A sunbeam for Duncan

The novel continues to surprise me. Duncan has found a spot for himself in it, and he kept his real name, too. My friend Robin Kelsey has become my main character’s next-door-neighbour. The Son of the Traveling Shovel of Death has claimed another victim (fortunately neither Duncan nor Robin, whose name, by the way, is now Dominic).

I’m up to 23,290 words, or 62 paperbook pages. It stinks, and it stinks bad. But I am learning a great deal from it. How not to write a book. Pitfalls to avoid, like having the bulk of the story set inside one character’s head, especially when that one character spends most of her time thinking. The importance of good bones in a story. The importance of momentum. The importance of consistency. The unimportance of accounting for every moment.

What else is new? Something very, very exciting happened yesterday. It’s still a secret. But I’ll give you a hint: It involved a trip to the Ottawa Humane Society.

Related posts:

1. How much do you know before you start writing?
2. Duncan’s secret

Wristband: Passport to the Clinic

We got our wristbands when they opened at 9:00 in the morning. That didn’t take long. We were No. 269 and 270. They told us to come back at 4:00 for the shots.

Under the Big Top

My friend John was in there (and, oddly, this was the third time we’d bumped into him in less than 24 hours). He was in the time slot ahead of us, so he was thoroughly familiar with the routine by now. He was like our personal tour guide of the immunization clinic.

The waiting area is an observation room overlooking a skating rink, so some of the little kids were thrilled to sit on their fathers’ shoulders and watch what they thought were the Senators. One of the fathers took all the fun out of it by telling his kid it wasn’t the Senators, it wasn’t anybody important, and get your damned fingers out of my ears, you know I hate that.

We waited. We made sure all our paperwork was in order (you can download the forms from the net or pick them up on site.) Every now and then a female security guard with a booming voice bellowed “CAN I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION. IF YOUR WRISTBAND IS BETWEEN THESE TWO NUMBERS, LINE UP OVER HERE.”

When it was our turn, the security guard snipped off our bracelets and we went upstairs. We were in a huge noisy room where everything was happening: People crying, people getting injections, people waiting, people getting registered, people recovering. We saw John in the recovery area. He was still alive and smiling, and GC, who was getting more and more nervous by the minute, seemed heartened by this.

Pandemonious pandemic room

I was supposed to be keeping GC calm, but I was so distracted by this kid, just three feet away from us, and how determined she was not to get the shot, and how determined her parents were to make sure she got the shot, and how locked into the whole thing they all were. I watched the nurses trying to calm her, and her father talking to her through gritted teeth, and throughout it all the kid just kept crying and screaming and fighting.

GC was awfully good in comparison. After his shot the nurse had him sit by himself over by the wall. She didn’t want him to watch me getting my shot, in case he fainted in sympathy. After my shot, we waited our mandatory 15 minutes in recovery, lined up for our immunization records, and left.

Chandler Swain's table at 260 Fingers

Related posts:

1. Mystery Shot Contest continues…

I’ve got a new lump in my right breast. It’s very small, it might not be cancer, it might just be scar tissue, but it’s in a completely different area of my breast than the cancer and surgery was. It’s where the MRI last Spring found an “area of suspicious enhancement.” I never did find out exactly what an area of suspicious enhancement was, exactly, but after another ultrasound last Spring I was told that it was probably a false positive on the part of the MRI. Now, six months later, there’s a lump there. The surgeon wants to wait and see. She’ll MRI it again in six months and see if it’s changed.

I feel like I just got off the cancer merry-go-round, and I don’t want to jump back on again just yet – especially if there’s nothing I can do about it. I had to get used to having cancer in the first place, and then I had to get used to not having cancer, and now I have to get used to not knowing if I have cancer. And doing nothing. Just waiting.

It’s not that I’m worried. I’m not. One of the benefits of having had cancer is that it stripped the word ‘cancer’ of its power to terrify me. I’m not scared of it anymore. Or maybe I’m just not scared of breast cancer. Or my breast cancer. I don’t know. But I’m not worried or scared.

It’s just that I’m weary. I moved through this past six months on the strength of positive thinking and tons of support from other people. I borrowed positive momentum from everybody I know, including all of you. But a week ago today, when I finished my last radiation treatment, I finally exhaled. I let it all go, all that momentum, because I thought I didn’t need it anymore…I’d made it to the finish line and now I could just let go. I never imagined I’d need to muster it all back up less than a week later. I’m trying, but so far I’m mostly just feeling kind of lackluster and drained.

