Health

One word for 2024

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At the beginning of each year since 2017, I’ve chosen one word to inspire or guide me throughout the new year as well as a scripture verse to go along with it. My word for 2023 was contentment and the Bible verse, Philippians 4:12b. “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” I wanted to be able to say with the apostle Paul that I had learned to be content regardless of my circumstances. 

Everything went pretty well for about eight months. In late March, hubby came through his prostate surgery well. We had a good summer season. We camped, hiked, kayaked and played lots of golf. Everything seemed to be going well and contentment came easily. Then things started to unravel. I worried about a close family member who was going through a very difficult time. Hubby and I encountered more issues with our health and life seemed to become a long series of trips to the city for medical appointments. I no longer came to the end of a day with a feeling of quiet happiness and satisfaction. Instead, I was stressed! Tense! I berated myself for having had the audacity to choose a word like contentment! How could I possibly be content in my present circumstances? Thankfully, time, prayer, wise counsel, and an excellent massage therapist helped get me back on track. Now that the year has ended, I think I can say that I’ve come closer to being able to be content in any and every situation. I’m definitely still a work in progress though! 

It was during this dark time that I settled on my one word for 2024. 

Hope! 

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines hope as “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen”. That meaning is definitely part of the reason that I chose hope as my word for the new year. I hope that 2024 is a good year for all of us. I hope that my family is happy and healthy. I hope that the embolization that I’ll be having to tackle the tumour on my liver is successful and that my cancer doesn’t grow or spread any further. I hope that hubby and I can travel more in the coming year (and not just to medical appointments!) Yes, I hope for many things, but there is a hope that is so much greater than any of these. 

This year, while my word came to me easily, choosing a scripture verse to go with it was more difficult because there were so many possibilities. I finally settled on two of them, Romans 15:13 and Hebrews 6:19a.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

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“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” 

The Biblical word hope is so much more than just wishful thinking. From the Hebrew word tikvah, it’s an expectation and a strong expression of faith. It’s a certainty that we can hold fast to. It’s confidence that God is who He says He is and can do what He says He will do. My hope, my certainty, is that some glorious day when the trials of this life are over, I will see Him face-to-face. He guaranteed it! This hope gives me strength to face whatever happens between now and then. It isn’t dependent on my circumstances. As I learn to depend more and more on this tikvah hope, the contentment that I yearned for in 2023 should become more and more real in my life!

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What do you hope for in 2024?

Have you chosen a word for the new year? 

 

Posture and appearance

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“Stand up straight!” “Stop slouching!” 

Did you hear your mother’s voice or perhaps your grandma’s when you read that? It’s timeless advice that’s worth heeding. Good posture has many health benefits. Incorrect alignment of the spine puts extra stress on the legs and can lead to achy knees and feet. Poor posture can have a negative impact on circulation and digestion and may lead to increased headaches. Good posture is also essential to balance which becomes increasingly important as we age.

So, what does good posture look like?

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Image: Stanford University

Notice that in the image on the left, the model’s ears are directly above her shoulders. One of the leading causes of poor posture today is constantly looking down at phones and laptops. Did you know that your head weighs approximately 5 kg (11 pounds)? Every time you look down for an extended period of time its weight adds stress to muscles, joints, and nerves, especially in the neck and upper back.

But what does all this have to do with our appearance? Have you ever been to a fashion show or watched one online? Models, without exception, have great posture; shoulders back, chin level and hips neutral. There’s a reason for that. Clothing always looks better on a body with good posture.

I love to people watch and I can’t help noticing that people with good posture walk with more ease and grace. They look taller, more slender, more confident, happier, and healthier. So, as you put on your Christmas finery and head out the door to whatever special occasions this season holds, remember to listen to that inner voice that’s telling you to “Stand up straight!”

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Sixteen years of blogging!

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I published my very first blog post sixteen years ago today! It was also the shortest post I’ve ever written; a brief message announcing that hubby and I had just accepted positions teaching conversational English in Japan. The blog was meant to share that year-long adventure with friends, family and anyone else who might be interested. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that it would still be alive and well sixteen years later!

The title, Following Augustine, no longer fits the blog as well as it did in those early days, but since it’s what I’ve been known as in the blogosphere for more than a decade and a half, I hesitate to consider changing it. You can read about why I originally chose the title here.

Though I probably already had neuroendocrine cancer (NETS) when the blog was born, I didn’t know about it until several years later. When I finally received a correct diagnosis, blogging became a helpful way to process what was happening and to share the journey with friends and family. I also use the blog to raise awareness of NETS. I’m sure that this will continue to happen as I’ve recently become a member of a newly formed Advocacy Advisory Board that will report to the board of directors of the Canadian Neuroendocrine Tumour Society (CNETS).

