Voice surgery update!

 Just a quick post to introduce my most recent YouTube video. This one describes the vocal cord surgery I recently had done, and gives you a chance to hear whether my voice has changed at all.

Click the video below to play on this page, or the link to open it directly in YouTube.

Click here to open the video directly from YouTube

Spring has sprung, needle has poked, new doors, a puzzle, and a potential new voice

Another post, and so soon! Well, lots has happened. 

Our spring came quite quickly this year with temperatures heading to 20+C a few days. The crocuses came up and bloomed last week and the daffodils just yesterday. 

Wendy got her first vaccine dose recently - they are pushing to get those working in hospitals done. Seemed to go well.

After a long COVID delay in receiving some new doors for our house (front screen and main door, plus one going into our garage), they finally arrived this week. Parker approved wholeheartedly with the grey colour (his favourite). Below are the old doors mostly dating from 1964 (the screen door was from the late 1990s).

Front screen door

Garage door

Front door handle

And here are the new doors!

Planning to paint the trim and hang a stained glass on the left

New garage door

Screen door has a hidden screen at the top that comes down when you slide the glass

Front door handle

Wendy did another time lapse puzzle and beat her record for a 500-piece puzzle!

You can click here to open directly in YouTube if this video doesn't play well on this page.

With everything else going on, I also got my surgery booked for an injection medialization of my left vocal cord. It is permanently paralyzed due to the nerve being lost during my tumour surgery in October 2019, so we finally got around to dealing with my difficulty speaking. The same surgeon (a grad of the BHSc program!) did this procedure yesterday. I have to not talk for about 5 days (not as easy as I thought!), then will see next week what is different with my voice. I started a before/after video about this procedure this week, but will wait for my voice to be regained and will put it together and post here.

More to come!

Has it really been since September...?

2020 was kind of a bad memory for most people, and I am surprised that I had dropped all updating of this blog since mid-September. It is now mid-March, so I guess I should update everyone on what is going on!

Essentially, not much of consequence has been happening since last year, but that is a good thing! I am still alive (not a given, unfortunately) and time has seemed to have slipped by very quickly. The last thing I had posted about was the airshow that the family went to at the end of August and the restarting of my fully online term for teaching. Since then, teaching has been continuing online (but now 8 courses this term!), and we have already bought tickets for the drive-in airshow in London for late August 2021. Here are some of the other things that have been happening around our place. 

Wendy bought a food processor in the late fall and has been making things in the kitchen! She has made chili sauce (her main reason for getting the machine), falafel, pickles, soup, etc. and has enjoyed the new hobby.

Wendy and I took the fall break week to go away to an AirBnB cottage in Thomasburg (near Tweed, north of Belleville). It was time to get away, do some hiking in the beautiful fall colours, go horseback riding, and especially to visit Wendy's favourite cheese factory (Maple Dale Cheese)... several times. Great view, nice and quiet, and a good way to get away while still in a pandemic. 

Adam moved back home from North Bay after his final classes ended at Canadore College. Kind of anticlimactic, as he simply got his diploma in the mail. We now have lots of extra 'stuff' to store around the house, but this did allow us to "upgrade" to some better electronics and better kitchen things... Wendy got her braces off the same day that Adam moved home.

My health continued to improve and stabilize and all my scans said the same thing - the cancer is no longer detectable! I signed a consent for a surgery to improve my vocal cord functions, but that has been delayed by COVID. Maybe early spring? Here is my 2020 health summary in pictures.

Wendy's best friend had an unexpected urgent surgery, so Wendy flew down to her place to help out while she was unable to walk and care for herself. Yes, Wendy can cook (and drive)! 

Wendy having Chick-Fil-A!

While she was away, we continued to upgrade things in the kitchen and got a new refrigerator (she had helped choose it before she left). We got one with an ice and water dispenser.

Wendy was away for about 2 months and arrived back in Canada to self isolate for 14 days - ending around the 24th of December. In the meantime, Eric had a potential exposure to COVID during a medical appointment that had him go into isolation for a full 21 days (he is special!). Sadly, the isolation essentially didn't change his normal daily activities of going to the basement to teach online, eating now and again, and sleeping.  He was able to get out of the house the day before Wendy was ready to come home. Consequently, Christmas was done in a very minimalistic style this year. 

The new year dawned and we used the most commonly used phrase of the year and told 2020 that "you're muted!!!" - then simply went to bed a few moments later. 

Starting the fresh new year, one which I had never intended to see, was not as exciting as it sounds. It was same old, same old... all over again. Since there seemed to be no companies hiring Aviation Mechanical Engineers, Adam got a full time job at a company in Dundas that calibrates equipment - only a 4 minute commute! Parker has continued to work full time for Purple Bricks from home (on the phone all day) and he decided he needed to sell his car. He got a good price for it and saved a ton of money on insurance. He really doesn't need a car at the moment. 

