"You - you alone will have the stars as no one else has them...In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night...You - only you - will have stars that can laugh" - from The Little Prince

June 2, 2015

We left Friday to camp at Little Bow. It was raining. And it was cold. But I was so happy to just be camping it didn't bother me...nor my family. Nor Liz & her family. Nor Bobbi & her family next morning when they met up with us. It was the first camping trip of the season with the three of us together - me, Liz & Bobbi and we had a great time. We even had a gnome with us...which made for some funny pictures lol 


The kids even swam the last day - and it was NOT hot out!!

We had zero phone service and great company - what more could you ask for?

On Monday with the kids back at the dayhome and me getting the camping laundry started I was catching up on Facebook. That's when I found out.

Late Friday night, surrounded by her family at home, Tamara Gignac passed away from her stage 4 colon canser diagnosis the previous June. 

I have never met Tamara. But she has never been more than a thought away during my canser road. See, at last year's Ride To Conquer, a Herald reporter asked me about my bald head and the sign I proudly held cheering on my precious One Aim team. As we talked, she told me about a co-worker who had just been diagnosed with colon canser. Her kids were the same age as mine. I told her she could give her co-worker my contact info - it was different kind of canser, but I too was a young mother going through treatment. I could empathise. 

A few weeks later I found her team page on Facebook - Team Tamara YYC - where she posted about her stage 4 diagnosis. She was a journalist and her writing left me with wet eyes. I posted a comment of encouragement and told her she could get in touch. I never heard from her but I did follow her journey throughout mine. I felt a connection to this young mom and buoyed by the hope I felt from The Ride, and then The Run For The Cure, I felt there wasn't anything us young healthy mom's couldn't do. Even beat stage 4 canser. I wanted her to live a long life. I wanted her kids to grow old with their mother.

With the small bits of good news that rolled in on her page - the tumours appeared to be responding to the chemo - I rejoiced. One for the good guys.

On Mother's day, she wrote a poignant article about facing her mortality and trying to make every moment count - particularly with her children. I cried through most of it. All I could think was "that could be me. That could be Em and Ethan she's talking about".

And now she's gone.

As I read the words "Calgary Journalist Tamara Gignac's brave battle with terminal canser comes to an end" I promptly burst into tears. With each article I read, I cried harder.

She is the first person I've been connected to since being diagnosed that has died. I was in complete disbelief. And my heart was broken for her family. 

No, I never met Tamara, but her story stayed with me and impacted my journey. I was rooting for her. I knew it was stage 4, but she was so young dammit. And her kids are the same age as mine. She wasn't supposed to die.

None of us battling are.

The fact remains that as far as canser research and treatment has come, people continue to die from this wretched disease. Young mothers amongst them.

I think of her children and husband daily. As for Tamara - she will always be the woman I never met, but will never forget.

We need a cure.

Below please see a tribute to Tamara in pictures - posted on the Team Tamara YYC page.

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new" - Socrates

May 29, 2015

At the time I honestly thought that four weeks was enough time to make up my mind about meds vs. no meds, anxiety wise.

 But they seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye and I still felt at a crossroads.

Camping was great - it was cold and it rained but we were 5 families that made the best of it - knowing that May Long weather is always unpredictable. 

It may not really have helped me with my decision, but it did help me to relax and get away from all things canser-related. 

We accidentally got quite drunk Saturday - giggly drunk!- and for once I didn't berate myself for it. I think I needed it.

In fairness it snowed briefly that night and we were tucked in warm in Liz's tent trailer - which was like a sauna! - so it's no surprise I guess that the drinks went down so well. The company helped...When it came time for bed, I giggled the whole 20 steps back to my trailer and slept like a log - no dreams, no demons - just blissful unconsciousness.

My head may have been a little worse for wear the next day but it was worth it. I felt relaxed and unconcerned about the decisions looming in my very near future.

My drive to Dr Taylor's office a few days later felt a bit like going to the executioner's office. "The Meds" debate weighed heavy on my mind, but I felt no clear answer. Like so many decisions on this sometimes lonely road, this one too was all my own to make.

In hindsight, I think deep down I knew what I needed to do. I just didn't want to go there.

This whole "fight" I've stood on my own two feet. I've made the hard decisions. I pushed through the pain. The fear. The uncertainty. I've done it. I just couldn't bear the thought of letting something else fight for me. Right or wrong it made me feel....weak. Like I wasn't fighting my own battles. Like I'd lose my warrior title...and that's the only new part of me I have felt sure of.

I walked into Dr Taylor's office with a heavy heart and a resigned face..

"I'm still not happy about it, but I think I'd like the prescription. The last appointment shifted my thinking and I haven't had any more panic attacks (because of it), but I have to do 3-4 hours per day of sweating exercise to keep the anxiety (mostly) at bay and that's not sustainable. I feel stuck and I think this is an option I should try."