When I started the blog, writing about fashion was the farthest thing from my mind. Several years ago, however, I starting following several fashion blogs and began to develop a greater interest in the topic. It was then that I decided to add the weekly Fashion Friday feature. At times, I find it a challenge to come up with a new fashion related topic every week, but it’s been a great way to connect with other women and to ensure that I post something at least once a week. Fashion Friday has a fairly small, but loyal following of interested readers, so I as long as I can continue to think of engaging content, I plan to keep the feature going.

As an avid reader, it was my passion for books that prompted me to add the latest feature to the blog, a monthly book review that first appeared at the beginning of February this year.

I refer to Following Augustine as a lifestyle, travel, and fashion blog, but in recent years, there hasn’t been as much travel content as I would have liked. First, the pandemic and then a number of other health issues, both mine and hubby’s, have limited our ability to spend as much time away from home as we would like, but our brand new ten year passports arrived in yesterday’s mail and we hope to be able to put them to good use in the future. If that happens, the blog will once again chronicle our wanderings.

Following Augustine will probably continue to undergo changes from time to time, but at this point, I don’t see it coming to an end anytime soon. Over the past sixteen years, I’ve published over 1400 posts and I expect that I’ll continue adding to that number until I’m no longer able!

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Not exactly a fashion post

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Life has been a bit crazy lately between our usual fall/winter activities starting up again and numerous medical appointments for both hubby and I. More about that in the future when we have a better idea what’s going on, but for now, suffice to say that it’s been a bit difficult to focus on something as comparatively trivial as fashion. I will, however, share what I wore yesterday for what was probably our final hike of the year.

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I don’t usually wear graphic t-shirts nor do I often wear black close to my face, but this particular tee has significant meaning to me and I really wasn’t worried about what I looked like out on the trail! 

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The logo, known as The Creator’s Path, was created by Indigenous artist, Don Monkman, for Indian Life Ministries, an organization that I do volunteer work for that seeks to reach Native people across Canada and the United States with the good news of the gospel. If you look closely, you’ll see the cross surrounded by Christ wearing the crown of thorns, the two thieves on either side of Him, His nail pierced hands, the people who rejected Him piercing His side, and those who accepted His sacrifice kneeling in prayer. All of this is held within a circle representing creation. 

Anyway, back to our hike. It was an absolutely beautiful day, one of the last few in the forecast before winter is expected to hit early next week. We spent a couple of hours exploring one of our favourite hiking areas, Willow Creek Coulee, located near the village of Donalda, Alberta. With beautiful sunshine and a temperature of 23ºC (73ºF), it was hard to believe that snow and sub-zero temperatures might be just around the corner! 

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In addition to the t-shirt described above, I wore an older pair of chinos, my trusty Merrell hiking shoes, and a hat to shade my eyes from the sun. There are few things that I love more than the peace and quiet of nature. For awhile, I even forgot all about the headache that I’ve had for the past two weeks! 

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On the way back to the vehicle, we almost decided to do a bit of international travel, but we didn’t have our passports with us.

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Just kidding! 😂 That’s actually a new sign that has appeared on the fence of a property near the trailhead since the last time we hiked the coulee. The land is held by a member of a movement known as  Freemen on the Land, a group who believe that they can declare themselves independent of the government and any laws to which they have not consented. It takes all kinds, I guess! 

Not promising, but I’ll try to have a more conventional fashion post for you next week! 

Logo by Sam

 

My 10 year cancerversary

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Do you remember where you were and what you were doing exactly ten years ago today? I do. The day is etched in my memory in vivid detail. That was the day I was told that I had cancer in my colon and that it had already spread to my liver! There was no hope or expectation then that I’d be writing about that day ten years later!

It wasn’t until a couple of weeks later that we learned that what I actually had (and still have) is neuroendocrine cancer (NETS) which, though incurable, usually progresses slowly. That gave us a glimmer of hope, but on one of our earliest clinic visits, we read that the average life expectancy for a neuroendocrine cancer patient was five years following diagnosis. I now know that that information was probably already outdated. There are members of my online patient groups who have been living with this disease for 10, 15, even 20 years or more. Others, however, have not fared as well, so I’ve learned to consider every day a gift.

On a day like today, I could dwell on the fact that over the past ten years I’ve had two major surgeries, been exposed to an enormous amount of radiation, had dozens of tests and scans of various kinds, lived in 28 day increments between injections, had 128 of those “butt darts”, and on and on. Or, I could count my blessings; focusing instead on the things that I’ve been able to do and enjoy over the past ten years.

Since my initial diagnosis, we’ve seen our family grow by one daughter-in-law and four grandchildren! In spite of the worldwide pandemic that put a damper on travel for a time, we’ve holidayed in Nova Scotia, BC, and the Yukon, and traveled to Israel, Europe (Portugal, Italy, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands), and Mexico four times. We purchased a kayak and have spent many hours paddling quiet lakes and rivers. Over the past ten years, we’ve spent 240 nights in our trailer and I’ve played over 350 rounds of golf. We’ve tried new things like snowshoeing and joined a seniors’ bowling league. I’ve edited 1346 microloan descriptions for Kiva and joined a prison letter writing ministry. I’ve had the opportunity to teach two women to read and tutored an ESL student. And again, the list goes on!