In the good news department, my back incision has finally healed. The home care nurse pronounced it sealed yesterday, and for the first time since mid-September, I’m dressing-free. (By the way, in case you think I haven’t had a shower for two months, I have to set the record straight. Shortly after Home Care started coming in, they switched to waterproof dressings just so I could shower.)

In other news I’m going to try to get my flu shot today. It should be good for a blog post if nothing else.

And finally, my nanowrimo novel is up to 17,378 words. The last couple thousand words have been kind of smutty, which surprised me even more than the boyfriend who hanged himself in the closet on Page 1.

Related posts:

1. A preliminary plan unfolds
2. I can’t think of a title for this post
3. Rethinking the Pink Ribbon

At any rate, I was very glad I summoned up the energy to socialize, because I had a lovely time, impending illness notwithstanding.

It’s not the swine flu. My temperature was well below normal. I had a whole litany of complaints, ranging from mundane stuff like headache to more exotic things like all the ligaments and nerves and tendons in my legs felt like they were too short. My breast was sore because the radiation continues to cook it for two weeks after treatment. Also, I’m in the process of weaning myself off my addictive painkillers, so various pains are starting to break through the painkiller barrier. And I think I’m coming down with perimenopause, and a touch of hypochondria too.

On top of everything else, I just started taking tamoxifen yesterday, and will be taking it every day until 2014. It’s the final part of my breast cancer treatment plan. It will likely produce symptoms that mimic perimenopause, so I expect to be completely confused in that department for the next five years. I won’t know what’s real perimenopause and what’s fake perimenopause. And what happens if menopause occurs during the next five years, as I sincerely hope it will? Will I have real menopause and fake perimenopause simultaneously?

You know what else? I hate my pharmacy. Earlier this year I switched from the world’s best pharmacy (Shoppers Drug Mart at Bank & Laurier) to the world’s worst pharmacy (Shoppers Drug Mart at Westgate). In the past I wouldn’t have complained because I hardly ever had to go to the pharmacy. But now? I average about one prescription a week, which generally means two visits and a phone call.

Here are some of the things I hate about my new pharmacy:

1. They hire staff with insufficient command of the English language. (I don’t expect English to be their first language, but a rudimentary command of English would be good too.)

2. They’re rude. They rush me away, refusing to answer my questions, saying “You go now. Okay? You go.”

3. They’re cold and unfriendly. They seem to resent customers.

4. They always leave me standing at the counter for several minutes before serving me. There can be six of them working back there, no other customers in sight, and they take turns glancing up at me and then ignoring me, waiting for someone else to serve me. My last pharmacy sometimes got busy and kept me waiting too, but it was always because they were busy with people. These guys do it because they’re busy with stuff.

5. They usually can’t find my prescription. They look through a big bin of prescriptions, declare it missing, check computers, ask one another, glare at me like it’s my fault, make me re-spell my name, and finally recheck the bin, where it was all along.

Yesterday I picked up my first Tamoxifen prescription, and was served by an incompetent new pharmacy assistant who couldn’t speak English and who had to ask her supervisor for direction on every single little thing.

The woman in front of me accidentally dropped her coffee and handed the pharmacy assistant her empty cup. She had to ask her supervisor where the garbage was. But she didn’t actually ask. She took the cup to her supervisor, held it up, and looked helpless. Her supervisor showed her the garbage pail.

Then it was my turn. I mentioned to her that there was a puddle of coffee on the floor, right in front of the wicket. She came out and looked and went to tell her supervisor.

“Split,” she said. “Split.”

Her supervisor didn’t understand. She fished the coffee cup out of the garbage, held it up, said “split” again, and pointed to where I was standing. The supervisor came out, looked, got some paper towels and cleaned it up.

Then I told the pharmacy assistant that I was here to pick up my prescription, and I spelled my name. She wrote it down, looked it up, and eventually found my prescription.

“You have before?” she asked. I shook my head no and she pointed at the pharmacist, indicating that I needed to speak to him.

I stood at the consult wicket and a few minutes later he came over and told me about my prescription and possible side effects.

“It’s like when a woman gets a period.” he said, “Things like bloating and cramps. Hot flashes. Bleeding. Moods. You know like your cycle, you get symptoms but then you get used to it?”

He paused. I waited.

“It’s hard for a guy to explain this,” he said, looking flustered and apologetic.

