It's been way too long

Yikes! It's been almost a month since my last post. Sorry for the delay.

I still have the drain in my butt. It's not causing any pain and I'm off the gabapentin which was helping me with the discomfort before. I left a couple of messages with Dr Buie before we went away to BC asking him to please call and let me know what the official results of the sineogram were and what the plan was going forward. Apparently he was very busy and then left on holiday himself so still to this day I have not talked with him or had any more done with my drain. He gets back Monday so I will be sure to hound him for information and try to encourage some progress in the drain department so that I can start my chemo by the end of the month. The way things are progressing (very slowly!) I'm not sure that I'll make that deadline. Maybe my medical oncologist can help push things along?

So, as I alluded to above, we just got back from spending 2 weeks in BC. A couple of weeks before we left we bought a travel trailer and we brought it with us to BC. Its a 27 ft model with lots of space. I'm not sure you can call it camping anymore though when you have a fridge, microwave and air conditioner with you. It was a good time. We stopped at Blanket Creek (25km south of Revelstoke) for our first two nights. The campsite there was full so we were forced to stay in the overflow which actually turned out well. The overflow parking lot is right next to the lake and playground and there were only a couple of other groups there with us. Since there was a fire ban we really didn't miss out on anything by being in the overflow.

After that we took the back roads to Lumby and to our yearly stay at Sugar Lake (an hour east of Vernon). We parked the trailer right next to the lake and had a great view of all the helicopters taking off and landing at the fire camp up the lake. There was even a small forest fire across the lake from us so we could watch the helicopters dumping water on it all day. Andrew loved all the action and was sure to let us know every time he heard a helicopter. Being parked right next to the lake had its disadvantages though. While Carly was very manageable and good at listening, Andrew was a terror and as soon as he was out of the trailer he would head straight for the water. This meant that he either had to be closely supervised outside or was cooped up in the trailer. Either way the situation yielded little down time for mom and dad. In a year or two things will be much better. I hope. Also sleeping became a bit of an issue. Carly would wake up in the night and call out for mom. This became a nightly habit that would go on for hours. In the end we chalked it up to being away from her usual bed and routine and not having her usual coping mechanism (her soother). She had just given it up a month or so before we left so not having it in the trailer was probably the main issue. We'll be sure to bring one on our next trip just in case.

We had great weather on our trip and besides Carly not sleeping well, mom and dad not getting much relaxing time, blowing the power steering pump in the truck, and forgetting some key ostomy supplies, things went well.

Right now our thoughts are with the family and friends of my cousin Daniel. His memorial service is taking place today in Vancouver and we wish we could have been there.