The other day in the car, my wife asked me if there were any places in the world I'd still like to visit. While yes, there are—it would be nice to see Paris, or New Zealand, or Istanbul—the question got me thinking more about my favourite places, the ones I've already been to where I'd like to return.
The ones that leaped to mind were all relatively close by, beautiful places in our Pacific Northwest neighbourhood of "Cascadia," wild places with water and evergreen trees, and each one reminds me of the people I shared them with:
Don't get me wrong. I love deserts and the tropics and mountains and other places too, but these three spots mean the most to me. So, inevitably, as we talked about them, the question came up: what if I don't make it back there? I do have metastatic cancer, after all, and there is even a small but non-trivial chance that I could die in surgery this week, something that's always a risk with an operation.
Here's what I told my wife. If I die, donate anything donatable: any organs or other parts, corneas, hair, whatever is useful to someone. If the rest of my body can be used to train medical students or get turned into a classroom skeleton or something, great, do that too. If there's anything left that no one can make use of, cremate that. Have a party, but not any kind of religious or spiritual ceremony—I don't believe in any of that stuff, so please don't pretend I did. If you can get together a band, have them play some fun songs, plus "Four Seasons in One Day" by Crowded House.
Then, when all that's done, split up the batch of my ashes and take them to Crater Lake, and Schooner Cove, and Cannon Beach, and put them in the water. Then enjoy those places as I did.
Labels: cancer, cannonbeach, craterlake, family, friends, longbeach, travel
My pre-surgery schedule is coalescing quickly. Next Friday, June 1, I meet with medical internists at St. Paul's Hospital to go over the medications I'm taking and see what adjustments I might need to make. June 15 I have a rectal ultrasound, and June 19 another CT Scan. June 26 I meet with Dr. Kennecke, my medical oncologist, to review pre-surgery plans. There will be other meetings in between and afterwards, with surgeons, anaesthesiologists, ostomy nurses, and so on. Barring a bed shortage, I will have surgery to remove my tumours and radically rebuild how my bowels work on Thursday, July 26—exactly two months from today.
Today my wife and I took to the kids to the Cancer Agency for a regular kids' art therapy group. The girls loved it (my oldest said, "It's a bad reason to go, but it was so much fun!"). One thing we did there is paint this banner together:
We won't get to Cannon Beach this year, but we will go back as soon as we can. It's one of my favourite places, along with Crater Lake (also in Oregon) and Schooner Cove on Long Beach in Pacific Rim National Park (here in B.C.).
Labels: cancer, cannonbeach, colostomy, family, longbeach, pacificrim, surgery, therapy