Tag Archives: cancer

WREN…

11 Saturday Nov 2023

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I’ve been thinking of my mom a lot in the last few days…

she spent the last months of her life at Princess Elizabeth Hospital, in the final stages of esophageal cancer…

I was blessed with the time to be able to spend those final days with her…

they were hard but so important…

she was a WREN during WWII, a survivor of mental illness, a caregiver for her husband, a poet, a proud Legion and Army and Navy member, and a participant in the organizing of the Women’s War Memorial by the Legislature…

she was strong, but it took me many years to really understand that;-)…

campaign…

19 Tuesday Mar 2019

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Spring flowers bring me so much joy…

on Sunday I picked up some daffodils for the house… as well as a bouquet for the office, a pot of mini roses and the cutest plant covered in blue flowers…

yesterday afternoon we had daffodils delivered at the office as part of the Canadian Cancer Society Daffodil Campaign...

this was how they looked at 4:30 yesterday…

here is how they looked at 8:30 am this morning…

open and sunshiny…

nice when a campaign raises funds and brightens people’s days…

having gone through a cancer diagnosis, I appreciate every opportunity to support the cause…

appetite…

18 Wednesday Jul 2018

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this morning I was reminded that six years ago today I had surgery to remove my uterus and repair a large hernia… just a few months after losing my beloved…

how my life has changed since then…

I did have cancer, but removing the whole thing meant no further treatment needed to happen, other than frequent checkups for the next five years…

for ten weeks I couldn’t lift anything… friends and family came by to do everything that needed to be done…

since then I have been well, although two years later I was diagnosed with diabetes… I’ve lost weight, been more active and changed my diet… thankfully I do not need to take any meds…

tonight, as I ate rice rolls that a colleague brought me, I was reminded of how little I ate during those first weeks… I had no appetite and a friend who came to stay with me worked very hard to find foods that would temp my taste buds, lol…

one of my fondest memories was the day I was able to walk out of the house and into the garden after being stuck inside on the main floor for over a week because I couldn’t manage stairs…

the garden is such a healing place…

serendipitous…

09 Friday Mar 2018

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took this picture of the trees out the back before I left the house…

reminded me of a colleague who we lost to cancer a few years ago… she and I had taken a photography course together and the picture was similar to one that I took at that time as part of our homework…

later in the day I was working on a computer and came across her name…

seemed rather serendipitous…

she had a wonderful artistic streak and a great eye… we worked well together and she taught me a lot… one of my favourite things was how she showed me to add a URL into a Facebook post and then delete the URL once the link had opened up so that the post looked cleaner… a little thing but it makes a huge difference…

a very special woman…

surgery…

31 Monday Jul 2017

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today in my Facebook feed the following memory came up…

I had been in the hospital for a few days with pancreatitis when I wrote the above post, and ended up there for six weeks… during that time I also had my gallbladder removed… I was very sick and when we left the hospital I was afraid, I’d been there so long I wasn’t sure how I would manage at home… I still had a drainage tube in my side and was barely able to eat…

a lot has happened in seven years… 

the tube came out just a few days before our younger daughter’s wedding and I finally started to have an appetite…

two years later my husband died suddenly in March and within a few weeks I was diagnosed with uterine cancer… I’d been waiting for hernia surgery and so there were lots of discussions with the various doctors as they figured out how they could do both surgeries at the same time…

in July of 2012 I had a combination surgery and spent ten weeks recovering…

my body does not handle drugs well and within 8 hours following the cancer surgery I stopped taking all drugs…

dealing with pain is easier than dealing with the side effects of drugs…

this afternoon I had my final appointment at CancerCare… after eleven visit… saw my surgeon, who I rarely see as they work on a rotation, and was discharged from the program…

life is pretty darn good even with all the changes;-)…

recovery…

19 Wednesday Jul 2017

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some lovely pictures this morning…


flowers make me happy…

yesterday marked five years since my cancer/hernia surgery… I hadn’t been able to lift anything for weeks as the hernia was causing a lot of trouble… for the next six weeks as I was in recovery mode I still wasn’t able to lift anything over two pounds… I spent the summer having friends and family coming over to look after the garden and take care of me…

