Fingers Crossed

fingers crossed,
originally uploaded by gail on the web.

I took this photo on July 13. It was on a whim, with the vague idea of using it for a post about the clock ticking towards our wedding date and hoping that USCIS will come through for us in time.

October 1 - wedding in Pennsylvania
October 8 - reception in Vancouver

We're still waiting to hear from USCIS as to the status of David's petition -- the first part of the application process for my fiance visa. There's more to the story, but we'll save it for a dinner party or something (remind me then).

It feels like our fingers and toes have been crossed all summer. We had one BIG hurdle in the spring. The next hurdle was David's petition to USCIS, which is currently underway. The next hurdle is my interview at the U.S. Consulate in Vancouver (which will, to a large degree, determine when I return West).

Never in a zillion years would I have imagined we'd have a health hurdle, too. David was feeling under the weather for a while now, and he wasn't getting better. But a TUMOUR???

I'd been bugging David to go to the hospital because he wasn't getting any relief from what his doctor had been prescribing thus far. We'd figured maybe it was bacterial/viral/stress-related, the symptoms would disappear over time, and in the meantime it was just a matter of finding the appropriate analgesic. How wrong we were.

It was pure fluke that David ended up in the hospital on Friday, despite my hassling that he not wait for the doctor and admit himself into hospital to nip this mystery illness in the bud. His doctor had cancelled all his afternoon appointments on Friday, leaving David resigned to another weekend of pain with only the prospect of seeing the doctor on Tuesday. Out of desperation, David went to Community Medical Center and that's when they ran the battery of tests -- X-ray, CAT scan, bloodwork -- and found this 'chest mass'. That's when David called me to break the news.

I was sitting in the sun on a cafe patio on Denman Street. My friend had just finished telling me her mother had radical surgery the day before to treat cancer.

Cancer?
CANCER?

While this was still registering in my brain, the phone rang. It was David calling from the hospital in a shocked voice to say they found a 4-cm mass in his left lung. I said I would fly asap and asked him to request the hospital fax me his admission papers in case I get interrogated at the border again. (In January I was held at U.S. Customs at YVR enroute to New York and they warned me not to cross without a fiance visa.) I was on my way.

Door-to-door, it took 20 hours to reach David at the hospital. If I could have teleported myself, I would have. Instead, I packed a carry-on bag, pulled an all-nighter on Friday, and set off early Saturday morning:

05:45 - Amtrak coach to Seattle
06:30 - U.S. border officer looks at my passport, hospital papers, airline ticket, asks a few questions, lets me go (RELIEF)
09:15 - King Street station, Seattle
09:30 - Krisanne drives me to SeaTac airport (THANK-YOU KRISANNE!)
10:00 - SeaTac is chaotic
10:40 - FINALLY get my boarding pass, security is a mess
11:00 - AA 198 to New York is delayed by 1/2 hour
12:15 - we finally get off the ground
20:40 - arrive at JFK
21:00 - JFK's AirTrain to MTA metro station
21:30 - subway into Manhattan
22:15 - arrive at Port Authority
22:30 - buy coach ticket to Scranton
23:00 - Martz Trailways coach to Scranton
01:15 - (Sunday) arrive at coach station, Scranton (deserted except for a rabbit)
01:30 - taxi to CMC
01:40 - arrive at CMC, get cleared through security
01:45 - finally see David
02:15 - sent away from CMC, I take the car and go home, greeted by a very confused cat.

The whole journey to get here gave me a lot of time to think things through, as did David. Thankfully we don't fear the same things, so we can support each other in times of trepidation. If we had the same fears, we'd be quite useless to each other in a crisis.

It reminds me of when we were in Toronto a month ago, when I couldn't step out onto the glass floor at the CN Tower. David walked right out onto the floor, finding the whole experience initially scary but overall quite thrilling. I, on the other hand, was wracked with vertigo and only managed to get over the feeling after he offered me his hand and I concentrated on taking a photo of our feet. He made me feel very safe. I want to do the same for him.

I would be remiss if I did not admit that we both put on a 'brave face' when the circumstances call for it. In this case, I'd call David's first entry about his condition a little too upbeat for how he's been feeling. The truth is he's been enduring pain symptomatic to enlarged lymph nodes but treated incorrectly by antibiotics, and the pain has been escalating. He's been taking medication to get through the day and functioning on little sleep because of the constant, spreading pain and nightly fevers. I didn't know the extent of his condition because we were three time zones apart and seemed to lack opportunity for quality conversation and meaningful discussion. There was just so much in the way, not to mention 4,000 kms. Being together has helped us both tremendously.

Now that the biopsy appears to confirm what David researched about lymphoma and what the doctors believe it to be, we can think more positively while we await the full results of the cell samples. Then, the next hurdle is to find a course of treatment that is the most effective and with minimum discomfort. He's suffered enough already, and the toxins released into his body by the offending tumour won't subside until it's taken care of.

We're not uncrossing our fingers just yet.

Inside AviatorDave

internal photography,
originally uploaded by gail on the web.

Photos taken during David's biopsy this morning.

