Rolling with the Punches

I was driving to Guelph on Monday for an appointment with my sleep doctor and as I was driving I began to reflect.  First, I began reflecting on this blog.  Although, I started it when I was first diagnosed I really didn't get serious with it until November 1st last year.  Since then it has grown much bigger in a year than I had imagined possible.  I am not one of the bloggers that is always checking my stats out as an ego boost, although I would be lying to say I didn't used to (at one time or another everyone gets obsessed with it :) ).  With that said I am always looking to grow this blog with readership that enjoys what I have to say. 

This thought pattern slowly morphed over to how the blog has evolved.  It was originally just a place to update friends and family on my progress so I didn't have to write a million emails.  Eventually the progress updates got farther and farther apart but everyone liked hearing from me so I started adding some of my thoughts to my posts.  From there it has merged to what the blog is today, reflections and lessons that my journey with cancer has taught me about life.  What I like most about it now is that it is applicable to everyone, you don't have to have cancer to get something from this blog...In fact, the goal is you use the reflections and lessons in your own lives to make positive changes instead of waiting for that catastrophic event to cause you to start making drastic changes.

I continued my reflection and started thinking about the past 6 weeks or so and was trying to come up with an idea to write about.  I started thinking about what my recovery from the bone marrow transplant can teach us about life.  The first thing that came to my mind is it is HARD.  I wanted to dig deeper though because you don't need cancer to tell you life is hard.  What has made the recovery the hardest is the unexpected challenges that come along.  I wasn't prepared to have as a slow of a recovery as this has been.  I half expected to be back to normal after a couple months.  

Getting Back to Our Roots

A little over a week ago in my post "Remembering to Feed our Roots" I discussed how important it was to once inawhile feed our root system.  This is the base of who we are and is what keeps us strong during life's toughest storms.  Many of you had some amazing comments about what you do to feed your roots.  With everything that has been going on I could feel my roots were getting weary, because I was getting mentally weary.  I just knew that I needed to do something to get back to normal, and so over the thanksgiving weekend I focused on correcting this.

Leading into thanksgiving had been tough for me.  I had been battling with stomach problems for weeks by then.  The problem wasn't actually all the "lost" liquid (you guess the end) but it was more a tiny prison.  Because of my situation I could never be far from a bathroom.  This stopped all forms of pleasure in my life, by constricting my diet to the blandest thing you can imagine, and taking my photography away.  I just couldn't go out taking pictures without a tow along porta potty :) 

This isn't a post looking for empathy or to complain, just trying to give some context.  I made it through, mostly smiling so everything is all good :)  But back to the story. 

Leading up to thanksgiving there were two drastic changes in my situation.  First off, I sold my Leica camera and bought another system (more on that in my photography review of October).  The second was the doctors started to get a handle on my stomach and I was making my way out of that dark valley.  The tuesday before thanksgiving I was given an IV bag of fluid because I was so dangerously low and started on a cocktail of drugs to try and fix the problem.  I had to go back to the hospital for Friday for a second appt.  This is the first time I had two appointments in one week and had an IV bad since my first 90 days post transplant.  The Friday appointment was to determine if I was getting better or whether I was going to get admitted to the hospital for thanksgiving weekend.