summer berth

 The days have passed in a whirlwind of activity and exhaustion, but here it is, 9:30am on Sunday and I'm almost all ready to take the camper to Kirsten's! The panic is over, leaving just a few ‘strong man’ things to finish before Wednesday. I'm excited!!!

Tuesday we will check the long range forecast and hopefully drag all the pots of plants out of the house and onto the deck! We have all of our herbs and garden plants (tomatoes, zucchini, butternut squash, lettuce), but no flowers yet. I can't visualize what I need and also, the place we used to get our flowers from has closed :-(  Next week I'll have a better idea so we'll comb the countryside looking for petunias! I haven't decided on white or pink yet.

We got the furniture out on Friday afternoon - I promptly fell asleep on the sofa until the mosquitos found me! The first nap outside 😀 . We've been in the pool at least twice a day since our first swim on Thursday. It was up to 20C yesterday! I've been going for a quick dip before bed and have found that to help my hot flashes  - I'm having hardly any at night now.

Sadly, and this may be the worst part of my whole ‘journey’, I likely won't be able to swim for at least three weeks starting this Wednesday after they insert a magnetic seed to help locate the tumour during surgery. If anything will bring me to tears, it's missing 3 weeks of summer… I live for a refreshing dip, even when it does turn me blue.

I'll be sure to luxuriate in the refreshing waters tomorrow when the air temps hit the low 30s! Summer is bearing down on us at full speed!

We are leaving the dogs and Grace home this weekend in the capable hands of Christina! We'll be able to get situated easier, and have our first night of socializing without worrying about the dogs alone in the trailer for hours on our first night out. Thanks Christina!

The lilacs and honeysuckles are in full bloom - it's like stepping into a perfume shop when I go outside. It's heavenly! Our apple trees are a bust this year - hardly any blossoms at all so there will be no apple harvest this fall. There have been years that the trees have been white with blooms, but there are only a handful on one tree. Spring started early this year and then ground to a halt with below freezing temps so that may have impacted the trees.

Later in the day! We are here and all settled in! Hurrah!

Awesome!

“a swim before bed”

“ready to hit the road”

“lilac tree pressing against the living room window”

“getting settled into our summer berth”

lily pink

 I breathed a sigh of relief this afternoon after checking off three of the biggest (for this week) tasks. The camper has been dewinterized and the fresh water tank is being sanitzed as we speak. I'll leave the bleachy water in until Saturday morning and then will flush it with fresh. We'll be ready to hit the road! Bar a few miscellaneous tasks, like loading the fridge and most critical, checking the weather forecast (will the ground be dry enough to pull into our spot without excitement?)

My mind has been spinning with to-do's for the last week so I've been pushing myself through tremendous exhaustion. Yeah… the doctor wanted me off all cannabis before surgery and I'm afraid I use(d) it nightly to help with sleep, hot flashes, and anxiety. My anxiety has been more or less under control without it, but GOSH sleep is just not happening… and the hot flashes are intolerable. It seems that every time I drift to sleep I start to boil which makes me wake up fully so I have to go through the whole get to sleep routine again. I'm having them multiple times an hour… day and night 😞 

Last night I went to my big gun emergency meds to give myself at least one good night of sleep. It mostly worked but I need another night or two to get caught up.

In between getting through my task list, I've been trying to visit Pat in the hospital as often as possible. Luckily she (was) in the local hospital which is just 25 minutes away. She was finally released into the wild yesterday!

Speaking of hospitals… I finally got all the appointments for the surgery. Two next week (one for inserting the magnetic seed, and the other just a pre-op appointment). The week after I have one to insert dye into my lymph nodes to identify the ‘sentinel’ nodes, and then surgery the next day on the 28th! I'm looking forward to getting it all over with.

But you can see why I'm a bit stressed about getting everything done! There are a few tasks that require lifting heavy things, there's also planting (we've got some of our plants but still need more), clipping Lupa, and countless other things to get done - in between 4 days of appointments. One of my biggest stressors is having to rush from place to place - that's sure to get my brain in a bad spot.

Carm's been getting some good golf rounds in!

Sunday we dashed into town to wish Mom for Mother's Day and then dashed home again to get ready for Leo's 80th birthday party that afternoon. The weather cooperated so about 20 of us gathered around Trudie's huge outdoor table and enjoyed an afternoon of congenial conversation :-) There were lots of people that we knew and some that we made new connections with.

Oh, the bird feeder is about to come down - I'll miss the birds but not the squirrels. Lately we've had a rose-breasted grosbeak and a red-bellied woodpecker. A lone turkey lurks somewhere on the property. There's always a few other woodpeckers, jays, cardinals, goldfinches, chickadees, nuthatches, sparrows, red-wing blackbirds, mourning doves, and others not on the top of my head.  Last night we saw a hummingbird at the lilac tree.

