Some Good News For Once

I am back in the Chemotherapy Daycare Clinic again today, but only got here through some good news.

I'm not used to good news. Every test conducted since I first began treatment at Princess Margaret Hospital has incrementally shown my condition worsening

Its enough to put you off tests all together.

But on Tuesday I was back at the hospital for some blood work to see the impact my first experience with Taxol was having on various organs and especially on my immune system.

Linda and I had been at the hospital for eight oclock for more blood work. And by ten thirty we had been waiting in the treatment room for about fifteen minutes before the oncologist arrived with the results.

For once it seemed I was fine. The oncologist was surprised and delighted, showing us the print out with amazement.

"Your immune system is perfectly normal!" she exclaimed. "Just look at these readings. Perfectly normal, despite all the punishment Taxol should be inflicting on it."

That was the good news. All the effort we had put into changing our diet, my MEDS program, the supplements I was taking, it had all paid off.

"So we can go ahead with the chemo on Thursday as planned," the Oncologist told me. "In fact you are doing so well, I'm adding additional cycles of chemo to your schedule. And I'm giving you the H1N1 shot. Hold still."

"What? Ow!"

"There, your arm may hurt for a day or two."

"Ouch"

"It will take ten days before you're fully resistant to H1N1, but with such good immune readings there is no reason to isolate yourself any more. I mean you need to take reasonable precautions. Don't use public transportation if you can help it. Don't visit with people who have contagious diseases. But otherwise get out and enjoy life between Chemo treatments."

So, good news. A step in the right direction.

But the important news will come in mid December when they repeat the CT scan to see what effect this cycle of chemo is having on my various cancer sites.

That's new news I'm waiting for.

As I lie here today with Taxol slowing dripping into my veins, my shoulder hurting from the H1N1 shot.

My reward for keeping my immune system healthy.

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Linda, my brother John and myself are back from our day of chemo. The ride there and back was lengthened by the day's pouring rain and slowed traffic.

I am feeling exhausted after 5 hours of chemo and will be unable to respond to your kind and very supportive comments.

I am especially sorry to have missed Totalfeckineejit's party today. I bet it was great!

Knowing I will be feeling stronger and more alert tomorrow, I will attempt to visit all your sites to see what I've been missing.

Linda and I will also be a little late getting our Friday Shootout Posted.

Sorry about that.

Lindsay Finds A Mystery

The Blair Witch weather of the previous month moved on to frighten other communities while the sun chased away the lingering dark where monsters might hide.

Suggesting there was no longer anything to fear in the long reaching shadows of the trees.

So I grabbed the camera and headed out into the deep forests that line the massive valley of the Rouge River, much to Lindsay's amazed delight.

I set up the camera and filmed us walking and running through the largest Urban Carolinian Park in the country. Lindsay pranced along through the deep carpet of fallen leaves, splashed through the cold waters of the eastern tributary of the Rouge River, and performed like a star. Or just a normal dog, whichever description seems to fit.

Then she stopped, her attention captured by a sound far above my range of hearing and suddenly took off up a nearby slope, vanishing deep into the enclosing forest.

I called her back but got no response.

Silence.

I called again.

Lindsay is usually very responsive.

But it was as if the forest had swallowed her whole.

Linda had been apprehensive about our going for a walk through the Rouge Valley after a television news report the previous night warned about a pack of wolf/coyote hybrids loose in the park. I was less concerned because the valley is vast, a good twenty kilometres in length. Besides, most animals rest during the afternoon.

And hunt in the dark.

Still, Lindsay and I had had one encounter with a coyote some months back and one was more than enough.

So I grabbed the camera and headed off into the woods after her.

The following video explores what we found.

Hoist On My Own Petard

One of the intrinsic pleasures of taking Lindsay for a run along the top of the Scarborough Bluffs, is the sense of escape.

Within a very short distance from my home I can find an area still untouched by human hand. Even though we live in a City of over 3,000,000 people, when we are running through the meadow at the top of the bluffs, we are alone and surrounded only by nature.

Not a sign of civilization is in sight.

Until now.





It is ugly and it sits immediately off the shoreline of the Scarborough Bluffs.

Where it will reside for the next two years.

Despite strong opposition from a significant and vocal majority of West Hill and Guildwood Village Residents.

It s a wind anemometer, and if the wind blows significantly, it is the forerunner of a line of Wind Turbines destined to run from the Leslie Street spit all along the Scarborough shoreline.

Toronto Hydro claims that anemometers pose no health threats. Our concerns, they say, were addressed in the studies done for the Ministry of Natural Resources. If there were any side effects the project would have been declined.

Opponents however, believe Toronto Hydro is pursuing a “vanity project.”

Opponents to the plan state they don’t want more money to be spent on the anemometer when they totally reject turbines in Lake Ontario,.

Toronto Hydro reminds West Hill the device is only for wind energy research and there’s no current plan to propose a wind farm. Somewhat disingenuously claiming that they are not proposing to build windmills, only collect data.

The wind data will be collected for two years, then other factors will be studied, such as costs for construction and electricity grid connections, before a decision will be made concerning the construction of the Wind Farm project.

The platform is located 1.2 kilometres off the bluffs and is visible all along the Scarborough shoreline from any position on the top of the bluffs. If wind results and other factors prove satisfactory, the 60-turbine wind farm could stretch from Ajax to the Leslie Street Spit.

Residents, however, will continue to oppose the project with more protests and educational campaigns.



The irony for me is that I support the development of alternative fuel sources. I want the single remaining coal generated electric plant in Ontario to close. I oppose the vast costs involved in building new Nuclear facilities.

I support solar and wind power generation.

But it will cost me the contact with nature I love.

I will loose one of the very things I love most about my runs with Lindsay.

