This is shot with a head mounted camera, so the camera moves a lot and is shakier than is idea.
Short discussion about how you can feel great and healthy while still knowing your dying, and that that situation is actually normal, about symptoms and side effects, and planning around them, and about how there's always laundry to do.
On the second of August, 2022, I learned that I had cancer. Its now the second of August, 2023, and I'm throwing my First Cancerversary party. A Cancerversary marks an important date in the progression of your illness, good or bad. Starting treatment, a surgical date, the date you went into remission, or the date the cancer came back are all things I think we should be celebrating. Not because a bad thing happened to us, but because we are still here to experience it.
My 1st Cancerversary is a celebration of joy, life and survival (with a touch of death thrown in as a treat for me).
This is not about medicine as a discipline, talk to your medical oncologist for that. This is about how I relate to my treatment, and how that has changed as I've received it, and as the purpose of that treatment has changed.
I've been off chemotherapy for nearly four months, and my treatment plan calls for three month courses of chemo followed by three month breaks to recover. My break was longer because I had done eight months of chemo and then had HIPEC surgery to recover from.
It's now time to plan the next six cycle course of treatment.
I visited some Canada geese at Tiny Marsh in Tiny township this morning on my way home from the Cancer Centre. There were many and they were quite relaxed and beautiful.
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