Bye, bye, Mini!

We did have a birthday party for Maddy, as she turned 10 in February. We even bought an ice cream cake so she could have a small piece.

Maddy turns 10!

In early March, we also bought a new bed (old one was starting to be very uncomfortable). We eventually got some shorter legs for the base/platform (long story) and it is now 3 inches lower. Maddy and Wendy appreciate the ease of getting into the bed.

We also captured the boys to take a family photo on Maddy's birthday. 

Family photo 2021

Hopefully 2021 will get a little more exciting and we will be able to do things outside of the house more. We have had some serious snow in the last month, but also have had some serious heat - this week it was 19C a couple of days. Winter isn't done quite yet, but the signs of spring are starting to appear.

Today marks exactly 365 days since I last stepped foot into my office. Hope it isn't another 365 before I get back to normal! 

August is over (thankfully) and September is not so bad...

August was a rush, and not always as relaxing as you might expect. We did, however, go to a hockey tournament! Our friend Clara from Manitoulin Island (we went to Iceland with her about a decade ago), was down in Vaughn for her granddaughter's hockey tournament. Quite the unusual thing to do in August, and even more so during a pandemic. This was a completely physically distanced tournament where only the players and coaches went into the arena. Spectators stayed out in the parking lot and caught up on things in the nice weather. No sweaters required!  And they won!

Eric finally got a new bread machine (a Breville) and it has worked perfectly for him. The large amount of yeast purchased at the beginning of the pandemic is almost gone!

Our 30th anniversary of our engagement and Wendy's birthday soon followed. Wendy always likes flowers and Eric usually doesn't forget.

Wendy even got the time to do another puzzle. This has happened a lot this summer.

We took a trip to visit our nieces and their families and got to meet a new kitten. Maddy was not completely certain what that "thing" called Mango was, but they seemed to make peace. Later visits would allow them to be less 'cat and dog' about the whole thing.

For our 29th anniversary, we went on date night and had DQ for dinner. Yes, for dinner. Seems to be a thing for us.  Good when you don't know what to make for dinner. The blue is cotton candy dipped.

Maddy got her next haircut in August, and seemed OK with the whole thing. Would have been worse to be mostly naked and meeting a new cat, we suppose.

Eric had a few more doctor's appointments, with the ENT surgeon who did Eric's thyroid sugery being next. He was checking out Eric's problem with swallowing and will be scheduling a closer look with a scope in October. An endocrinologist was also one of the appointments, and they seem to have identified the fatigue over the summer to be partly due to the steroids Eric has been on. Getting better, but slowly. You might be able to notice some extra weight - Eric is 40lb heavier than the last time he saw the surgeon in November. The steroids have contributed a lot to that gain.

Parker had his birthday (20!!!) and realized that the amount of 'flame-age' becomes significant from this point on. We may end up putting only one candle for each decade after this. He also was celebrating getting his job back (laid off from Purple Bricks during COVID). He will be working full time from home.  He also will begin the online Real Estate course starting in September.

Eric's next appointment was at the Cancer Centre with the medical oncologist, mostly confirming that everything is very good (other than the slowly lessening fatigue and the swallowing). The MRI done was clear and no issues in either the brain or the neck!

September hit and Parker decided he wanted orange juice and peach schnapps. Had quite a bit (plus rum and coke - not a great mixture) his first night. Oddly, the rest of the orange juice has sat untouched for weeks in the fridge...

Wendy received a special puzzle from her friend Carolyn, and it required a little work by Eric getting it from her phone and sending it along for it to be made.

Eric finally stopped working 16 hr days getting ready for the new online term, and was able to settle into his new basement office with lights, cameras, microphones and a green screen. Works very well (especially with his weak voice), although Parker is a little inhibited in his gaming on the other side of the screen. Wendy's desk is near where Parker was standing to take this photo, so it is a little like a call centre when all of us are down there! At least Parker's office for work is upstairs (he works a split shift). Classes are surprisingly less exhausting as preparation for classes, but staring at a screen full of initials (rather than live videos) four days a week sometimes gets old pretty quickly. Getting used to this new environment more each day, and unfortunately, the winter term will also be online (an entire year) as well.

September 12 was a family event day for us. We had Adam come down from North Bay (he started the last course of his program early the following week - for 6 weeks) and all of us went to the London Airshow! It was a physically distanced airshow with reserved parking spots, where we stayed in our 6m x 7m square area and sat with our car during the show. The US Airforce Thunderbirds was the feature act, and all the many US planes flew from their base in Michigan without landing. F35, F22, two Canadian CF-18s, etc. A well organized show without having to lug everything with us to a seating area. We even used the radio to hear the live announcing (which we could actually hear!).  

All in all, not a bad way to end the summer!