So that was the summer!?!?!

Hey everyone.  Can't believe that it's now mid-September and the summer that we wait so long for, is now pretty much gone.

In any event, we had a really nice day on Saturday.  It was a beautiful sunny Fall day.  In the morning we had donuts from Tim Hortons, then ran some errands.  After lunch I worked on the P-car a bit, washed and waxed the GTI, and generally puttered.  We pulled some weeds in the driveway and then decided to go for a drive to Assiniboine Park and take a walk.  We strolled around the English Garden and even saw a fox sneaking around outside the zoo.  Watched a movie in the evening and went to bed.  It was a good day, for sure.

Anyway I guess we had a pretty busy summer and I thought I should post an update and some pictures.  I guess the most recent interesting thing we did was drive to Sault Ste-Marie, Ontario for the wedding of our friends Greg and Linda.  I was standing up for Greg.  We took the Porsche and it was a pretty fun trip. 

The first day, we stopped in Bemidji for lunch by the lake.

Then we hung out with a couple of friends:



We stopped in Duluth for the night and spent a really nice evening at the harbour front they have there, here are some pictures:

Can't drive through the UP of Michigan without a photo stop in my favourite town:

The wedding was lovely and a lot of fun.  While in SS-M we went on a boat cruise of the locks, it was very cool, especially meeting the large Great Lakes freighters.  These are amazingly large, some over 1,000 feel long... impressive!



On the way back, we drove up to Thunder Bay and then down through Rainy River back into the USA at Baudette, Minnesota.  Driving beside the lake was absolutely breathtaking, so many beautiful views.  Couldn't stop for them all but we made a few stops to take in the fantastic scenery.

And the famous Wawa Goose of course!

On the health front things have been pretty stable, thankfully.  Pam has scans and appointments on a regular basis but they have shown no radical developments, touch wood.  So we are hanging in there pretty well.  

We hope everyone enjoyed their summer and is having a great fall-time.  It's a really nice time of year here, and we are hoping to visit the corn-maze with friends and do some other outside stuff if we can.

Love to all,

Dallas and Pam

Micro-Update

Today was a nice day, Pam had a good sleep last night and was feeling well. I got my hair cut. Diane H. came over and left some delicious cookies.

We mainly stuck close to home and took it (mostly) easy. I did some overdue work in using some surplus plywood to replace the doors on our shed, and Pam puttered a bit in the garden. Good to be at home together.

Lastly, we want to give a special shout-out for our dads Gary and Lorne on Father's Day. We love you guys!

More Fun!

OK, this goes back about a month...

Pam had had a chest scan, and the doctor's office phoned back right away. Apparently the radiologist had spotted some blood clots in her lungs and this is something they want to address very quickly. So Pam had to go back to the doctor and get started on anti-coagulant drugs to try and prevent further clots. They also took her off her tamoxifen as they thought that this had contributed to the clotting.

So after a week or so of daily injections, the INR (clotting coefficient of the blood) was back close to normal, so they discontinued the injections. Big mistake ;-)

Soon Pam had developed a big clot in her leg, it was quite swollen and she ended up going to HSC Emergency on June 5. Then the daily injections had to start again.

Pam had another CT scan yesterday and it showed another large clot in her right lung. So out of caution the doctor scheduled an urgent procedure to implant an IVC filter - "IVC" being "inferior vena cava", the blood vessel that feeds the heart. The idea of putting a filter there is to stop any roaming blood clots from getting where they shouldn't. The filter is made of titanium and is inserted via a catheter through a vein in the leg. (I told Pam to make sure they used a "K&N" brand filter with the million-mile guarantee ;-)

We arrived at the hospital as required at 9am for the procedure at 11... but HSC being what it is they didn't get her in the OR until 1pm. In any event the procedure went very well, Pam was asleep through the whole thing, and just as I am writing this at 4:30pm she called me from the hospital and was sounding very good. So I will pick her up after I am done here and we will try to have a quiet weekend.

Scan

Just wanted to post a short update on Pam's latest scan she had on Tuesday.

She was at HSC at 9am for the test and it went fine, but the radiologist reviewing the films was quickly on the phone to Pam's doctor as he had spotted two blood clots in her lungs. The clots are treatable with blood thinners so we got back to Cancercare pronto and Pam had her first daily injection of a week's worth. The doctor also discontinued her Tamoxifen as it can contribute to clotting. He will be prescribing another drug therapy in its place.

Very glad that Pam happened to have her scan that day. She had been a bit shorter of breath than usual on the weekend but we really didn't think anything of it. Once the clots are cleared that should improve, and we are very thankful and lucky that the scan was scheduled when it was, and that the radiologist was on the ball.

Is It May Already??

Pam is at the movies with her sister tonight so I thought I would clean the house. Procrastinator that I am, I also figured that I should update the blog too ;-)

I can't believe that the last update was last year already! But anyway I guess no updates mean no bad news, so that's cool.

We actually had a bit of good news again with Pam's latest brain scan. Although we were worried, it turns out that the brain lesions are either the same or have shrunk again since the last scan, and that's great!

I guess we should also update readers on our mainly boring lives... we've mainly just been working, but we have had a couple of nice breaks lately too. In the winter we went to Gimli to stay at the hotel there, just for the weekend. It was very relaxing, we went for a walk, read our books, soaked in the hot tub, watched the Olympics, ate in the restaurant and were generally slothful. It was fantastic!

More recently we went on a quick trip to the west coast. We stayed for two nights in Vancouver with Pam's brother and sister-in-law and had a good time with them. I hung out with my old chum Rick and that was great as well. Then our friend Bryan very kindly drove us to Tacoma, Washington where we picked up our new old car. (I had sold the '72 Datsun 240Z I had owned for 20 years because I wanted to try something different).

In Tacoma we picked up the car, and over the next three days drove it back 1600-odd miles across Washington, Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota. The car ran great and the weather was perfect, it was a nice break for us (not to mention exciting for me to drive a longtime "dream car" of mine through the mountains, with my lovely wife there to enjoy it with me). We got back to Winnipeg about 7pm on Wednesday, April 21, and took the next day off work.

Now we're back to work... I hope that Powerball ticket we bought in Washington paid off, but I don't have the heart to check the numbers ;-)

Farewell to 2009

Being as it's the last day of the year, I thought I would post a few thoughts here.

2009 was a bit of a strange year for us. It started off great, with Pam and me celebrating a milestone birthday with a fantastic trip to Europe. Both Pam and her "other family" in Spain were thrilled to be reunited after a long time apart and I also really enjoyed seeing Iratxe again and meeting the rest of her lovely family. We had such a great time in Spain and the UK, it was really a dream vacation.

After that, of course, things went a bit sideways (which is of course the reason for this blog in the first place). You can read all about everything that's happened in the previous posts, so there is no need to go through it all again here ;-)

Anyway, we are very glad to have had some good news recently, and we are thankful for how things are going, and that Pam is feeling mostly better. We know that this thing will always be with us, but we also are grateful for the support, good wishes, thoughts and prayers of all of our friends and family (that's you, readers!) All of your positive waves that you have sent our way have really helped us.


Wishing you all the best of health and happiness for the New Year,

Dallas and Pam

Some Good News!

Today we had some good news, the results from a brain MRI Pam had last week.

The MRI showed that many of the brain lesions have disappeared, and the few that are left have shrunk!

We are really happy about this. Dr. B. has also suggested that Pam start on Tamoxifen so she will be doing that in the next day or so. It is a pill that is intended to help keep the lung tumours from growing, and is well-tolerated by most people.

We also want to say thanks to everyone for your good thoughts as they appear to be working!

Love, P+D