Happy Canada Day everyone.
July is now here, the year is now closer to 2017 than it is to 2015. Kids are off school for a couple of months, and the tourists will hit the highways and byways in droves…. so, I guess you get the good with the bad when it comes to tourist season.
Overall, things are quiet for me still. 2 of the 3 treatments of this summer session are complete, and a week until the last one. The holiday landing on a Friday actually delayed me for a week on the last one. But, I think I can find a good silver lining in this – it means that I have an extra week to recover before the next treatment…. so, my overall recovery from this session (even though this session was longer) may not be as bad as they have been in the past.
I think that I am absorbing this session of treatment well. I am down 40 pounds since Feb 22nd, and I think that my body is slightly better suited to absorb the increased energy demands that the rounds of BCG place upon me. I have also been behaving myself better this time and not doing things to sabotage or prevent my body from recovering between sessions. I shall call that – a lesson learned from past attempts to try to maintain a normal schedule during treatment. More time doing less, seems to be working better. I have even become a fair weather rider leading up to the treatments, making sure I don’t have the sudden onset of a cold, or anything that would make these rounds of treatment any more annoying, inconvenient, or uncomfortable than they need to be. It also makes my wife happy when I take that approach.
In discussion with the staff at Cross Cancer Institute, I have some rough guesses as to the rest of 2016, and 2017 timings… roughly put – fall 2016, spring 2017, and fall 2017. This is all the “preventative maintenance program”. Kinda like when you get booster shots for immunizations. The good news, is that if all progresses well for this 18 months, then in 2018, I can start putting my life back together. When treatments end, I can actually start rebuilding my fitness and physical health back to a point that is greater than I have had in the last couple of years. I am really looking forward to not having to manage my energy as much as I do now. It will be a wonderful thing.
The down side to doing less, means that I accomplish less. My 20 K riding goal is really falling behind. I had hoped to have a big week of riding completed in June, by riding to Yellowknife for the Midnight Sun Run on the shortest night of the year, but – treatment started the day before I was hoping to leave. With discretion being a significant part of valour – I opted not to go. See previous paragraph for logical argument… the group that still went (awesome group of riders) had a great time even with rain by the gallon and hail storms. They had a blast and thought the trip was epic – made me feel supremely jealous. So, with that hit to the odometer not happening, I re-calculated my numbers and even with a 4,000 km trip planned for later this summer, I still have many kilometers to go. This time off doing less means that I am giving google maps a pretty heavy workout on my laptop. I have a bunch of ideas for day rides and places to go, even another BC trip in mind…. now if I could just get the cystocopy date from my oncologist, I could try to plan my life a little better.
I actually don’t have many events planned for the next month, and so things will likely be pretty quiet. The next “for sure” charity ride events will be 20 August, for a PTSD fundraiser, and 27 August for a kids with Cancer fundraiser. I hope to be able to get to Southern Alberta for a few events, but all that will depend on how I do coming out of my last round of BCG on the 8th of July. A friend from Southern Alberta will be in Edmonton just after that, so we can talk about ride stuff when he is in town. I have some ideas and will be passing close to his place (just in the Foothills outside Crowsnest Pass). I hope he realizes the epicness, and epicosity, (those are really words – I checked) of the riding territory that he and his wife have moved to.
Website updates – I will update my welcome video in the next week, and tell you about some channel thoughts and ideas for the YouTube videos and items that I want to cover. I still have some desires to develop some fundraising items, and other swag, in order to generate donation funds for the Bladder Cancer Awareness Walk in Sept. I also have some ideas that I want feedback about, so that will come up in a future post or video. Still trying to come up with a logo or something cool… really don’t have any ideas.
Anyway, thanks for following along on this journey to an unknown destination.
Happy Canada Day, hope you enjoy your long weekend.
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