In hospice, most days are not easy. There's a parade of pills, injections, infusions and pumps that have to be gone through to maintain the balance of health that is visible from outside the walls. It is the hard work the medical staff constantly do so that I can be as joyful about the little things I still, happily, get to experience.
And sometimes I need a stronger reminder. And today, I need an extra strong reminder. Which, happily, I have in the form of Healey and Balm Beach.
Healey, the only place in the whole oblate spheriod that's ever had the fortune of being home. A place where a railway meets a bay on a lake, where trains traveling from east or west light up the land and water in dramatic effect, passing each night. Where the full moon turns the gently rippling water into billions and billions of fish scales, seperating the millions of fireflies stuck in the sky from the cold dark where the scaled ones really live. The place I like to swim, to campfire, to watch the sun silently set, night after night, as I do here, in hospice.
The home to the last of my railway demigods, totems to a telegraph age long gone by, replaced by fiber and reliability. Replaced Healey. There's no where like it, yet everywhere is or could be. It's just my spot.
You shouldn't visit, there's nothing but ghosts left, and they're not you ghosts to play with. Balm Beach is much more inviting, has a similar sort of specialness to me, but in a sharable sort of way. Its ghosts are inviting, at least during the summer months, so you have a little time left to acquaint yourselves with them. It would be more rewarding, try yourself the brisket poutine and a Wasaga Beach Cerveza, it comes with a recommendation from the living James, too.
When it comes to Cats, my love is for every production I've encoubtered. I need say no more about the 2019 film for I think I've said it all, several times, at great detail. I've further worn our fairly warm out compact cassette copies[1] of the original Broadway cast (tape one isn't even really worth listening to anymore, but tape two has McCavity, Skimbleshanks and Memory, so you make do). I've got both the London and Broadway cast recordings on vinyl (London is my preference, but I don't have to choose so I don't).
And then there is the 1998 cast recording. The only way I'll ever experience it live. I'll always pick the theatrical movie, I'm much more about film than I am about stage. But state is still such a treat. And this recording is simply very good.
My mother wanted to watch Cats with me. There's a lot of that going around, and I cannot fault anyone for wanting to share it with me. It became so important to me at such a strange time in all our lives. Watching a stage recording with someone else feels more alive and real than watching it alone, not like the real thing, which is a capital R regret, but even one other spectator added so much to my experience.
It's Cats. It was beautiful. There were no dry eyes in the house after Memory, as it should be. I'm glad I've been able to share this with my family, because I'd honestly put this fixation largely behind me, terrified that it no longer had emotional power over me.
That fear was unfounded, I loved every second of sharing this weird period in my life with my loved ones. A small r regret is that I didn't do it sooner.
I forgot I kept my traveling stage show Mistoffolees holo ticket, and now they were scrapbooking (digitally and irl) I'm so glad I'm a pack rat. Mr. Mistoffolees is my cat, and it feels so right (even though Thomasin is absolutely a 1998 Jennyanydots)
[1]: I bought the cassettes because I was looking for long lengths of tape to make tape loops out of as part of an extremely lofi synth set up I was building (built the synth, built some tape toys, never made those loop tapes), so the first Cats thing I bought, the tapes, I bought explicitly to destroy because I was confident, so fucking confident, I'd never want or need them. That they were less worthy of preservation than the same Anne Murry tape that was in every store a dozen times. This is just a lesson that it is possible to be as most wrong about something as possible, and somehow, stumble back into the right path. The world is a wild and wonderful and beautiful place, and it is good and glorious to make mistakes, but also to make magically somehow avoid making the same mistake so many times they you end up with a deeply treasured possession. Sometimes luck is just with you.
A short (hopefully) daily video about what's going on in hospice. Today, some edited selfies from the past few days. Today's rambling video in the comments.
Tiny Marsh was my quiet piece of tranquility (except during hunting season) for near seven years. The Pond was round, crossed by two intersecting dikes, with a path they covered most of the circumference. Part of the circumference path had a boardwalk and lookouts. It was one of those perfect places in the world, maybe it could be improved, theoretically, but some of the real magic or the place would be lost in the transaction.
