I wasn't feeling well this morning, achy with a mild sore throat and headache.  I was going to drive into Edmonton to get some cooking supplies for Asian food that I can't find in Sherwood Park, but I didn't bother.  I ended up returning some insoles for the big guy and finding two pairs of jeans for myself, that fit and flatter.  I couldn't figure out why I was looking for jeans so much until I realized I won't be wearing scrubs very often anymore and I like wearing jeans.

When I got home, I took a couple of advil and relaxed (sat on my ass, looking at my phone), until I felt better.  I still have a headache but I felt good enough to take the dogs for a walk at the dog park.  The dogs were happy, Charlie found a mud puddle, and I felt better after some fresh air.

Last week my girlfriend and I met up to have lunch and visit a greenhouse on the West End. This friend has multiple myeloma and was telling me how sick she was for the past four months.  She had pneumonia, needed antibiotics and at one point was peeing blood.  She didn't tell me any of this while it was happening, only once it was over.  I have told her countless time to call me and I can help but she's stubborn and hates to ask for help.  I'm not much different but I do force myself to call her when my depression is severe because she always makes me feel better.  

I don't know much about multiple myeloma; it's not a common type of cancer, although we do see a lot of patients with it because they all come for a central line, prior to their stem cell transplants.  I know almost nothing about the treatment or how it kills people, so I looked it up.  Two of the common causes of death in multiple myeoloma are pneumonia and kidney failure.  Fuck, she had both.  My friend's stem cell transplant was six or seven years ago and when this whole shit storm started, her oncologist had given her ten years.  

I never bring up the spectre of death, other than I told her that I don't want to lose her and then burst into tears last week.  I lost another friend to metastatic breast cancer.  She knew she had brain tumours, knew that she would die but chose to not think about, telling me it was how she protected herself.  There is no cure for multiple myeloma, only treatment that will delay the inevitable.  She is in denial because it's how we protect ourselves.

My friend has also been dealing with her sister-in-laws and her dead mother-in-law's will, and my friend has embraced the word cunt to describe these women, fucking cunts actually.  It's not my story to tell but I do agree with her that they are indeed cunts.  

Other things happening.  I had a patient on Thursday, two months younger than me with pancreatic cancer.  When he was diagnosed in February they performed surgery, opened him up and then closed him up.  The tumour had wrapped itself around a pancreatic artery and vein, making it inoperable.  He started to cry as he told me this and I asked him if I could hug him.  I gave him a hug and he just sobbed.

Later that day, I had a patient who was thirty-two years old and twenty-five weeks pregnant.  She had just been diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma.  She has started treatment and they will deliver the baby as soon as it's lungs are developed enough.  The next day, another man, the same age as me, with newly diagnosed metastatic cancer, whose doctor had not allowed him to discuss more than one problem at his doctor's appointment, something that delayed his diagnosis.  And then on Friday, one of our CT scanners was down, and patients were waiting for hours for their CT scans.  These scanners are the oldest in the province and our Health Minister and Premier play the fiddle as health care burns down to the ground.

A photo for Steve, taken in Vancouver.  I'm trying to branch out in my photography.