things are much better now and I am so blessed…

crisis…

10 Friday Mar 2017

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been feeling up and down lately… made me remember the importance of feeling well…

reminded me of five years ago today at George’s memorial service when I had a serious health crisis… 

from that event the doctors were able to discover the cancer in my uterus… once again, my beloved saved me…

many friends are dealing with health problems – colds, flu, chronic issues – to name a few…

wishing all of them health and wellness…

sunshine streaming into the garden…

circles…

11 Saturday Feb 2017

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as I’ve been struggling with this cold or almost flu it has reminded me of how great I usually feel…

when I think back to the few times I’ve been seriously ill and gone through tough surgeries… and the slow process to recover and how I would feel a little better each day… and then would eventually get to the place where I was well… 

sometimes we forget how much we take good health for granted…

next week I have a CancerCare checkup… I think it is my second to last appointment as July will be five years since my cancer surgery…

amazing how the time has gone by so quickly…

good reminder that although I’ve felt rough over the last week it is nothing like what I’ve been through before… and I am very blessed on the whole…

thinking of all those in my circles who are struggling with health issues, either their own or their loved ones…

dreams…

23 Sunday Oct 2016

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yesterday we went to a play in the afternoon…

it was about a woman and her adult children and how they dealt with her diagnosis of Alzheimer’s…

I am always amazed at how they can take a few inanimate objects and make them appear to be different things throughout the play…

there were a few moments that brought back memories for me…

they talked about the loss of the husband a year previous and how difficult that and the intervening time had been…

the mother told one of her daughters that she was going to take her own life when she felt the disease was overtaking her… 

that reminded me of my own mother asking me to help her die… she was in palliative care in the end stages of esophageal cancer… nowadays there are some options if a person wants to end their life when they have a terminal illness… there wasn’t anything to help a person when my mom asked me… she also asked if she could come home to die… it was difficult to say I couldn’t help her or bring her home to die… at the time she would have been staying in my daughter’s room and I wasn’t sure my daughter would be able to move back into the room if her grandmother died there…

it was a very powerful play and certainly opened up opportunities for people to discuss these difficult situations…

slept very poorly last night… kept having strange dreams with my beloved in them and then waking up… don’t usually remember dreams… thinking the play triggered them…

we did have these cute pumpkin pie cookies my friend picked up and which were very tasty…

repair…

18 Monday Jul 2016

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four years ago today I went into surgery for a hysterectomy due to cancer, and a hernia repair… I had two different surgeons involved to get everything done, basically at the same time…

just four months after George died I had been to accountants, financial experts and lawyers to put my affairs in order… I wasn’t sure I would wake up…

I remember that morning, as I lay on the stretcher, my heart pounding, wondering if I had done everything needed so that my girls wouldn’t have too much trouble dealing with my stuff if I didn’t make it… I didn’t want them to struggle the way I had when my beloved died…

I was so thrilled to wake up and learn that the surgery had gone well and the prognosis was excellent…

my body has always reacted poorly to any drugs and the pain meds they gave me kept me from sleeping and made me slightly crazy… eventually (within 8 hours) I was able to convince the doctors and nurses to stop all medication… I have always felt it easier to deal with the pain than the side effects of medication…

so, it was painful for a while, but my head was clear and I knew the pain would subside as my body repaired itself… 

and I was so happy to be alive, that helped too…

every step of my recovery was supported by family and friends… people sent me flowers, brought me food, sat with me, walked with me, ate with me, called me every day, stayed with me, and did chores around the house and yard that I couldn’t manage – for the first six weeks I couldn’t lift anything over a pound… what an amazing group… 

fast forward to today… I am healthy, able to lift and carry, have lost around 40 pounds, walk regularly and eat carefully… I am managing my diabetes with diet and exercise and feel pretty darn good…

still have the most amazing group of people in my life… 


I just realized a few days ago that there are no morning glories in the garden this year… made me a bit sad… we’ve had them in the garden for many years… I just love their beauty, the surprise in the morning when they open, and the inner glow they seem to have… when I was in hospital in 2010 for a six week stint, I remember George taking pictures each morning before he came so he could show the blooms to me…

I miss my beloved each and every day but know I truly am blessed as I continue down this new path…


life is fleeting…   enjoy every moment…