The offending tissue is in the centre of the photograph; an analysis will be ready in 48 hours. All indications from the biopsy point to lymphoma in its early stages, as David mentioned here. Probably the most critical piece of information gleaned via the scope is that the enlarged lymph nodes are in the same general area and haven't spread around his body (Stage 3). We'll see what the doctor says after the biopsy results are released, but the preliminary reports align with the better-case scenario -- that of a treatable condition.

I took David home a while after the sedative wore off. He's groggy and sore, but otherwise in good spirits. We were at the hospital for 6am, so I'm pretty groggy, too. I'll write more later.

For now, I'd like to thank all our family and friends for the words of encouragement and support. It's all very uplifting and we look forward to our wedding celebrations, where we can thank many of you in person. We'll have that much more to celebrate.

Surreality, or Why I Left Vancouver on Short Notice

On Friday night I did some quick flight searches and settled on American Airlines 198 from Seattle to New York on Saturday morning. Here's why.

Cutting a tree down Old Skool Soviet style

Cutting a tree down Old Skool Soviet style,
originally uploaded by HyperBob.

There's a hilarious joke attached to this photo. Click to read.

I've got some other Finnish jokes lying around somewhere in my boxes I'll have to dig out sometime.

Thanks HyperBob!

The Bee's Knees

Van Dusen Gardens,
originally uploaded by gail on the web.

I say this phrase more often than a person who's never seen bee's knees really should.

"Those are the bee's knees!"

I'm proud of myself for getting this shot with my paltry 3x zoom and without pissing off the bee.

Van Dusen Gardens

the secret world of lily pads,
originally uploaded by gail on the web.

In the span of one day I've uploaded one more photo of Van Dusen Gardens.

Now that's progress.

Actually, I did a whole lot of other necessary things wedding-related so Flickr was relegated to the backburner. Makes me wonder how I managed to hold a full-time job, take university courses, and occasionally take part in extra-curricular activities in previous years. Actually, all I have to do is read the archives in this very blog -- those entries were all textual grumblings. Let's not go back there.

Here we have a hypersaturated photo of lily pads in the pond near the entrance to Van Dusen Gardens. I took the saturation as far as it would go on the slider, something I've not done before because it usually blows out all the details in the photo. For some reason beyond my neophyte understanding of Photoshop it brought out the glints of sunlight, making it look fairytale-ish. All that's missing is the frog.

UPDATE: OK, finished uploading the rest of the garden photos. You can find them here:

Vandigicam at Van Dusen Gardens

John's Giant Cabbage

The cabbage is now the talk of the neighborhood.,
originally uploaded by John's Giant Cabbage.

Couldn't help myself. I hit the 'Blog This' button in Flickr once I learned of John's Giant Cabbage.

"What's this giant cabbage?", you say?

Green Thumbs beware, you might just get inspired to grow your own giant vegetable once you check this out.

Cross-processed Moi

Gailontheweb,
originally uploaded by goddess_spiral.

Photo by goddess_spiral, whilst we wait at Stanley Park's Malkin Bowl on Sunday to embark on our Cole Porter musical experience.

I've observed that as I get older, the carry-on baggage I host under my eyes slowly morph into Samsonites. The kind you have to check in and weigh.

My, how the cross-processing is kind.

Me and You and Everyone We Know

The verdict: inspiring, touching, revealing. The main characters are each and every one a cinematic treasure, particularly Miranda July herself. I still have plenty of scenes still milling around in my head -- clearly the hallmark of a good film.

Go see it, but keep your heart and mind open.

Van Dusen Gardens - it's not just for flowers

yoga at Van Dusen Gardens,
originally uploaded by gail on the web.

It was an action-packed long weekend in Vancouver and surrounds. After I returned from Nanaimo, I went to see the fireworks on Saturday night, and by Sunday morning I found myself with no clean clothes...

A load of laundry and a very long phone call to England later (nearly two hours?), I moseyed down to the Coal Harbour to meet Rachael to see Cole Porter's Can-Can at the Malkin Bowl in Stanley Park. It's a musical -- no weighty plotlines here -- but it hit the spot like a summer ice cream cone; an outdoor theatre is a relaxing way to wind down a Sunday. There were some gorgeous flowers blooming between the Pavilion and the Malkin Bowl which we shot for posterity with our ever-present cameras. I saw Rachael's prints yesterday, and they're very eye-catching... I'm just waiting for her to scan them *nudge nudge* so I can post them here, too.

Yesterday -- Monday -- was another full day. After lunch with Eliza and one of the quickest shopping trips we've ever done (20 minutes, two pairs of shoes) at Oakridge, she dropped me off at Van Dusen Gardens, where I met up with the Vandigicam crew.

This is the only photo I've uploaded from Van Dusen so far. I'm still only halfway through my Nanaimo trip photos, and there's Sweden's fireworks after that, the flowers in Stanley Park, dinner at The Reef (caribbean cuisine) after Van Dusen Gardens and the impromptu after-dinner storming of Neil's place because his dinner came so late he ended up taking it 'to-go' and we didn't want him to eat alone...

What a forward bunch of people we are!

Tonight I'm off to see Me and You and Everyone We Know, an indie film by Miranda July that I learned about through Manu, who raved about it so enthusiastically he saw it not only in New York when it opened but last weekend, too!