Tiny Marsh, more than any other place in southern Ontario is home to me, on an emotional level. It's where I'd go for a walk to clear my head (frequently after a unnecessarily convoluted drive to get there, because sometimes your head just needs that much of a clearcut). I recorded dozens of videos there, and until the Hospice videos started coming out was by far the most emotionally honest recording there vs home or my parents' place.
It's special. It contains real magic, the sort I've chased my whole life. It's not just the geese (although it is absolutely the geese, and their water fowl friends).
Around the east side, it has a small bunch of feral apples. Not the tastiest apples you've ever had for sure, but after all the walking you've done up to this point, they're exactly what you want.
Round the west side there are lookouts, and a groundhog mountain (hill? wiser men have debated this). Sometimes you even see the little critters. But in the fall, what you do see are cascades of leopard frogs, bounding away from you with every step you take. If you're quick, maybe you can catch one, but why? Let them flow like water across the path, away from you in all directions. It's more beautiful this way.
We haven't even talked the turtles, foxes, rabbits, turkeys (and other land fowl). Or the green heron, strangest bird I've ever seen with my own eyes. We discussed swans, but not swans in the spring, singing to each other, or in the fall, calling out and learning to take off for their preposterous flights. We haven't talked the dark passages through the trees carved out by the paths, the strange bridges, drainage ditches, the carp and bass (maybe, I'm only good at identifying caught fish), the cat tails, reeds and sedges.
Tiny Marsh is a place of wild magics. I cannot share a story about it because they're all beautiful, but they bleed together. Like many things, sharing the details would spoil the whole. So I'll leave the exploration of these spaces up to you. Just be kind to the spaces, and talk with the geese. They love that.
I've come to learn a lot about pain, in all its horendous flavours, these past years.
There was the stabbing, burning intensity of whatever the tumor in my pre-treatment naval was doing. A feeling so intense it could block visition. I had a lot of traveling to do that summer, and an exam to write, the pain pulled me off the road at least a half dozen times, and had it struck during my exam I might never have been able to call myself an electrician for those brief days.
There is the strange knotted numbness I felt with the surgical incision. As the hydromorphone hit and began to work, it was as though someone with the gentleist, most skilled touch was gently untying knots in the nerves, the sensation starting slow in the very pit of pain (where the naval used to be). The result didn't even register as a pain/no pain feeling, more the sort of relief feeling your body gives you whenever you've done something right (like when you stop holding your bladder too long, but to a much greater extent).
Recently, after the total bowel obstruction and the begginning of my stay in hospice, the pain registered as an extremely intense heartburn. It had a component in it of real heart burn, because over the counter medications helped briefly, sometimes enough to fall asleep (when combined with well timed sleep aids), but often it as just too painful to sleep. The solution to this was less painkiller based and more based on modifying how my digestive system works, but the cancer pain still manifested differently and in a way I wouldn't expect.
Cancer pain has dominated most of the last three years of my life. Only though accepting my fate and accepting a pain pump (truly a miricle machine to those in need) have I been able to break free of it. Or, at least, dramatically losten the strength of the teather. And I am happy for the freedom.
After the Grand Adventure that was every province west of Ontario, especially Alberta and British Columbia, I had no plans to slow down. I knew I needed smaller plans, that would fit between chemo sessions, and something like Manitoulin Island was a perfect little challenge.
As an asside, I don't know how I expected to manage anything under treatment. It was a race between the disease and the treatment to destroy my body. I was never going to be able to take the Manitoulin trip as I imagined.
On a beautiful, sunny day my aunt Nancy Fallat, uncle Terry and I set out for a quick tour of the eastern part of the island. We ate at the Anchor Inn (they messed up my order, but the order I got was probably safer for my condition than the loaded perogi I pined for.
Other highlights were the Ten Mile Point gift shop, stepping foot into Lake Manitou (largest freshwater lake on an island in a freshwater lake), and, best for my interests, we saw the swing bridge swing.
Plus, lots of Joey, the brand new (and very nervous) rescue dog. His nervousness had me leaving him alone
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.
No medical device of mine is going to remain plane. The oxygen tank, unfortunately, gets replaced too often to personalize in any meaningful way.
