Now. This moment.

Now. What are you feeling and experiencing right now? This moment.

Yes, Now. Where are you? What do see? Sunlight through the window or leaves on the tree. Your hands with a callous or a broken nail. The laundry to be folded or the inbox to be perused.

Now. Close your eyes. Feel the ground, the air, your body, each muscle, each movement, your breath, your breath… your breath.

Now. what do you smell? The bread on the counter, the plant in the earth, the soil, the wood on the floor where the sun excites the molecules. The potatoes in the bubbling pot or the fresh, soft linen on your bed. Sunlight like the warm rind of a lemon or rain like ozone and earth. Good. You are centering. Keep going. 

Now. What do you hear? Silence? No. Listen closer. Breeze in the trees, waves lap-lap-lapping, children laughing in the distance, insects buzzing around flowers, your air conditioner hum, the bird outside your window singing a familiar song.

Now. Go deeper. Within. What emotion are you experiencing at this moment? Pain is the past… let it go. Fear is the future… let it go. Now. Right there. Now. At the centre of it all. Gratitude. Gratefulness for the here, for now, for sight, for hearing, for touch, for breath, for sparkling sunlight and living soil, for bright birdsong and buzzy pollinators, for happy children and cooling rain. Breath deep. Sigh. Gratitude.

Now, did you find it, the gratefulness? Consider it, form it, feel it. And what is inside your rich, joyful gratitude? Yes. Now. Love.

Now… Love.

Because no else should have to walk in these shoes

I am participating in Strides for Melanoma Walk for Awareness to help raise funds towards melanoma patient support, prevention efforts and education. Melanoma is a serious and potentially deadly form of skin cancer. In North America, one person dies from melanoma every hour. But, it doesn’t have to be this way.

My husband, James, was initially diagnosed with melanoma in June 2014. By the time it was diagnosed, it was Stage III and already traveling outside the primary site. Surgery removed the tumour on his face and 42 lymph nodes in his neck. By August 2016, it had metastasized to his brain, liver and bowel with a terminal prognosis. In an effort to buy time, James suffered multiple hospital stays, surgeries, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation treatments, post-seizure ambulance trips, and multiple blood transfusions. Our last (and last) anniversary together was spent in a hospital room. All this, James did with his typical positive attitude and jokes. James, succumbed to this dreadful disease in January this year, just 2 weeks before his 40th birthday.

He left us to carry on without him and I struggle every day with this profound loss. As part of my grieving and healing process, I work to raise awareness around the prevention and diagnosis of melanoma. If James’s primary lesion had been caught sooner, if the metastatic tumours had been caught sooner, he might still be here or at least have had a better chance.

I was witness to James’s cancer journey from the beginning in 2014 to his very last breath. I would never wish this suffering, his or mine, on anyone. If I can play a small part in the fight against melanoma then it I must do it. It is what James wanted.

We hold on (posted Oct 9, 2016)

For more information visit (and support!) one or all of the following:

Melanoma Network of Canada

Melanoma Research Foundation

AIM at Melanoma

We hold on

I have been absent from my blog for a while – 10 months according to WordPress.

I’ve had a busy year. I was hired at a great job in April and learning the ropes and getting back on a workday schedule took much of my time and concentration. Basically, I was at the top of my game – a new job perfect for me working with databases, married to an amazing, loving man, and a cute, little house for two. With two solid jobs, we started planning for trips and adventures to celebrate our milestone birthdays next year. We got ourselves on a new healthy regime of exercise and simple, organic foods. We couldn’t be happier. And we held on to dreams.

In August of this year, my husband started getting headaches. We attributed it to the humid summer that Eastern Canada was experiencing at the time. While asking our pharmacist what to do about the persistent pain, he got physically sick in the store. I drove him to the local ER. They treated him for the pain and nausea and sent him home. The next day his regular doctor sent him for a CT scan of his head. With my husband’s history of melanoma in 2014, his doctor just wanted to rule it out. I was at work when my husband called. “They found a lesion on my brain. I need you.” And we held on to hope.

Our world since has been a blurry whirlwind of scans, x-rays, surgery, and more bad news of cancer in the liver and bowel. The tumour in the liver is inoperable. It is just too large and in a delicate spot. When the doctor said to my husband, “This WILL take your life in 6 months to a year,” my heart froze, then it broke. It shattered like a rose fresh from a liquid nitrogen bath that has been dropped to the floor. The doctor quietly dismissed himself from the room. We held each other so tight and sobbed. We whispered our love and promises between moist, gasping breaths. And we held on to strength.

