Monday, May 3, 2010 - May, already??

So what happened to April? I only barely remember it... it came and went sooooo fast!! Here we are into May and I don't know about the rest of you but those of us in the Vancouver area, May has literally BLOWN in... and is still blowing! I don't know if there are going to be any needles or leaves left on any of the trees by the time this wind calms down!

Anywho... I only popped in here to let you all know that I realize I'm long overdue for a blog entry and one of these days I'm going to actually have time to write one :D But whoever said that retirement is the time when you get to catch up and do all those things you could never do when you were working full time is full of #$()*#)@! Retirement is busier than ever... so busy that even the things you were used to being able to do, there's no time :)

Quickie on the health update: I'm back in a state of confusion... not sure if that has anything to do with the health issues or just my normal state of mind :) I did hear back from the surgeon on Friday... well, he left a voicemail message since I wasn't home (I was off being busy somewhere) . He said that he had taken my case to the renal committee, the committee that meets once/month and that they unanimously agreed with our decision... to go into "wait and see" mode. Now, I'm scratching my head on this one because I could have sworn I left the appt. with him with us both having agreed that the Radio Frequency Ablation (RFA) procedure was the best way to deal with this kidney lesion. At the time of that visit, he asked if it would be ok for him to present my case to the committee since time is on our side and there is no rush to do something about it yesterday. Of course, I agreed and why not get a second opinion from a committee of specialists? So now he says that they all agreed with us that we should take the "wait and see" approach. He knows that I have a CT scan scheduled for June 9th, so he'd like to see if there are any changes with the lesion since the last CT scan in March. That all makes sense, but I'm still scratching my head about what we had agreed on.

Anywho...rather than play telephone tag with him, when I know my regular oncologist, Sharlene Gill, will have to be in touch with him anyways, I'm going to wait until she comes back. If you recall, she's been on sabbatical for 6 months, doing research work and she will be back in the office and clinical practice on May 10th. So, I've fired off an email to her and since she will have to find out what's going on and what our next plan of action will be (and when), then I'll wait until she's talked to him. I'm sure RFA is the answer as far as when we need to get rid of it, but the "wait and see" approach is to see if the lesion is even growing. If it's just an every day kidney cyst, then there's no reason to get rid of it unless it's actually causing discomfort. If it IS a malignant lesion, as he said, there is no danger of it leaving the kidney and it would be the same as a benign one in that unless it was causing major discomfort, there is no rush in removing it right now.

Ok, enough of that... one could talk themselves in circles when the end result is, Sharlene will be back next week, she will go over the file and who said what, and then get in touch with the surgeon and get the low down.

Meanwhile... adventure time happened yesterday. Bridget and I went to an annual party at a friend's house. Dave lives up in Paradise Valley (or is that Pleasant Valley? I keep forgetting the name of the valley)... but it's up past Squamish and Brackendale. It was a cloudy day when we left, but little did we know a wind/rain storm was on the way (and is still here!). Every year a bunch of us get together at Dave's, along with all our doggies. Dave, Steve and Joan are vets, so a lot of the friends are vets, or vet assistants, etc. Hahaha.. in the evening, when one of the big dogs (Savannah) decided she'd had enough, she snapped at Bridget... for absolutely no reason and no provocation. She didn't bite her but she sure scared the heck out of her. And talk about attention... 6 veterinarians jumped to their feet and Bridget was surrounded by attention (something she's very good at getting).

Everyone calmed down and all the doggies were all lying around and behaving. The wind was howling and it was just starting to get dark. Since it was an 1 1/2 hour drive home, Joan and her passengers, and I and Bridget decided to leave. Ha!! The start of adventure #2! Because of the way the cars were parked, I couldn't turn my car around to drive out of the driveway, so what the heck, I'd just back out in reverse. The problem being, the driveway is the equivalent of about 3 city blocks in length... along two tire ruts of a path, trees and bushes on both side and on the right hand side, a ditch! Not that you could see the ditch for the bushes and trees but a ditch there was... and do you know how I knew there was a ditch there?? Uh-huh! Because driving backwards I got slightly off the tire path and the water-saturated ground gave way and my car slid partway into the ditch :) First things first... release the dog from her seatbelt in the back. Joan was leaving at the same time, so her car was right there in front of me, so we took Bridget out of my car that was now, ever so slowly, sliding towards the ditch water... and put her in Joan's car.

Blair, who was in Joan's car, went back to the house to get the "gang". Now, considering we had been there all afternoon and it was now 7:45pm, a fair amount of wine/beer had been consumed , although, not by those of us driving. Hahahaha.. but those who were assessing the vehicle ("Yep, that would be a car in the ditch, alright!") were all in a good mood :) To make a short story long, suffice it to say, two of them had 4WD vehicles and someone had some rope... and they ended up pulling the car out of the ditch... most impressive. Meanwhile it was pouring, it was windy, it was cold, and although the pictures look like it was really light out (that's just trick digital photography), it was getting darker by the second. By the time the car got out, it was dark!

Here are some pictures of our most excellent Country Ditch Adventure :)

My rescuers! Put the drinks down and come see the car in the ditch! :)

Yep! That will be Cheryl's car in the ditch... where's the dog?

Hmmm... Dean is under the back end of the car, trying to figure out where would be the best place to secure the rope, to pull the car out from the back end. The rest of us are in the rain saying, "Yep, I think it is slowing slipping more and more :)"

The dogs all helped out to... one in particular kept going and getting a different stick or branch and bringing it to me. She figured if she could distract me with the stick and I would throw it for her, then I'd forget all about the black car that was falling into the water :)

This is one of my favourite pictures! We were trying to make it very dramatic, but it was raining soooo hard and everyone was soooo wet... the drama turned into "Why are we standing out in the pouring rain in the middle of a forest up on a mountain again??" :)

This is more realistic of how dark it was ... darkness comes very quickly in the mountains! It was in this darkness that the car was pulled out (yayaya Ken!), with Joan behind the wheel in my car (yayayaya Joan!), and Dave and the boys pushing the car (Yayayaya Dave, Blair, Steve and Dean!!)

Back to the house we all went and I turned the car around this time... then all was well! I retrieved Bridget from Joan's car, and off we went!!

What a day!!

Last but not least (more pics to come later), I'll leave you with a picture of little Bridget after she had the nasty trauma with Savannah, then all the attention from all the vets, and then back under Dr. Dave's 50th Birthday Blanket :)



Back soon!! :D

Huggggggs,

Cheryl