FSO Rocks

To see our Friday My Home Town Shoot Out for this week, with links to other contributors, please click here

Linda's Retirement Party

Linda stirs beside me in the bed and takes a peek at the clock. I snuggle up behind her and put my arms around her.

"It's the big day," I whisper.

"So it is," she agrees sleepily.

Today the staff at her school, where Linda has worked for 25 years, are celebrating her career. Former Principals will be there, family, former students, Board trustees and many, many others will be out to wish her well.

Linda has been instrumental in Berner Trail Public School winning the gold standard as an eco school, has lead the school choir for a generation (and even sang the anthems at a Blue Jays game). As a teacher and an artist and an environmentalist, Linda has left her mark on her profession and her school.

But, for the moment, Linda isn't anxious for the day to begin. It is comfortable just resting here in the early morning light.

Her brother Steve and I will take a taxi to the Party, since, between numbed feet, drugs and constricted lungs, I no longer trust myself to drive.

Linda was up late last night putting the finishing touches to a scrapbook she has been compiling of her career. Letters of commendation from the Board, photos of folk dancing groups she's led, the safety patrol she managed, the wilderness trips she supervised, photos of former teachers and friends.

So many memories.

But now Lindsay comes wiggle wagging her way into the room with a "come on guys its after getting up time and I need to go out" look on her face.

And Linda stirs, throws back the covers and her day begins.

Thoughtfulness

Lindsay hears it long before we do. She comes running out of the back office in full defensive mode, the hair standing up on the back of her neck, and rushes to the front window.

Linda and I exchange "what's got into the dog?" glances. And then I hear it too.

A very deep and distant "thup, thup" sound approaching rapidly from the East. Suddenly there is a vibration in the house and everything that's loose seems to be rattling.

Lindsay starts to bark ferociously.

And a large military helicopter sweeps quickly by over head destined for the distant towers of the downtown core where the G20 Summat preparations are in full swing. Defending the leaders of the world's most powerful nations on their two day visit to Toronto will cost tax payers over a Billion Dollars. More, even, than the recent Olympics held in Vancouver.

"Who's here?" asks Linda, noticing a car pulled into our driveway.

I've spent the last few days in a state of exhaustion punctuated by the return of a rattling cough that disturbs my sleep and irritates my days. The relief I'd been experiencing from the medications prescribed by the psychosocial oncologist, only mildly moderating the experience now exacerbated by the side effects of chemo.

My chair is closest to the window. "Looks like Wally and Ruth," I tell her.

Wally climbs out of the car and watches the massive helicopter receding into the distance. Wally and Ruth are my daughter Kathy's in-laws.

Linda goes to the door to greet them and I can hear laughter in the distance. The two women are talking and I can clearly hear Linda saying, "Oh now look, you have me in tears!"

I become concerned.

But there is more talk and more laughter before their car pulls back out of the driveway and Linda returns carrying a small blue box. Her eyes are wet with tears and happiness.

"They brought us muffins," Linda tells me. "Ruth was thinking about us and baked us some muffins."

And I marvel at this woman beside me who has been holding back the very Forces of the Universe to care for me, profoundly moved by a simple act of thoughtful kindness.

Wally and Ruth, two more good people in my debt.

Sepia Saturday--A Younger Me

As an Explorer I was always on the go. However, in my English Pram in 1945 I had to wait for Mommy Power to get me moving.



At that age all I could do was dream of being a train engineer.



By the time we had moved to Canada in 1946, I had discovered a love for dogs and was inspired by their freedom to move.



I thought about becoming a farmer and working with massive farm machinery.



I wondered if by being nice to girls they would take me for a ride. And many did. Just not always in ways I had imagined.



Of course I could always rely on my dad and dream of being a fireman.




Or I could just strike out on my own and see what adventure the world had to offer.



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To see posts from other Sepia Saturday members (or to become one yourself) CLICK HERE

In Which, To His Surprise, Barry Grows Up

"You don't happen to work for a circus, Mr. Fraser?" asked the Pharmacist from the doorway of my room at the Chemo Day Care Center. She was fairly short and I could just see her over the shoulder of my nurse who was busy tapping my forearm seeking a suitable location to insert the needle for my drugs and pausing only to make little "Grrr" sounds of frustration.

"Work sometimes felt like a three ring circus, but no, I never actually worked for a circus." I croaked in my weakened little voice.

"Because your chart says you are the tallest man I've ever met. Nine feet tall, in fact. How about basketball?"

"Baseball and hockey were more my games." I laughed. "But then I'm only 6 feet tall. Have always been six feet tall since I was 18."

The Pharmacist smiled. "So you're sure you didn't grow an additional 3 feet over the past week?"

"Grrrr!" said the nurse beside me, tapping even harder on my arm.

"I think my wife would have mentioned it." I assured her.

