The title is optimistic. There will be others.

Thursday is Devin’s day off. My cousin, Soheil, is here visiting to cheer me up. I decide that we should keep the car so we can drive around. And so, I drive Janet to work, along with Soheil. Then we go shopping for some food.

I have aother craving, a Subway seafood sub with all the trimmings. Soheil and Devin go out to get me the sub while I wait for the nurse. Turns out Subway does not make this any more. Something to do with health and safety. But Mr Sub has it, and they come back triumphant. Craving fulfilled.

I waited for the nurse all day. The deal is they call before coming, so you really cannot do anything until the call comes. But I got our signals crossed. A couple of weeks ago, my nurse Barbara and I had decided that she should come on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays only. She cancelled Tuesdays and Thursdays. I waited in vain.

I finally went to take a nap. Yama and Lisa came to visit. Soheil came to get me after they had been waiting for about 30 minutes. What a pleasure to see them. We had a great time, at least I thought so. Talked about this and that, including the broken transmission in Yama’s VW. He is out of warranty by 79km. They wanted to charge him $8,500 to replace the unit. Can you imagine? He bargained them down to $2,500. Two weeks later, and still no car.

I had a good day in spite of the waiting. Soheil makes me very happy. We talk a lot. He wants me to write documentaries around my pictures (farokh.ca) and also include videos. He loves videos and cannot understand that I do not want to have anything to do with them. So the idea of a doc comes into play which could incorporate his favourite medium. He is funny.

But the concept of writing a doc around some of my pictures has peaked my interest. I am in the process of defining the new me after all.

Good friend of mine. We were quite attached to one another. The separation was painful.

The Jackson-Pratt bag refers to this bulb that is attached, in my case, to the stomach area by a tube. One end of the tube is inserted in the stomach area,  the other end is attached to this bag. The bag is squeezed and plugged. Helps, I guess, that it is made of plastic. The vacuum creates the suction that drains the liquids from your recent wounds.

The nurse in the hospital would check on me regularly to empty the bag and check its colour. We were aiming for very little to drain and a clear liquid indiating that there was nothing left to drain. In my case, a bit of the opposite took place. At one point, the nurse emptied the bag, plugged it up and watched it fill up again. Did that three times. She was, to say the least,a bit bothered by that.

Dr. Kennedy decided that I should go home with the bag attached and let nature takes its course. Here we are two weeks later, and the bag has stopped draining entirely. I had the pleasure of emptying the bag two to three times a day.

Let me say that this bag was a pain from the get go. My fingers would get stuck behind the tube and inadvertently pull on it. Very painful. Then you had to attach the bag to your gown while you slept with the clip that came with it. I would have to empty it before going for a walk. The weight of the liquid in the bag made it difficult to control.

Today is the day this thing is to be removed. Not only has it stopped draining, but it is now causing pain. My guess (a correct guess as it turns out) is that the tube inside my body is now rubbing against my insides since all the liquid that held it afloat has drained.

We are ushered into a room with a bed listing at about 30degrees. I thought I was going to slide off. Took a little time for everyone to figure out the electronics. Finally lying down flat. Get a local in the stomach. Ouch!

It might help to let you all know at this point that my brother, sisters and I are all phobic about needles. We had a dog while growing up in Ethiopia. We are talking about the 50′s here. Dog dies. The powers that be think it may have had rabies and decide that the children should be treated with anti-rabies vaccines, just to be on the safe side. We get 20 injections in the stomach over 20 days. I have no physical recollection of this event, but am still phobic about needles.

So ouch it is. She waits a couple of minutes then removes the bag. More like yanks it out. I scream from the pain. Janet tells me she closed her eyes and turned her back. The pain was incredible. Lucky she did this quickly. A slow withdrawal would have been more painful. Did not feel the stitches as she sewed up the hole left behind. The community nurse would have the pleasure of removing those in a week or so.

Damn you Jackson-Pratt!

My bunkie.

A charming older gentleman from the Calabrese region of Italy. Spoke 2 words of English, which along with my two words of Italian meant instant communication and deep conversations.

Seriously. We looked at each other and shrugged at each other’s predicament, and smiled a lot.

The thing about being sick in hospital is that you tend to sleep a lot regardless of all the noise. Ricardo and I would fall asleep soon after 8:30. The visitors would have left by then, and the nurses done their rounds. Lights out. Instant sleep.

Ricardo snores. This is not a gentle purr, but rather a snore designed to wake the  dead. He snored from the time he fell asleep, to the time he woke u when the nurses came for the morning vital sign check. He woke up several times to go to the washroom, unplugging the IV machine and rolling it out with him. The snoring started as soon as he was back in bed.

You would think this would keep me awake. I guess my body was tired and exhausted. The snoring did not get in the way of my sleeping.

Ricardo had the occasional visitors. They all seemed to show up at the same time. They were all about his age, and they were as loud as you would expect a bunch of Italians to be. Except one of the loud couples were Portuguese who spoke as much Italian as I did. Somehow, they had remained friends for years and she was there talking to him all the time. I have no idea what they said to one another, but it was fun listening.

Ricardo was having some issues with his digestive system. His Doctor would come in every morning and ask him if he was in pain. “Dilores?” he would say quite loudly. Then would go one about the how soft the abdomen was. He was always accompanied by two other doctors wearing green outfits. The Doctor wore white. The ranking was obvious.