But it's Halloween at Dollarama, finally, so my memento mori skulls are out. Three little charmers adorn the front, with a light pattern that is supposed to (and mostly does) look like a spider web. I am excited to add a couple stickers in the morning (bearing in mind its a loaner and that I don't want to ruin other people's still too much).
The important thing, for me, is that while my physical form continues to be buffeted by the cancer and the chain reactions it's begun, I remain silly. I remain whimsical. And I, even though I haven't properly eaten since July 5th, still want to talk about food.
I'll succumb, eventually, and I'll go down dreaming of the 40 Creek whisky barbacue sauce chicken wings from Cellerman's Ale House circa 2018. Because I've fought this monster for years now, and I just want a snack of those wings, of civiche I had in Miraflores District in 2012, Domino's pizza as it first tastes out of the box, just a little too hot to eat but you can't help yourself (Canadian, in this dream), the butter chicken poutine you used to be able to get at The Bombshelter Pub, the double pulled pork poutine (order a bibimbap for Alicia and another for yourself or you'll regret it) from Minji's, onion rings from a local convienemce store that just melt away as you eat them, a bacon cheeseburger from Lucky's on Highway 17 and, because I'm not unreasonable in my dreams, coarsely diced tomatoes, salter and peppered, eaten as is.
The Cancer could still take these memories and desires from me, but for now they're safe. And with these absolutely delicious memories, I am safe.
And writing this list was so, so relaxing for me. I'm in such a better spot having recollected something important to me, in a way I hadn't so far. Pleasant dreams.
I really like these hallway chase scenes. I don't have much to say about them, I think they're fun and more than any photo I post on here they capture the mixed joys of the moment perfectly. I'm so glad I got my mother in one.
I enjoy the smiles, because I have to look very silly with the selfie stick in order to capture them. I enjoy the lighting challenges in editing. But mostly I like making it a game for my driver. Moments pass slowly here, but days are devoured. I hope these little races anchor a few moments in place, so we can better savour them and live within them.
Two New Friends! (An oxygen tank and my very own walker)
Today, I woke up with an oxygen tube in my nose. Nothing unusual in a hospital, in fact both rooms in the hospice are plumbed for it, but I went to sleep without it.
Today, the surgeon who generally checks in for a chat at the end of his shift (a man truly in possession of the best bedside manner I've ever had the fortune of experiencing) visited during lunch. He overheard the plan my mother and I had of spending the day looking for a walker because I'm at the point where I really could use one. It's a small town, and his aunt runs a medical supply store. She was able to get me a loaner I could keep as long as I needed. I walked out of the store with it. It took fifteen minutes, five was spent on petting dogs.
So last night I went to sleep breathing insufficient air, and with mobility problems. Today I rest back at home, problems all solved satisfactorily, at least for the time being.
Outwardly, these are massive losses of autonomy. To me, they're the tools I need to maintain what autonomy I can possibly have left. They aren't proof in no longer capable, they're how I remain capable in the face of whatever that sneaky assed cancer is up to.
September is a time of transition for us all. The seasons demand it of us. Our geese gather and leave us, hoping for warmer climates (or the open watering holes of southern Ontario). The leaves change as they die, so the trees as a whole may survive. And in that change, give us the colours of a perpetual sunset until the cold waters come and end it all in a sludgy, cold, slippery mess from which next year's leaves and berries and wonder all grow from. We may not all be there to see it, but its happened every year since the glacier's retreated and I see no reason why it wouldn't continue in my absence just as it has. Maybe with a bit more spice from climate change than we'd like, though.
I have been doing a video series on how weird a transitional splace hospice has been for me. Because it has truly been the strangest physical, mental and emotional places where I've spent any serious amount of time in. Its been a deeply special place, and, as the last few grains of sand in my hourglass empty, one I've been very glad to call home. Its been a gift to me and my family. But a deeply strange one. Some days its a regular apartment, which just so happens to be attached to a hospital, where your old sitcome friend (who always happeens to be a nurse) can bardge in any time to an appause track as they either solve the little problem you were having (usually an IV disconnect or reconnect) and be on their way. Sometimes, though, you're just trapped in a hospital room with no magic, where no amount of whimsy in the form of flowers and quishmallows and toys and pink flamingos and photos on the wall and children's colouring and the like can save it. Its still just sterile.
