half of a vacation

Hi Everyone

Betcha thought we got eaten by a bear. Actually we did see a bear, but it had been hit by car and was dead. Big black bear.

I am feeling better every day, at least my energy. The shortness of breath seems to be gradually going away.

In Kamloops we went mountain biking with Dylan on a fairly easy trail. I am a bit of a fraidy cat on a mountain bike trail.

We found mushrooms, Boletes and Shaggymanes. Lots of them, in Williams Lake, in Kamloops and yesterday morning we found a few Shaggymanes in Westbridge. I have never eaten Shaggymanes, but yesterday fried up a couple and ate em and they were delicious.

We are in Grand Forks now and it is cold. There is snow on the higher elevations, and it is close to freezing, not quite.

I am now 5 weeks post chemo, and figure perhaps it might be time I might start thinking about taking off the pounds I put on with the last few chemo treatments. I guess eating just made me feel so good, so I did.....lots.

Problem is that I seem to hurt everywhere. This is a new thing for me in the past month, my muscles everywhere seem to just ache. I have asked about this on a forum, and a few other girls said that they had painful muscles for about a year after chemo. I have no idea why this would be, why it would just occur now?

Ken and I both find it hard to know what to talk about as we travel around visiting with family and friends, as the cancer has pretty much been our whole lives for the past 8 months and it is not really what anyone else wants to discuss. It seems to make people uncomfortable.

I feel so fortunate that Ken has been able to talk to me about whatever I wanted to talk about, whenever. It is hard, even now, not to occasionally think about my fears. After all it is cancer.

I believe that there is this subconcious thought that if you do not think about it, it will not occur. Perhaps there is some truth to this. I have read a few articles on the power of optimism, and how the optimistic tend to have favourable outcomes.

I find though that being able to talk about it helps me to set my fears aside. I guess the hardest thing for me is to read about recurrences, in people who had believed they had been cured.

Oh well what can you do?

Our holiday is half over now, we will be in Grand forks for 4-5 more days, then on to Kelowna.

My cd has done very well on the folk music charts, it ranked 39 on the international folk music charts for the month of September, and I only sent it out half way through the month. It is doing far better than any of the previous cds, so it is quite exciting.

Peace and love

jankenb @ gmail.com