As I explained about the "fighting on my own two feet" feelings, she reminded me that when I needed it, did I not allow chemo? Surgery? Radiation? These didn't fight my battles - they were merely tools to help me fight. So too perhaps the cipralex pills. Just another tool perhaps?

Huh. Said like that, I felt a little better. (Dr Taylor is good like that lol)

We then talked about work. She wanted time for the meds to kick in and thought mid-end of July would be good timing. We looked at the calendar and landed on Monday July 20. By then it would be almost 8 weeks - enough time for the meds to kick in and allow for adjustments to dosage if needed. She was starting me on 5mg once a day (half a pill). After 8 days she wanted me to go up to 10mg (which is the start of a therapeutic dose and one pill a day) I have always been sensitive to drugs (both my chemo's were reduced to 90% strength) so I wasn't on board with "automatically" going up to 10 after 8 days. Dr Taylor said I could go longer if I wanted before upping the dose- I'd be in to see her every 2-3 weeks to check in and see how things were going. We would just see how it went.

Ok...

I left her office with mixed feelings. I felt better from talking to her about my decision. But I also felt like going home and crying.

Which I did do later that night - while having a full blown panic attack.

Ethan had been complaining for a couple of days of a sore neck. I finally looked at it while Phil was out riding with the team, and felt the blood run cold in my veins. His neck glands on his right side were swelled up like marbles...bigger than a marble actually. It looked like a huge lump on the side of his neck - and it was tender to the touch. He had no fever, no cough. I ran downstairs, and tried to dial Phil's number - which was difficult cause my hands were shaking and my eyes were blurry from the tears that filled them...When I started to babble to Phil about the lump I quickly spiralled till I could hardly breathe and tears were pouring down my face. All I could think about was "is this how it starts for parents with kids who get canser".

It's not really that crazy to think finding a lump on the side of my baby's throat would send me into a spiral - I wasn't coping so great with everything I had been through and it started with a lump.

Phil had to literally yell at me on the phone to get me to snap out of it enough to call health link. I ended up taking Ethan down to Urgent Care and at the end of it walked out with antibiotics for a likely infection. But also the haunting words of the (well meaning) doctor "If they (lymph nodes) don't go down by the end of the antibiotics (10 days) then he has to be seen again. He would need an ultrasound". Ultrasound and lump for me mean one thing...so I lived in terror the next few days, obsessively checking his neck to see if it had gone down or not.

 All the while, I kept forgetting to get my prescription filled.

I had my BEAUTY program assessment the following Monday. I went up to U of C and they did the 12 week physical assessment. I had been going up once a week most weeks since February to do their circuit resistance training. You do it for an hour and its weights and cardio. I have met some phenomenal women through this program that is just for women going through breast canser treatment. Both Kelly and Vanessa also took part in the program.

I was curious how I'd do. Between yoga, BEAUTY and riding, I thought I was getting in relatively good shape, but it's hard to be objective. This assessment would give me an idea if I really was in better shape then before the first assessment - which was after chemo but before surgery (which the program got interrupted for me from surgery and radiation)

I was elated that I could see results just from some of the tasks I had to preform. The first time around I could not do any levels of the sit ups. I could do crunches, but a full sit up, nope...this time I completed level 2 of the sit ups - (there are 7 levels - each one more difficult than the previous level) I didn't really think I had worked on my core at all, but I guess the bit we did in BEAUTY and from Yoga helped!! At the end of the assessment as she was looking over the before and after comparison, she told me I was one of, if not THE, most improved ever in the program!!! It was the first time that I felt like maybe everything physically I had been doing, was paying off. I was actually seeing results! Objective results....if felt amazing!!! I tend to be very hard on myself...but I was able to give myself a little pat on the back...and was especially happy about the cardio part which I blew out of the water. That I owe to riding for sure. And I got to see the results of all that hard work! It's sometimes hard to see when you have improved riding - cause as Martin put it "it doesn't get easier - you just get faster".

And riding we had been. Through everything, Phil and I continued to ride. We did an especially tough ride that Martin had done south of 22X - with what felt like a TON of hills...BIG HILLS! I think I swore more in that ride than all rides we had done thus far!! But it did feel great after I will admit...(don't tell Nigel though....) I also had my first clip incident - witnessed only by deers lol 




And I still hadn't filled the prescription a week later....(But, Ethan's neck was back to normal lol.)

Phil & I are in the orange and red to the left

And then I posted my blog about the whole meds debate right before we were heading to Little Bow for more camping...and I got a HUGE response of support and people reaching out with their own stories of anxiety...Some really touching stories and emails that I cherished more than I can say. 


And because of that response, I walked right into the pharmacy before going camping and had the prescription filled...though it would be another emotional week before I took my first pill....

Baby steps right?!?

I'm in bright yellow to the left white helmet, Phil to the right with One Aim jersey & blue helmet