And those days, my friends, are the hardest ones. Because no one can breath life back into the space. Its just gone for a moment or a minute or longer. And I am ost without it. Its happened rarely, but some day the whole edifice willl colapse, bringing with it the joy I have found here. There will still exist joy obviously, the poodles and Thomasin still exist, but it will be lesser, different. It will be another stepping stone on the path towards my inevitable death. Which is inevitable, and not something I intend to run from at all.
Today there is joy. There is joy in hospice, so here I shall remain. But I must remember that the geese fly befroe the winter, not after the ice has frozen their ponds over. And I just need the wisdom to find that inflection point within my life.
September is a transition time for us all. After all.
This is the anniversary of when I started this album. I'm not sure what I thought I was doing then, but eventually I found my comfort zone relating my experiences with the medical system - the administrative side and the treatment side. This was a comfortable place through chemotherapy, and honestly an exciting one for me to be in through surgery. But I've struggled a bit since then.
I thought it was just that surgical recovery was boring (and it is), but chemotherapy was the same two week cycle sixteen times, and I never felt this way about it. I still talk nonstop about my cancer, as any of you who know me in person, or are in the same Facevook groups, can attest. But I haven't been able to figure out this place.
I think the reason is that, in light of my failed surgery and prognosis, the only place it made sense for me to go was do the same kind of day by day thing, but instead of it being about getting the full cancer trearment experience at 35, it's about grappling with mortality at 36 and, statistically, dying at 37.
Mental health wise, I'm just coming down from a minor hypomanic episode and feel stable, bipolar wise. My lithium levels are good. If asked how I'm doing, I'd truthfully answer "good, given the circumstances," but I can't tell you if that means I'm doing good.
I'm not an actor, though, when you see a look of delight on my face, that's real. I do have an actual notebook with an actual list of neat stuff to do and I am actually crossing things off on all my little adventures. I'm getting out and experiencing the world. Probably doing way more than I ever would have if I remained otherwise healthy, too, which is a thought too terrifying to contemplate.
To end, because it's been haunting my dreams and hopefully sharing will help, if someone, someday, talks about my death bed conversion, know that they are a disgusting fiend who takes advantage of the vulnerable to glorify themselves. If disease progression or treatment leaves me vulnerable earlier than that, same logic applies. These people were never able to convince me so far, I doubt they'll come up with something compelling in the next few years. I doubt I'm interesting or notable enough to receive this treatment, but I know it happens, so I know I'm not 100% unreasonable in my fears.
Outside Bala, Ontario, searching for its Bog Beast (visible in far background)When I bought it, I thought it was a cat, I now realize it's a hamster. My first pets were a pair of hamsters, who's claws terrified me so much I barely held them. And now I have a cat who walks up and bites me for unknown feline reasons, we change so muchAt Balm Beach, arcade, store and restaurant visible as bright lightsRecording videos at the marshGoose friend!Suspect beaver (at Kirkfield lift lock)Mystery door, CollingwoodRainbow trout, ThornburyOld historical rail bridge, ThornburyA cool evening, down by the bayMost antique shop booths are dragon's hoards of shiny things, thrown together. This one was a beautiful room (ft Lilly)Is he looking at me?State of the MoustacheMemento moriAt the restaurant in Balm Beach (I had what they called an Austin Cheese Steak, which i assume is a regular cheese steak with Texas grilling traditions. I have no idea, it was delicious though)I'm stoned in some of these pictures, but not this one, no matter how it looks.10/10, only note is that I wanted more giant octopusI can tell the chemo really effected me because it's above 30C here, there's no shade for 2km, I've already been outside for half an hour, and I'm just comfortable.
From the comments
James Petrosky: 37 is an estimate. I don't want anyone who knows me well enough to start doing math on my birthday and panicking. 38 is probably a better estimate, but 37 fits the flow a lot better, and it's all statistics based on regular colon cancer anyways
James Petrosky: I want to dramatically say "from here on in its all about death" but honestly it's been that way for a while. You have no idea how happy the "thinking about death" joke in Barbie made me, because a) it was funny, and matched my mental state perfectly and b) gave me a lot of cover to joke about it all summer. So thank you, Uncontrollable Thoughts of Death Barbie, you're a life saver.