"Well, my loss." smiled the Pharmacist. "We formulate your drugs based on height and weight and legally we have to check any anomaly on the chart, and this was quite an anomaly. I'll get busy with your drugs and get them up to you as quickly as I can."

"Okay, I give up." said my nurse. I don't think you have any veins in your forearm. Maybe one of the other nurses will have better luck."

And she headed off to find help leaving me alone in my room.

The Chemo Day Care Center is beginning to feel like a comfortable place. I've been coming here for over a year now. The only difficulty for me was when I entered and had to pass by the bell that is rung when patients complete their final round of treatment. The bell I had rung back in February and whose ringing was echoed around the world by those friends who follow this blog.

Well, bell, I thought as I paused to look at it. I will be seeing you again in a few months time. Just wait right there for me.

And then my nurse returned with a slightly older colleague who found a suitable vein within thirty seconds and I was hooked up and ready to reacquaint myself with Taxol.

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To see Barry and Linda's contribution to the Friday Shoot Out please CLICK HERE

Barry Versus The G20

The words of the thoracic surgeon seem coated with oil and slip away from me as I try to grasp them. This gives them the sense of delayed meaning, as if they're being translated and I am always a meaning or two behind.

It isn't just his heavy French accent, it is also the content. He is telling me I will need to be hospitalized for 4 or 5 days to thoroughly drain all the pockets of fluid that surround my lungs and to then seal each of those pockets so fluid can never again accumulate.

The "never again accumulate" part sounds fine. But the five day hospital stay isn't what I wanted to hear.

It has been a long and frustrating day at the hospital, made much easier by the new regime of medication I have just begun. The day before, the Psychosocial Oncologist had replace all my pain meds with a new cocktail he promised would eliminate my pain and give me significant relief from the chronic, gasping cough that had transformed my life into a nightmare over the past three weeks.

I had begun taking the new medications in the morning and discovered the oncologist was as good as his word. My pain was gone, my cough was gone and I had none of the brain numbing drowsiness that accompanied the previous pain meds.

However, the fluid was still around my lungs sapping me of any energy I might have once possessed. And we'd been kept waiting for three hours past our appointment time with the surgeon, due to a crisis he'd had with an earlier patient.

But now we were negotiating my entry into hospital. It couldn't be this week because we didn't want to do anything to delay my starting chemo on Thursday. Then the chemo side effects would take a few days to pass. And the 17th was Linda's Retirement Party which I didn't want to miss, or have canceled so she could be with me.

Finally there was the upcoming G20 summit taking place in Toronto and the fact that the hospital was smack in the middle of the currently being fenced in security zone. We had to get me in, and out, of hospital before that circus began.

So we settled on the 19th, which will see me in hospital over Father's Day. Which was unfortunate.

Although, as Linda said, what better Father's Day gift could there be than the ability to breathe.

The Wizard Of Pills

"None?" I asked in disbelief,

"None," he said firmly. "No pain. none whatsoever, throughout the entire course of this disease. There is no need for it and your body spends too much energy fighting it when that energy could be put to better use fighting the disease."

Linda and I were in one of the treatment rooms in the GI Clinic at Princess Margaret Hospital having our first meeting with the Psychiatric head of the Psychosocial Oncology Department and Palliative Care Unit. He was a tall, calm man, with a soft voice and the body of a weightlifter.

"What did you think when you heard the term 'Palliative Care'?" he asked. "What did that term mean to you?"

"Preparation for death." I told him.

"Well, we can do that too," he agreed. "But that's not what we're really all about. We're about pain management and quality of life. And it looks like the quality of your life over the past few weeks has really sucked. So we need to fix that immediately."

"I'm all for that"

"Nothing we do here will affect the progress of the disease you're fighting. We will leave that up to your medical and radiation oncologists. We're here to make you feel better and maybe free up some of your energy to allow you to join back in the battle yourself. So, I'm changing all your medications....."

And an hour later, Linda and I are headed home, Linda clutching a fist full of prescriptions that will relieve my pain, stimulate my appetite, relieve my chronic and annoying cough and give me back the energy I've lost.

We drop off the prescriptions at the drug store ("Are all these for Barry!?" the Pharmacist asks in disbelief) and make it home half an hour later, Lindsay dancing for joy around our feet.

There are phone messages waiting for us. Linda settles wearily into her chair and plays them back.

"Hello," says the first voice. "This is Mary at the thoracic clinic. We have you booked in tomorrow at 9 am for a procedure...."

Across the room, I've already begun a ragged cough. You certainly do, I think. The sooner you get this fluid away from my lungs the better.

"If afraid the doctor has been called away and won't be available for your appointment...."

For Linda and I both, the room became suddenly cold and silent.

"However, I know you've been waiting quite a while for this procedure, so I've managed to book you in for another appointment at 1:30 tomorrow afternoon. Only a couple of hours later than you would have come. So we'll see you tomorrow at 1:30 not 9 as originally scheduled."

Linda and I collectively exhaled. And life went on.