Awesome!

“Carm jumped in the pool today - first swim 2024 18C”

“I followed later in the afternoon when it reached a ‘balmy’ 19C brrrr”

“lilacs in bloom”

“beautiful lilies that Carm got me last week”

“getting to my goal weight”

“shopping for new clothes - size 8!”

“time on the treadmill”

rolling

 rolling rolling rolling, keep those doggies rolling, rawhide! We made it to the tire place this afternoon and even better, back and into the laneway without even a harsh word! Yay! There have been times in the past that tempers on both sides have flared as it's a tricky back-in with only one way to get it done. A foot too soon or too late puts us into the deep ditch so it's fraught with anxiety. Over the years we've gotten better and today was as close to perfect as you can get :-) Yay Carm!

Now that the trailer is back in its berth and the slides have been deployed, it will be time to start getting ready to head to its summer home :-)  I think we've decided to forgo taking the trailer to the annual titanium rally as it starts just a week after surgery - I'm not sure how I'll feel and I'm pretty sure I don’t want the stress and excitement of travel and dealing with the dogs, at least not there. 

Being at Kirsten's for a few nights is a lot different than camping for 7 nights with navy showers, where the dogs have to be walked on leash every outing in overly exciting surroundings. Not to mention having to stick around the trailer to keep them quiet. 

Will we miss it? YES! I think we will stage ourselves at Kirsten's and drive the hour to Kingston for a day visit or even two. Maybe we could plan supper at Raxx one night. Carm could even go for supper and an evening campfire if he wanted to. There will be lots of people to catch up with (except for Andy & Edna whose absence will be huge). Maybe I'm wimping out but I don't need the extra stress at the moment… it will be comforting to know that we are situated for the summer before madness descends!

Awesome!

“hitching without a hitch!”

“new tires, but gulp for our bank account”

“backing into the laneway perfectly! Yay Carm”

“Adia with the zoomies outside”

starting the process

 It's been a long month, but today was finally the day of my appointment with the surgeon… It seemed like I had to wait forever, although I was pretty good about putting things out of my mind and keeping an optimistic outlook. Perhaps I had a tiny bit of denial which kept me in a good frame of mind - I wasn't dwelling or awfulizing! My daily walk with Kirsten has kept me motivated and on the right track with proper nutrition and exercise - it’s helped to walk away any anxiety that I might have felt!

My surgery has been tentatively scheduled for May 30th, but that has to be confirmed. There will be several appointments before that but those have yet to be arranged and I'm not really sure what they are for... Carm was there taking notes, but that's one place where we fell down! The doctor is pretty certain that I will be having radiation but chemo is unlikely - that will be confirmed once they do the pathology on the lump and lymph nodes that they remove. It seems to me that one of my upcoming appointments will be to inject dye into my lymph nodes to identify the ‘sentinel’ node.

The doctor thinks that I will get 5 to 20 radiation treatments, depending on what they find. I can't remember if I'll be seeing the radiation oncologist before or after surgery - probably after.

There is a small chance (10%), that the ‘margins’ won't be good enough and they'd have to do another surgery which would be a drag - my cousin had a similar thing and she said the second worst thing was having the second surgery so fingers crossed!

Dr. Carrier has lots of experience doing this surgery (he is pretty young though!) and gave both Carm and I a feeling of confidence.

I do want to thank everyone who reached out with their success stories - it helps so much :-) I feel pretty optimistic although I am having a bit of a crash in that area this afternoon, I guess it suddenly seems a bit overwhelming and has become more real. Still, I know that it will be a walk in the park compared to what Mom went through - if she can troop through that horror, my little hiccup will seem easy.

The local hospital is becoming more familiar than I'd like as our friend P is still there (3 weeks now!) so I've been trying to visit on a regular basis. I even have a favourite parking spot!

Oh! My bruises are gone and I have no new ones so it looks like the omega 3 was to blame! Carm is taking it without issue so I'm just an oddity…

I've been so focused on diet and health that I've not been making meals that are worthy of guests so we've been hermits… Carm is a good sport about it and hasn't been pressuring me for better eats, in fact he's fully on board and starting to lose a bit of weight himself :-)  I did trott out my favourite lentil recipe for Cathey on Saturday - I fed her caramelised onion lentils & rice, with a side of a few vegetables. Not fancy!

Tomorrow we take the trailer in for a new set of treads - ugh, which means backing into the laneway again… not my favourite activity and already I feel anxiety about it. Nothing like compounding things…

And for a treat tonight, chicken shawarma was on the menu! (big garlicy burp)...

Awesome!

“art!”

“gorgeous tulips”

“a sunny morning”

“getting the process going”

“garlic”