James Petrosky: Somewhat related to liars for Jesus are liars for other spiritual causes. Mediums, channelers, seyances, ghost hunters, it's all evidence free nonsense, and they do tremendous harm to people undergoing grief by giving them a false hope that can never, ever be realized. If there is somehow an afterlife that can communicate back to the living, I promise you I'll never, ever give these dangerous frauds the time of day. I can be a stubborn person, and this is the thing I'm most stubborn about, so you can be sure I'll hold to it.
Because we live in something approaching a techno dystopia, it's possible to train a large language model on someone's social media history to create a computer program that can write and speak like you can. Maybe there's not enough information available for me. Almost certianly I'm not important enough for this treatment. But if this is done, and it's done well enough to be convincing, the output program is also not me. It's just an actor, playing a role. The same as a spiritualist, they just learn their script from different sources.
Yesterday, I left the hospital for a few hours to visit my apartment, visit my parents for dinner, and most importantly visit a pretty little orange tabby with an enormous head.
She was a bit shy at first, but warmed to me and the extra set of hands petting her quickly. She's the sole resident of my apartment right now, but gets plenty of visits from everyone and lots of attention. I'd rather her live with me at the hospital, but logistically that's not possible.
We're still working on getting her settled in with the dogs, but there was a but if a medical setback during the heat wave we need to address first. Things are still looking good for her, though, and I'm not losing sleep over her just yet.
I can't say I ever made it to Haliburton proper on my adventure. Yes, I stopped in to have some fish and chips at McKecks Tap and Grill (and I really felt the absence of beer this time, the fish were fantastic and could only have been improved by a better drink), but we were too close to chemo starting, physically too far from home, and I'd seen half a dozen deer in the way into town. I'm crazy, not a lunatic.
The sculpture garden was one of the most magical places I had the good fortune of visiting during the whole of my travels. It's attached to Flemming College at Haliburton and, so long as you can get there, free to explore.
There were several of beavers which I particularly enjoyed, as I love my fat rounds, but I think the stone hemisphere where you could sit in the dark and quiet and humid has left the longest impression on me. I wish I'd written this post quickly, and then again later, periodically.
The Sculpture Garden is with a visit, maybe even a detour visit. I ate at a perfectly good bar and grill, because I came on an off day. You could likely do something more special to match the weird erie, possessed feeling of the place.
More information on the sculpture garden can be found here.
I was in and through Collingwood quite often. Through it was one my my favourite junk shops in Thornbury, and the whole south coast of Georgian Bay all the way to Owen Sound (and even Wiarton Willie), plus being the path further into south western Ontario.
But I only spent one glorious afternoon there. Passed a old grain mill is a spot called the Collingwood Millennium Overlook. It sticks out into the Big Water like a breakwater (and probably was constructed at least in part as one) and is covered in parkland, neat historical trinkets and, while I was there, perfect weather for spotting where you live across the water (see comments).
The highlight of my day was a food truck called Han's Beach Bites, where I learned of the greatness of currywurst and curry fries. Not going back here, especially because it was so close, is a big R regret, the good was magnificent. I probably should not have eaten the leftovers for food safety reasons, but I did, so my car smelled like curry all day long and it was amazing.
On a weekend, with more food trucks, this would be a really exciting and fun spot. As it stood, on a hot day in the middle of the week, there was no wait for my food. I'd have liked to be around people, but the next part of the journey (Thornbury) makes up for it.
️Coldwater Canadiana Heritage Museum (and home for haunted dolls)
After saying goodbye to the wonderful Big Chute Marine Railway, I noticed that I had a narrow window where I could also fit in a visit to Coldwater's Canadiana History museums.
Like many indoor/outdoor museums of this type, you'll have a mock blacksmith shop, maybe an optician and a dentist, old fire engines, early tractors, and the like. And I didn't record pictures of any of that here. Because I started in the farm house (which also houses the chemist).
Friends, in every possible seat, bed or chair was a doll somehow more haunted than the last reminding you not to sit on the antique furniture lest you lose your Immortal sou.
I had a great time, recommend grabbing whatever the special is from Linda's Corner Cafe, located in the Legion in Coldwater proper.
