Well, we're adjusting...

It takes time to adjust to such big changes in the routine. Marie's parents have been great through all this. They've been coming over every day during the week to be with Marie and take care of our youngest. The support from family, friends and neighbours has been overwhelming. I've got a bunch of meals in our freezer from everyone which has made it easier on me. By the time I get home (given my commute of about 1.5 hours) it can be a little late and the boys are hungry so throwing something in the microwave that is not full of all the crap that "instant" meals are made with.

This whole thing is a rollercoaster of a ride though... one minute you're feelin' confident in the choices you're makin' and the next you're doubting yourself and gettin' all worked up. We've decided to try and get in to see another neurologist and we're still waiting to hear back from the AVM Clinic at Toronto Western Hospital on a time and date to consult with a neurosurgeon.

I keep tellin' Marie not to read stuff on the internet about her condition... you never know the quality of some of this stuff. She ended up gettin' a google hit on the document put out by Novartis (the manufacturer of the AED she's on) and it freaked her out. It freaked me out too but after I took the time to read the entire document, I wasn't so freaked out. They talked about some scary side effects that occurred in animals but when you look at the dosage they're talkin' about, it's many times the dose Marie is on. The risk percentage is pretty low, I'd prefer zero but that's not gonna happen so I'll settle for the course of action we're takin' right now. We can't forget the risks to Marie if she doesn't manage the seizures.

Man, am I tired of thinkin' about this stuff... I finally got a better sleep last night. Sleep really helps to keep things in perspective.

I feel guilty posting about anything other than the shit Marie is going through but I think I'll talk a bit more about Jim and my trip to Algonquin. We're gonna assume that it's still on until the time we're supposed to leave... in other words, we know that the trip is at risk for being cancelled but we're not giving up until the last possible minute.

Jim picked up a Coleman latern at a garage sale for $5! It looks brand new! Man, that guy has horseshoes up his a$$. LOL!

He also picked up a compass and a watch that has GPS. This will allow us to log out waypoints and map it all out when we get back. We (and by we I mean Jim) plan to put up a site about our trips and do a daily summary of how things went. We're toying with the idea of giving our trip to Algonquin a name... it kind of solidifies it as an annual event. I want to get t-shirts made but Jim is hesitating on the idea... he thinks we'll look funny. I say, people will be jealous and we'll be constantly asked, "Hey man, where can I get one of those cool t-shirts?"

I'm planning on snapping a lot of pictures of our trip. I want to experiment with the camera, trying things like longer exposures to see what kind of neat scenes I can capture. This will complement the trip log that we'll do (again, by we'll I mean Jim). Don't get all Hey-dude,-don't-leave-all-the-work-to-Jim on me now... he's far better at the writing than I am. I mean, it's not like I'll not be contributing in some ways ("gee Jim, that's paragraph sounds really good to me"). GeWilli has played around with photography quite a bit and in one of his (friggin' long) posts, he mentioned a piece of software that will stitch together multiple images to make a panorama shot. I may play around with that although, I should try it out before the trip so that I know what I'm doing when I'm up there taking the shots (how much overlay between images, etc). (Hey GeWilli, if you're readin' this, I searched through your archives and can't find the reference. Do you remember what the software was?)

Well, I gotta get back to work. I'm taking the day off tomorrow to have some down time. It'll give the in-laws a break and I can spend some time with Marie and play with our little guy (by the way, those who every meet our "little" guy will know that he's quite the opposite). I bought a basketball hoop earlier this week so I imagine that I'll be spending some time shootin' hoops with the boys this weekend.

Have a great long weekend everyone!

g.