Instead of running through nature, I will be running through an electric generation plant.

A Visit To The Cham Shan Buddhist Temple

In preparation for our Friday Shoot Out assignment, on places of worship, Linda and I toured some of the more architecturally interesting (and therefore photographically interesting) spiritual centres in Toronto.

Including the Cham Shan Buddist Temple, the largest in the city and one of the largest in the country.



Where we discovered something interesting about the City of Peterborough.




Where blogger steven (who dislikes capitalization) lives.



As the huge statue of the Compassionate Buddha looks on, the Cham Shan Buddhist Temple has a major building plan underway. Perhaps you could even describe it as an audacious building plan. They intend to build full size replicas of the four major Buddhist temples of China. All in and around Peterborough.

The wood for the temples will be pre-assembled in China and classic Chinese artisans will be imported to erect the temples.

Here is a scale model of the proposed temple's gate.



The first of the four to be build will be a 6th Century style Wutai Shan Buddhist Garden, to be build in traditional Chinese style without nails or glue and entirely of Rosewood. When completed it will be a perfect replica of the Tang Dynasty Foguang Temple.

And here is a scale model of the proposed temple itself. Soon to rise at 15 Bland Line about 100 km North-East of Toronto



Surprising what you discover when you get out of the house.

Friday My Town Shootout--Places Of Worship

Linda and I stumbled on some very mysterious structures deep in the forests of the Rouge Valley. Obviously they are shelters of some kind. But who built them and when? And why?

Their discovery changed the entire focus of our Friday Shoot Out, suddenly Places of Worship were no longer just about Churches, Mosques, Temples and Synagogues.

Once again Linda and I are combining our efforts and jointly hosting a single page for our My Town Shootout.

At least until I'm through this new round of chemotherapy (read Christmas).

So to see how these structures refocused our joint posting CLICK HERE FOR FRIDAY SHOOT OUT

I will have even more to say about this discovery in my post on Lindsay next Wednesday.

Putting My Affairs In Order 2--An Alternate View

"Don't be afraid, there's another way to look at all this!"

In my dream, I sat once again in my Naturopath's comfortable office and watched her face relax into a smile. She shook her head in disbelief, looking at me with warm and amused eyes. Her voice soft against my ears.

"Barry," she said. "You're not going to die. You're going to live for a very long time. This is the truth and you'd better get used to it."

I awoke with a start in my bed at home. The clock on the dresser suggested it was just after 4:00 in the morning. And it was pitch black.

The words, "You're not going to die", ran through my head, the product of a dream.

Had my Naturopath ever said such a thing? Even hinted at such a thing? At four in the morning, my brain befuddled by sleep, I couldn't decide.

Yet it felt true and I felt so euphoric I couldn't sleep. I was going to live, for a long while. Guaranteed.

But the next morning, now fully awake, I went with Linda to the lawyer to draw up our wills.

I was living in two irreconcilable worlds, I realized. There was conventional reality in which my chances of dying within the next few years was about 85%, the world I wrote about in part 1 of this series. This was a world where CT scans and nuclear bone scans had detected the metastasizing of my cancer to the bones of my hip, ribs and spine. A reality in which doctors had given up on a cure. A world in which harbouring hope for a longer future was a sad sign of denial.

But there was also an alternate reality, the reality of the health I felt. Of the world in which I actually lived. The world I experienced on a daily basis. Because I didn't feel ill and wouldn't until my next treatment on the 19th of this month pumped more Taxol into my system.

It was a world in which people survived worst cancers than mine. A world in which cancers disappeared on their own. A world where diet and meditating and prayer and the positive energies of well wishers had a measurable impact. The world of my MEDS program. It was a world in which traditional treatments, folk remedies, had gone to war against cancer for generations, and won.

At least now and then.

It was a world in which expecting a shortened lifespan involved denying a whole world of healing. A world in which hope was the only reasonable emotional response and it was despair that signaled you were out of touch with the facts of reality. In this world, if you felt despair, you were wallowing in a pathetic delusion, wallowing in self-pity.

No, I'm not becoming schizoidal. It is our culture that has split reality into two, not me. Our culture that has split reality into alternative world views that are not as complimentary as they claim.

You see, I can't despair when I have hope. I cannot have hope when medical facts argue otherwise.

And so I prepare for the worst, but expect the best.

And live in today. Where my odds of surviving the day are exactly the same as yours.

Where I live happily. Comfortably. Not heroically, just normally. With a normal level of fitness and energy. With a normal appetite. And normal interests. Where I run and hike and lift weights.

Where I love my wife.

Where I take from both worlds the best they have to offer.

And laugh at all the rest.

Lindsay Unfinished

I'm working on a small film that isn't about Lindsay, actually; although she appears in it. The film isn't finished yet but I've been asked how I film myself in my videos without having a cameraman along?

This little film clip of Lindsay and I going for a walk shows the answer. The clip is about 30 seconds long and the only processing has involved adding music.

Alan was kind enough to provide some bagpipe music for video backgrounds and I wanted to see how well the pipes would work.



As you can see, what I did to film myself was place the camera on a fence post, turn the camera on and then do whatever action I want to film. Walking with Lindsay, in this case. In later editing I can cut the video so it shows only about 10 seconds of me either walking away or toward the camera.

The final film will be about a mysterious discovery Linda and I made while walking Lindsay through the forests of the Rouge Valley. You can get a glimpse of what we discovered in Friday's shootout.

I could tell you the rest, but wouldn't want to spoil the fun.

The final film will be about 3-4 minutes long and should be ready to post next week. I need to go back to our discovery and shoot a little more film first.

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And as a Salute to Veteran's Day in the States and Remembrance Day here in Canada, here is a new musical tribute to our troops written and performed by my brother Keith's good friend Bob Reid---