When you get diagnosed with a serious disease, the flood gates open to all that quasi legal direct drug marketing. You are inudated with smiling people in lab coats, with their perfectly chosen glasses and pure white smiles.
I've met scientists, and these are not they are not. These are amoung the lowest of the low, marketers. But I'm not here to take on marketers, at least they're hawking a product with some evidence behind it.
The moment you're life starts to be about hospice care, and pallieative medicine, the true monsters crawl out of the woodwork. The purveyers of fake medicine (largely harmless en mass, but deadly to you, kind) who are sure that whatever fad diet they like this week and some yoga will kick those tumours asses (and if not, remember, you just didn't try hard enough). There are the health cults, which are the same as the first group but really want to get their kill count up before their caught. They'll come in the form of gurus and faith healers (especially faith healers, never, ever trust someone with an invisible, untestable product.
Then you've got piles and piles and piles of traditional practices. I don't make time in my day for any of that, but it's your life, if its part of your tradition then I hope you get what you need from it, and if it isn't maybe consider your last mortal action not being one of appropriation.
I would relish conversation on a lot of subjects. This isn't one of them.
I was writing a post about the evils of complementary and alternative medicine and my power went out 😮
Coincidence? I mean, yeah, probably, those fiends are too busy finding cancer patients to take advantage of
From the comments
James Petrosky: Got an issue with my fundamental point here? I encourage you to go do some good quality research. I'm not available to argue about to ❤️
James Petrosky: If it makes you feel better, new agers and faith healers are similarly problematic. Also not debating this.
Ron: Not enough is made of the fact that people who push that crap are actively preventing people who need real help from getting it in time to matter. Evil indeed.
James Petrosky: Ron I was reading my memories and it apparently took less than a day for the algorithm to serve up this kind of stuff to me. Skepticism has long been one of my interests, so I'm okay, but not everyone would be
A collection of hair styles I have chosen, and that the treatment has allowed for me.
Centre is pre-diagnosis, pre-treatment, regular assed long hair
North is bleached at Lilly's place, I'd have loved to wear it more than an hour, it wss fun
North-East is the blue that was on the box. It didn't take
East is the glorious green I got
South-East is the green as the sun ravaged it and the chemo started to take holding
South is the point where I shaved what remained
South-West is the baby fuzz starting to grow back. It was very soft, wavy and provded no tempeature regulation. But it was summer, so it also provided no sun protectiuon.
West was the straight bald i wore through most of my last chemo cycle. It was easier to keep the floor clean with a perminanly shedding cat that way.
North-West is how it is now. The facial hair grew back in better and more mountin man than I could have ever hoped. I wish I could survive in part because I just want to see what it can do. The baby hair is back, soft as ever. I may not have won the lifespan lottery this go around, but I'm doing great for hair. And sometimes you take what you can get.
You have fine the joy when it comes to something like cancer. Once it has sapped all the joy, and I think it inevitibly will, that's your end. Or at least it will be mine. But I've been talking with the many faces of death, and I don't think we're ready quite yet.
I miss my long hair, and my green hair, and especially the few days it was blue hair. I did a thing I'd half heartedly wanted to do for a decade, and I'm glad I did. It's nice that not everything in my Facevook memories is an emotional timebomb I've got to work through.
Sitting here in the hospice in 2024 I don't think there's any other way this situation could have played out for me. I wasn't afraid to ask questions, or even the right questions, but I was so passive that I often didn't take the time to make sure I had the information part of informed conscent solidly figured out.
I did, eventually, get there. All my at home readings of reputible research and advice papers put out by reputible hospital networks got me the information I needed, it would have just been faster if I wasn't so shy and was willig to ask especially about weird bowel movements earlier.
The old mantra remains true, though, questions would not have changed the outcome.
Looking back at this expremely anxious time in my life, the only thing that made sense was for the two teams to be working together in some way to improve my outcome. And both teams turned out great, the disease just had other plans.
Given that there are fewer than 24 hours until I meet my oncologist, I'm going to go back to the CUTE ANIMAL PHOTOS well because holy fuck I have an anxiety disorder and I didn't understand anxiety could be so bad
The comments comtain dozens of posts featuring people's pets and wild animals
Alcohol is a heavy subject, and this one is about my relationship with it. My relationship with it is largely positive, and my little naritive will reflect that, but I know that isn't everyone's experience.