I felt sorry for him, and decided to let him off the hook. After all, I’ve got books with whole chapters about Tamoxifen. I’ve got the Internet. I don’t really need a flustered pharmacist to tell me the side effects.

Even though it wasn’t a very helpful conversation, it was the most human exchange I’ve ever had at that pharmacy so far, and left me feeling slightly better about the place.

Related posts:

1. I hate all squirrels except this one
2. I fell down the stairs and I don’t hate winter anymore

They inject a dye during the MRI, but they can’t use my right arm anymore for IVs and blood-taking, because my nodes have been removed on that side, so there’s a risk of lymphedema. I’ve always been a bit of a challenge for nurses and phlebotomists, but now it’s getting ridiculous. My left arm has clever, skittish veins that hide when they see a needle, and retreat and collapse when poked. I got poked five times on Friday night – four times by a technician, and once by an ER nurse who was eventually summoned to deal with me, and also to deal with the woman next to me who was having similar problems, only hers were compounded by a needle phobia.

The MRI took over two hours from beginning to end, which cut deeply into our plans for the evening. We ended up just doing drive-throughs at both Octopus Books’ 40th birthday party and Raw Sugar’s first birthday party. By then we were famished and we went to the highly recommended 24-hour Elgin Street Diner for a late-night snack.

Saturday morning we went to an art show (Art Expo) which was very good. In the afternoon I had my complimentary facial at Oresta’s, which left me feeling almost woozy with relaxation.

Saturday night we went to a Halloween party.

Normally I don’t do Halloween parties. I can’t get myself together for it. It’s too hard. But the stars were aligned this year. I found out that my favourite band in the whole world, Astronaut Love Triangle, was going to be performing at this party. Then, David Scrimshaw posted something soothing about Halloween party costumes. Then, with the pressure reduced, my sleeping brain actually came up with a costume idea.

Interactive collaborative work of art in progress

The extra added bonus is that I now have two pieces of art to hang on my walls, created by beatniks, cowgirls, cabaret dancers, nuns, sexpots, variations of the swine flu and various other assorted creatures.

The party had everything you could possibly want in a party: interesting guests, dancing, food, wine, excellent live music performed by heavily made up almost-naked people, and Astronaut Love Triangle, amplified! They only performed four pieces, and I wanted much, much more, but they were brilliant as always and the crowd loved them.

We couldn’t stay late because Nanowrimo was starting at midnight and we had novels to write. I wrote just over 3,000 words on Day 1. I’m much happier with the quantity than the quality, but that’s about what I expected. (What I didn’t expect was for the book to completely ignore its outline and go off on a tangent of its own. I don’t know whether to try to rein it back in or to follow its lead.)

Related posts:

1. 24 on the 24th!
2. Partying with some real party animals!
3. Post-weekend wrap-up

Zoom, moments before the last treatment

I know I said a couple of months ago that the oncologist told me I could start referring to my cancer in the past tense, since radiation is aimed not at treating cancer but at preventing a recurrence. So officially I’ve been ‘over’ cancer for awhile. But it’s hard to feel like you don’t have cancer when you’re having daily cancer treatments. You know what I mean?

Now I feel it. I feel like I can begin to put cancer in the past. And I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to say that.

Radiation machine #18, and the little table I lay on while being radiated

“I’m going to scrub all the green magic marker off my breast,” I said. The technicians have been calling out numbers (22.2, 88, 8.5, and 8.7) and scribbling on my breast for a month now, and asking me not to wash it off. (By the way, if you ever have to have these treatments, wear a cheap disposable bra for the whole month, since it’s going to end up permanently stained a splotchy green.)

“Oh no,” she said, “Your breast tissue is still very tender, and you mustn’t scrub it. Let it wear off naturally.”

The view from the table: Ceiling tiles painted by one of the radiation technologists

After the final treatment, GC whisked me off to Second Cup to celebrate with a cranberry-apple muffin, and then to Chances R for the breakfast special. We reminisced about the whole thing (cancer – not breakfast).

Tomorrow – this is so exciting – I’m celebrating the end of cancer treatments with a free facial at Oresta’s Organic Skincare Confectionery! Remember my one and only facial in November 2008? That was at Oresta’s. A couple of days ago I read on Laurie Kingston’s blog that Oresta’s is offering complimentary facials to women with breast cancer.