Since that day, there have been hospital stays to combat nausea, too thin blood and pain, doctor appointments, blood transfusions when his hemoglobin dropped too low, more surgery, then chemo, immunotherapy and radiation in an effort to buy a couple extra months or even just one more day. And we held on to love.

Today is the 11th anniversary of the day we met. I felt that meeting coming in my solar plexus for months, like the wild excitement before a big vacation away. We met at Christmas time at a bar. At the end of the night, we were slow dancing, oblivious that the music had stopped and the lights had come up. My friend gently pulled us apart and held up my phone number for him. On Boxing Day we had our first date. The rest, as they say, is history. I have told my love that, for the rest of our life together, he never has to buy me a present. There is no way he could ever top the first present. Him – Best. Present. Ever. And we held on to each other.

And we hold on. We will keep holding on until he let’s go. And then I will hold on to memory.

Update: My beautiful, funny James passed away with his loving family by his side on January 21, 2017. He will be missed. He will be loved. He will be remembered.

Rest in peace Huey, Dewey and Louie. Good riddance!

Today I celebrate being fibroid-free for ten years. It seems like just yesterday that I had a limited life due to the horrible, daily pain.

The uterine fibroids were discovered when I had a stomach pain so bad I ended up in the emergency department on New Years Eve. When the doctor ruled out an upset stomach from indulging in too much holiday fare, he thought that perhaps it was gallstones so arrangements were made for an ultrasound. I returned to the hospital the next day, New Year’s Day 2005, and during the ultrasound of my gall bladder there were no signs of anything that could be causing me discomfort. The ultrasound technician paused, held the wand up and asked, “Do you mind if I check lower just to cover our bases?”. I indicated that he was welcome to proceed. I unzipped my jeans and pulled the denim out of his way. He moved the wand to below my belly button and began a new scan. He paused…then looked closer at the monitor. “Are you aware that you have fibroids?” My head whipped around to get a better look at the screen. “Wha? No!” The technician pointed out three on the screen, obvious as you please, not even trying to hide.

The technician took measurements and proclaimed them to be 10 cm, 7 cm and 3 cm. I was flabbergasted! How the heck did my doctor miss these during my annual exams?! But, I can’t completely blame my doctor. After all, thinking back, I never did mention discomfort that I was experiencing – back twinges, excessive bleeding during periods, cramping even when it was not that time of the month.

The emergency doctor forwarded the results to my GP, who quickly referred me to a gynecologist. I was very fortunate that the gynecologist was able to take me within 3 months. Around mid-March, I was sitting in Dr. Mawdsley’s office going over my options.

At the time, I was 38 years old and newly single (my boyfriend left me after the initial diagnosis), so the doctor gently suggested I find another option to hysterectomy. I explained that I was single and had never had the urge to have children anyway. He said that he did not want to remove my option for children if it could be avoided, then I meet the man of my dreams and suddenly want children. It happens, sure, but I was pretty darn sure it wasn’t going to happen to me. Besides, by the time I met someone, fell in love, decided to marry and even got to the point where, as a couple, we decide to have children, I knew I would be in my forties. So, no, it wasn’t gonna happen.

But, to be thorough, I did research on the options and discussed them with the gyno. I met with another doctor to discuss uterine artery embolization (UAE). He explained that, in basic terms, a catheter is inserted into an artery in my leg, pushed through to near the fibroid, then small particles are injected to block the flow of blood feeding the fibroid. The hoped-for outcome would be to starve the fibroid and it shrinks to a more manageable size. My tumors were on both sides of my uterus so this procedure would need to be done on both sides. After explaining all that, the doctor informed me that, even if the fibroids shrunk so that they did not bother me so much, that they could come back in a few years. Annnnd, he lost me right there. I wanted these things gone, dead, sleeping with da fishes! They were interfering with my life and I wanted them to go away, not take a vacation and come back in a few years so we could do this all again.

Another option is a myomectomy (removal of just the tumors), but due to the size, number and locations this was not a viable option for me. So that left a hysterectomy.

