On Monday's We Talk About Cancer

And puppies and what has been going on this summer.

It’s scan week again!

But first meet William Wallace the 5th.

Aka Wallace. He’s too young to have a dozen nicknames yet but they will come. He isn’t mine, he belongs to my parents - but really he belongs to all of us because we are all invested in his upbringing. My parents are here with him for six weeks which is a real blessing. He’s the fifth Cairn Terrier for our family (not the fifth one named Wallace though - really it’s just a joke as we are not that posh at all.) Even though he is all teeth and bitey right now he is super smart and is going to be an amazing dog.

On the cancer front things have been up and down. I was hoping to have a “hospital visit free summer” but one of my oncologists (it takes a village) decided that I need to have scans early so it is scan week. And if you are new here I wrote about Scanxiety back in February in my post Is it Scanxiety or is it Just Another Normal Day?

This morning I had a CT scan - which is the easiest of scans - so I didn’t worry too much about it. Plus I have a lot of distractions right now: parents AND sister visiting, a new puppy, and beautiful weather being the major ones. Plus this week I decided I was going to work on one of my many sewing projects that I had hoped to get done this summer. Which if I actually complete it will have my completed sewing projects count up to: one. Sad but true.

Earlier this summer I had a bad fall but I thought was fine - and it mostly was, sore, but fine - until we went camping to a little cabin and I slept on the sore side and broke a couple ribs. We ended up having to come home a day early because I just couldn’t get comfortable (there were no chairs in our tiny cabin and we forgot to bring any). And while everyone was fine with coming home a day early in my mind I feel like this is another check into the Why Melanie’s Illness is an Annoyance for our Family column. In the early days of being sick, after the whole chemo rigamarole, the column was fairly empty. But now I feel like everything is stacked against me. It is not a nice feeling.

The view from the cabin was nice from the front:

The girls enjoyed going to the small beach near by and their were hiking trails but my pain level prevented me from really enjoying it. (Behind the cabins were dozens of giant motor homes and trailers which, I’ll be honest, isn’t my scene.)

My favourite part of camping was a visit to the Medalta pottery museum on the way there.

I had a set of Medalta dishes in my 20s that I used as my every day wear until they started breaking on me. I guess I’m not much of a camper anyway.

Treatment for my bones on Wednesday and another scan on Friday. Hopefully I will have a new shirt to show you all next week.