Oresta wanted to do something for women with breast cancer, while avoiding the whole pinkwashing thing. Ultimately she decided to offer free facials to women with breast cancer. And I think it’s lovely. There’s plenty of unpleasantness associated with cancer, so when a company offers something pleasurable directly to affected women, it’s wonderful, and very much appreciated.

I’m going to keep celebrating for a few more days too. Tonight, after my MRI, I’m celebrating Octopus Book’s 40th birthday at the Carleton Tavern and Raw Sugar’s first birthday at Raw Sugar. Both are open to the public and free if you’re looking for something fun to do.

Related posts:

1. Rethinking the Pink Ribbon
2. The medical oncologist sums things up
3. Back on the merry-go-round

My mother always said if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all, so I’m not going to say anything at all about the food at the Yang Sheng. (Actually that was Bambi’s mother who said that. My mother used to say “By the time kids are fit to live with, they’re living with somebody else.”)

There are close to 100,000 people registered for Nanowrimo this year, and we’re each going to try to write the first draft of a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. If you’d like to join, you can sign up here. (Add me as a writing buddy if you want – I’m registered as zoom.)

People have been asking me questions about it, so I’ll do a little Q&A here.

Q. Are there prizes for best novel?
A. No.

Q. How do you win?
A. By writing 50,000 words of a novel in November.

Q. Who reads the novels?
A. Nobody.

Q. What’s to stop you from writing the same word repeated 50,000 times?
A. Nothing.

Q. What’s your novel going to be about?
A. I’m writing a dark romantic thriller about online dating, self-betrayal, hidden blogs, horrifying secrets, and a clash of precariously balanced personality disorders. It’s set in that place where love and hate masquerade as each other, and where you can’t trust anybody – not even yourself – because nothing is as it appears.

Related posts:

1. I left my couch!
2. An unexpected hanging
3. You can peek at my ballot

Duncan dining on Tuesday

When GC first came into our lives, I liked him immediately but Duncan wasn’t so sure. Remember the first time GC slept over, and Duncan peed on his shorts? Remember the time he peed directly on GC? (And on me too, at the same time – we were entangled together in bed one morning and Duncan climbed right up on top of us and peed.) Actually, you probably don’t remember that one because I was so mortified I didn’t even blog about it. I worried people wouldn’t like Duncan anymore if they knew.

We blamed ourselves, of course. Duncan’s dish was almost empty and his litterbox hadn’t been scooped for 36 hours. And there we were, lollygagging about in bed, lavishing so much attention on one another and none on him. Sometimes a cat has a point to make, and humans respond so well to being peed upon. They stop whatever they’re doing and turn their full attention to the cat.

Anyway, it took Duncan a little time to accept that GC, with a little training, might be a good addition to the cozy twosome we’d been enjoying.

Face in bowl

He also taught GC to beg. I explained to GC once that cats say “I love you” by touching your nose with their nose. So GC begs Duncan every night, before we fall asleep, for a nose touch: “Touch my nose Duncan, touch my nose.” Sometimes Duncan complies; Other times he turns his back and pretends he’s above nose-touching. Occasionally he ignores GC altogether and touches my nose instead.

Because GC wanted Duncan to love him enough to touch his nose every single time, he started looking for ways to make Duncan’s life even better than it already was. This wasn’t easy, because Duncan’s an enormously satisfied cat.

The Tuesday Bowl

Lip-smacking goodness

I wouldn’t let either one of them kiss me til they didn’t stink of sardines anymore, but Duncan thought GC smelled delicious.

Related posts:

1. Your animals and their table manners
2. One thing I DON’T adore about Duncan
3. Dear Duncan

“Maybe,” I suggested, “They changed their route this year.”

“You posted the route on your blog,” said GC. “Was it different?”

“I just copied and pasted it,” I said, “I didn’t actually read it.”

Hmmm. I knew for a fact that they’d be going past the Rideau Centre on their way to Parliament Hill, so we decided to go see if they were there. And that’s how we almost missed the Zombie Walk of 2009.

They weren’t there, and by the time we got back to our original spot, the parade was half over! But here are some of the highlights from the second half of the Zombie Walk. Their makeup, special effects, and theatrical skills are nothing short of astounding. I’m so impressed, because I’m woefully challenged when it comes to Halloween costumes. I can’t even be a ghost anymore, what with the cost of sheets and all. Anyway, enough about me! Without further ado, ZOMBIES! (Click the images for even bigger zombies.)

Related posts:

1. Zoom Zoom and Zombies
2. A bunch of things we almost did