By this time, the fibroids had progressed to a point where the pain was a daily occurrence. Not knowing when the back spasms and cramps would hit meant I rarely left the house and couldn’t make definite plans. My life was in a constant tentative mode. I would come home from work and lay on the couch because if I tried to move too much the back spasms would start. After a lifetime of never knowing the agony of heartburn, it became a weekly occurrence. My doctor informed me that the fibroids were of a size equal to pregnancy at 6-months. “Morning sickness” and shortness of breath also became a part of my life.

I became sick of people asking, “When are you due?”. Little old ladies, that I had never met before, would suddenly place their hand on my belly and ask, “Boy or girl?” More than once, I had to slip away to a bathroom or around a corner to try to stifle tears of frustration. Sometimes I would fail and have to give up and go home to crawl under the covers and cry. My emotions were a whirlwind and even I didn’t know what kind of mood I would be in from one moment to the next. I pity anyone who was around me at that time.

I walked into my gynecologist’s office for my next appointment determined and set. I told my doctor my decision and after a very brief, firm discussion we both agreed to go ahead with the hysterectomy. That was near the end of August. My doctor set the surgery date for October 20, about 2 months later. It seemed so soon and, yet, looking back, it gave me lots of time to research the procedure, recovery time, what to expect, what to tell others, etc. It also gave me too much time to run worst-case scenarios through the Hollywood lot in my brain. Scenes such as a stroke caused by a blood clot or death on the operating table played daily in my head.

My supportive, fun-loving friends named the three tumors Huey, Dewey and Louey. We even had an Irish wake for them prior to my surgery. My friends were wonderful and helped keep my mind off all the things that could go wrong when an organ is being removed.

The big day arrived! Since I was single with a dog and chinchillas to care for my parents came to stay with me. I don’t think I could ever repay them for the peace of mind they gave me. At least if I died on the table, my furkids would have someone to look after them. Phew!

I prepped for the surgery and sat by myself in a room in johnny-shirt and hospital slippers. More scenes played in my head. Finally, I was wheeled into the operating room. Brrr! Cold! And bright! A nurse asked if I was cold and brought me one of those fabulous blankets that had been in the warmer. (Side note: whoever invented the blanket warmer should get a Nobel Prize for Kindness or something.) The nurse explained what she would be doing to help the doctor during the surgery. She asked if I wanted her to hold my hand. She must have seen the panic in my eyes. I was better, though, once I had that toasty blanket.

The anesthesiologist entered the room, introduced himself and began to explain what he would be doing. He then proceeded to set up the IV in my arm and check his equipment. The nurse and anesthesiologist chatted and double-checked their charts and lists. I could tell they had done this before.

In swept Dr. Mawdsley with all the confidence in the world. He came over to say hello and ask how I was doing and if I had any questions. When I’m nervous I joke around a lot and ramble. I said, “You know, while you are in there if you find anything else I’m not using feel free to take it out. Anything to lose more weight.” Everyone chuckled. Dr. M made the rounds of the room checking in with the everyone to ensure we were good to go and then he gave the go-ahead. The sedative began its blissful work and I recall, just before losing consciousness, I said, “See you on the other side…” I drifted off to the sounds of laughter.

I came around briefly in the recovery room and a nurse quickly explained the angelic, wonderful morphine drip button. When I was in pain I was to hit the button to get a portioned hit of morphine. I immediately hit the button and drifted off again thinking that I still felt better than before the surgery.

I next woke up with Dr. Mawdsley standing over me. He placed his hand on my arm and said, “I’m so sorry I tried to talk you out of this. If I had known what you were living with I never would have tried to talk you out of it.” He later explained, once I was more awake, that there were many more fibroids in my uterus that would have, eventually, made things even worse. There was even another sizable fibroid hiding behind the others. He had to remove one of my ovaries after trying to separate the adhesion between a fibroid and the ovary and I began to bleed too much. They couldn’t stop the bleeding without removing the ovary. But, they were able to save the other one, which would delay menopause, thank goodness.

That doctor will never know the full extent of what his words of apology meant to me. They have stayed with me all these years. Not too many people will admit fault. In one breath, my doctor negated all the people who questioned the amount of pain I was in, the symptoms I was exhibiting. It wasn’t in my head. I wasn’t making it up. I wasn’t putting on an act. Ten years later, that is one of the big things I took away from this. Vindication!

Rest in peace Huey, Dewey and Louie. Good riddance!