Vandigicam Bench, Kits Point

Vandigicam bench peeps,
originally uploaded by gail on the web.

We were very protective of "our" bench during HSBC Celebration of Light. This was before the China's fireworks, on Aug 3. Two days later, I was booking a flight to New York because they found a tumour in David's left lung.

Life changed literally overnight for David and me.

Here's a timeline:

Aug 5 (Fri) - after feeling ill for weeks, David finally goes to the ER, they X-ray him, find tumour, he calls me in Vancouver and I book a flight
Aug 6 (Sat) - fly from SeaTac to JFK, go straight to hospital, they can't find any doctors to biopsy him
Aug 9 (Tue) - biopsy, preliminary report is lymphoma
Aug 12 (Fri) - biopsy results in diagnosis of small cell lung cancer, for which the survival rate is a shocking 20%
Aug 16 (Tue) - meet with oncologist, he books David a bed at Mercy Hospital for immediate treatment
Aug 17 (Wed) - David gets tested for evidence of spreading and his first bout of chemotherapy
Aug 18 (Thu) - reports show there is no spreading into bones or brain
Aug 19 (Fri) - David is released to continue his treatment as an outpatient, official diagnosis is limited-stage small cell lung cancer

August 25: David's first day of radiology

This group photo makes me smile every time I look at it. It's also a "pre-diagnosis" photo. I'm trying not to think of time in terms of 'pre-diagnosis' or 'post-diagnosis', but it's how my brain keeps track of things involuntarily these days. I know each day forward is positive and over time the diagnosis date will slowly become less significant to us.

Here's to taking more photos, and celebrating the good times in our lives.