There was a time, between dropping out of grad school and taking on the apprenticeship that would become my career, where I seriously considered bartending. I adored making cocktails, traditional sorts and the usually delicious abominations that reared their heads at juicemorn.
For years at family get togethers, if anyone wanted something more complex than a beer or a glass of wine, they were coming to me. And I loved it. Understanding how different flavours come together and balance was always a thrill.
But then came the symptoms which would eventually point to cancer. At first, the surgeon I was seeing thought it was a problem with the liver itself, and by the time we had the actual root cause determined, I was starting chemotherapy. Alcohol and chemotherapy is not only a great way to destroy your liver, it's also a good way to dramatically reduce the effectiveness of the drugs themselves.
I figured I'd never have a drink again. And while I'd have preferred to have marked the occasion somehow (a nice scotch, or Beach One Cervasa and a smoked meat sandwich down at Balm Beach Smokehouse, or both), I was okay with it. The extra time was easily worth the lost pleasure for me.
Fast forward two long years of chemotherapy and surgery and recovery and alcohol free adventure (so many fish and chip meals demanded something I just couldn't give them). I jokingly asked my doctor if I could have beer. And, more seriously than I expected, she responded that, at my disease state, it was fine.
Drinking in the hospital is a weird experience. Sharing that experience with my brother and my friends is stranger still. Should we have imbibed during Cats or Repo? Probably. Palliative care is about patient comfort,. And trying new things from the LCBO is apparently part of it for me. Especially when I can share the experience.
I really intended this to be a whimsical post about being drunk under the table by a giant benevolent ramen (how good would a ramen like that be after the party's over, just savouring the flavours) (lets ignore the canabalism implications) person. But instead you get something serious.
To make up for it, I'll share a secret. I didn't quit alcohol the whole of my treatment. I did go to the Balm Beach Smokehouse three of four times last summer, ordered my favourite beer in the world (Wasaga Beach Brewing Company Beach 1 Cerveza, it's objectively just fine, but I love it), ordered the Cubano sandwich, ordered the braised brisket poutine, ordered the Balm Beach burger, ordered the house special.
The only regret I have about this is that I never went with anyone, I felt like I was sneaking a forbidden treat. And now that I can have those drinks, I cannot eat. Which would feel like cosmic punishment if I still didn't love talking about food and drink
️Cats like furry constellations lap up the Milky Way
The first time I tried coffee was a cold October morning in 2005. The natural high I had from successfully escaping from my dying town and landing in my very first choice for a university program was finally being worn down by the twin powers of first year chemistry and linear algebra. Everyone else was getting their wakefulness fix from coffee, and it made sense to give it a go.
I poured myself a medium cup of Columbian medium roast and left with it black. Maybe, if I had a guide, I'd have added some sugar or milk and enjoyed it. Maybe I'd have been too stubborn ("I know I like sugar and milk already"). Regardless, I took a sip, burned myself a bit, let it cool and decided it tasted exactly like poplar bark (a flavour I was familiar with from childhood games where we pretended to be beavers).
The next time I tried coffee was on a Taco Bell run after my April trip to the hospital in Midland. It still tasted of tree bark.
But once I entered the hospice suite? Give me every coffee treat. I have limited time and so much to catch up on.
Photos of myself follow a similar path. I used to try and remove as much trace of myself as possible, like I was embarrassed to exist. I could spend a lot of time with a social worker trying to work through those feelings. But I don't have to, because the diagnosis came, and I realized I needed to leave something behind that indicated that I existed, I lived, I thrived and I loved.
Like my new found taste for coffee drinks, I've grown to love the camera. And, in its modern form, the camera includes the whole editing and filtering and playing suite of tools available on your phone.
I'm no wizard at this sort of thing, and time is strange in hospice. Every single moment has the gravitas of possibly being your last, but you still count down until the weekend because that's when people can make time for you. So I pass the time recording videos and taking pictures and editing it all into something I hope has meaning.
I don't think these have meaning. I don't intend them to, at least. They're just four flavours of coffee drink I tried and liked well enough to share with my friends. I like them, even if they're a bit overworked. You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.