The nurse would also ask Ricardo if he was doing well or not. They would show up and ask if he had any bowel movements. He would not answer. He only responded when they asked if he had poo-poo and pee-pee. You would think the nurses would have figured this out at some point. But every day, twice a day, they would ask about the bowel movement. They always asked twice like he had not heard them the first time.

Ricardo was released the same day as I was. He gave me aa big hug before elaving, assuring me that I would be fine.

Lovely, lovely man.

My brother leaves  a happy man. I am in better shape than he thought I would be in, and he is already making plans to come back. Our house looks like a hotel of sorts. Beds in every room to accommodate one and all.

The day after he leaves is a disaster for me. I am totally listless and without energy. I am in the worst shape I have been in a while. We try to understand what has just happened. My voice had been returning to normal. I was getting stronger and showing promise. Why would I suddenly collapse to this extent? The conclusion we have come to is that I was high on adrenaline from seeing my brother. The result is what Dr. Kennedy mentioned. A great day is invariably followed by a bad day. You expend your energy on the good day, almost going overboard. The price is paid the next day when you collapsed from the exhaustion of it all.

We spend the next few days recovering from it all. Trying to get back to some more even level. Lots of visits from friends. Lots of food. A few walks though not as many as before. A lot of telephone conversations as well. Most are short, but people just want to know how I am doing. I am also asked whether I mind the visits and the phone calls. The answer has so far been: no. They are all welcome. I expect they will eventually die down.

The other wrinkle in the ointment is that we have a meeting coming up on Wednesday with the oncologist to discuss chemo. More to the point, when to start. This is affecting me more than I expected. The unknown is the worst. We have no idea what to expect from the chemo. Nausea, tiredness, and what else? No one knows for sure. Everyone reacts differently to everything. The unknown. I have not learned to control my emotions over the unknown.

I am excited beyond belief. My brother is coming up for a visit. He arrives around noon. I cannot help him unload the car, which feels a bit weird. Big hugs all around. I cry a bit.

Fo’ad and Barbara travel together all the time.  We spend a lot of time talking. He spends a lot of time on his computer. He still has a business to run. Barbara is always on the computer. She helps run the business, but is also writing a book. I think we should have one implanted in her that is able to read her thoughts.

I convince her to cook a Persian for me. I have not had rice in about two months and miss it terribly. She decides to cook green rice with fish. Fo’ad and Devin are to go shopping the net day for the ingredients. We will start a recipe page at some point and provide you all with a list of foods that helped me through this episode.

Fo’ad is also visibly excited to be here. He was not sure what to expect and is delighted to see me navigating the stairs and walking around. We go for a couple of walks just to make a point. We are still getting a lot of visitors, and Fo’ad gets to meet them all. Included in these is my father-in-law Morris and Qayla.

Devin dices the herbs, and cooks the fish. Barbara cooks a LOT of rice. It was so delicious!  I cannot wait till I can cook again.

I started reading a book called AntiCancer that Nancy bought for me. Took me a few days to get through it. I have very little concentration, which makes reading particularly difficult. Unless, of course, you don’t care if you understand a word of what you are reading. Shawn offered to lend me his books by Jeung and Freud. To which all I can say is Hah! Funny man. I can barely make sense of the Saturday comics. I will devote one blog page to the AntiCancer book. It is very informative.

We had to find a place to park my brother’s  car so he would not get a ticket. I would normally go to City Hall and get a temporary permit. Some of our neighbours have driveways. Brenda in particular, has a double lot and a huge driveway. You would think we were living in the country. I took a walk to talk to her but she was not home. I opted to go see Marianne instead. The first thing she said was of course we could park in their back yard, followed closely by you have lost a lot of weight. I weighed 180lbs before this ordeal started. I now weigh 160. I lie. This morning I weighed in at 164lbs.

I told her I had discovered the perfect diet. Instant weight loss. The side effects are a bit tedious. A bit like those commercials you see on television. Take this drug, it will do wonders for you, except for the last 10 seconds of the advertisement which lists all the possible side effects. That’s me. Great diet, slight side effects. The usual reactions follow. Shock. But you look great. No worries, you are strong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We talk briefly, and I go home.

My brother is a take charge person. He went shopping with Devin and bought all sorts of things. Including way too much jam. Jam is one the bad foods in my diet. Too much white sugar. If they would replace the sugar with agave, we would be in business, but white sugar is a cancer promoter. More about this later.

The next day, Fo’ad decided to get souvlaki for the whole family. We had a discussion about the fact that souvlaki means pork in greek, so that makes chicken souvlaki, basically a non-entity. He and Dev go out returning some time later with some mediocre food. Turns out that what we call souvlaki, some of these Greek restaurants call Doner. Not quite the same thing. I wanted a greek salad. I feel like a pregnant person. I keep getting cravings. Yummy is all I can say about the salad.m Not the best I have had, but good enough.

My brother did not stay long. He had to go home to Atlanta. His daughter, Khandan was driving up from Louisiana with Scot and the kids. Scot was goiing to help Fo’ad with some construction projects he was working on. They left on Thursday evening. They will drive about three hours and stop at some hotel/motel before finishing the trip the next day.

It was a very good visit. My spirits were uplifted daily. My voice getting stronger. I crashed after he left, but that is a whole other story for another day. Lets leave this on a really positive note. He left promising to come back in a couple of months, probably November. I was in high spirits, very happy and content with my progress and life.

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