Life is good! Yes, I have cancer. Yes, some of my tumours have grown a bit recently, but I still feel 100%. I don’t know what the future holds, but neither does anyone else. I have an army of people who pray for me and we know who holds my future. I’ll just focus on today!

So what am I doing to celebrate this momentous occasion? I suppose I could have planned something special, something big, but I’ve been so busy just living life that this one crept up on me! I have absolutely nothing planned, but that’s okay. I’m alive and living life to the fullest and that’s all that really matters!

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Opposite views of aging

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Logo by SamSince reading Breaking the Age Code and featuring it as my July Book of the Month, I’ve been doing what the author, Dr. Becca Levy, suggested and looking more closely at the messages that I see about aging in the media, in advertising, and on social media. While this topic is much broader than just fashion, I think it’s appropriate for a Friday post because so much of what we see about age is directed at women and their appearance. Take the article that I saw posted on Facebook recently for example. “40+ Short Haircut Tips and Styles That Make Us Look 20 Years Younger”  sounds innocent enough until you ask yourself, why should we want to look 20 years younger? What’s wrong with looking 40, 50, or even 80? The message is that young is good, young is beautiful, and old is not. 

Thankfully, there are positive messages to be found too. “72 is the new 30! Get fit at any age along with this 72 year old fitness star!” implores an ad for an online fitness program. Scientists claim that life expectancy has increased to such an extent that a 72-year-old person today has the same probability of dying as a 30-year-old primitive hunter-gatherer would have had. Hence the saying, 72 is the new 30. That’s good news, I think, but the real message of the ad is that at 72 we can still be active and physically fit.

In contrast, look at this meme taken from Facebook.

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What? We’re old and washed up at 50? Maybe this is supposed to be funny, but it’s exactly the kind of self-defeating, negative message about aging that Dr. Levy wrote about.

Instead, here’s the kind of message we should be seeing.

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This the the kind of age belief that can add years to your life and quality to your years. In the long run, you’ll probably look better than the gal who’s lying on the heating pad eating nachos too!

Progression

/ edebock / 6 Comments

As a neuroendocrine cancer (NETS) patient for the past ten years, stable became one of my favourite words. After each set of tests and scans, stable was the word that my doctors used to tell me that my cancer had not grown or spread. Unfortunately, when I saw my specialist on Friday, that was not what I heard. Instead, I heard the word progression.

In the cancer world, progression is the word that is used to describe growth or spread of the disease. It didn’t come as a shock to me. Over the past few months, we’ve been carefully watching test results that appeared to indicate that my tumours were likely becoming more active again. The news we heard on Friday was actually better than I feared. There has been a tiny bit of growth to a couple of tumours on my liver, but no spread anywhere else. That part is very good news!

Thankfully, I’m a cup half-full kind of person. I think I’d be a basket case by now if I wasn’t!

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So, what’s the good news in this? What happens next and what’s there to be optimistic or hopeful about?

After 126 monthly injections of a drug called Sandostatin, it would appear that it’s no longer doing its job and I’ll be switching to a different medication. Since Lanreotide is also given as an injection every 28 days there will be little change to the routine that we’ve become accustomed to over the years. There are, however, some real benefits to this medication.

Unlike Sandostatin which is know to suppress the production of the hormones that these tumours produce and thus reduce symptoms, Lanreotide is also known to actually delay their growth. Secondly, Novartis, the company that produces Sandostatin, cut out their in-home injection program over a year ago and I had to arrange for my family doctor to begin giving me my injections. Lanreotide is produced by Ipsen and I’ve been assured that once again, a nurse will begin visiting my home to administer my butt jabs. Not only is that more convenient for me, but it frees up my doctor’s time for other patients which is an important issue in a rural area where there’s a doctor shortage. Perhaps the most exciting part of all this for me, if there can be excitement in receiving news of progression, is the fact that hubby and/or I can be taught to administer the Lanreotide injections ourselves! Why is that exciting, you ask? Why would I want to poke myself if a visiting nurse could do it for me? For someone who loves to travel, as I do, the idea that I might be able to pack my medication and leave the country for more than 28 days at a time is actually quite exhilarating!

I’m already somewhat familiar with the new drug because many people in my online patient groups are on it and seem to tolerate it well. Hopefully I will too. I’ll have tests and scans again in late October to see if it’s having the desired effect. In the meantime, it’s summer in Alberta. There’s camping, hiking, and kayaking to be done and golf to play. In spite of the change from stable to progression, I still feel 100% and I’m determined to keep on living life to the fullest.

Living my cancer life out loud

/ edebock / 6 Comments

This post was inspired by an interesting discussion that took place awhile ago on one of the online neuroendocrine cancer patient groups that I’m a member of. It started with a younger patient asking for advice about when to tell the person she was going on a first date with about her cancer. I was surprised to learn that most of the patients who responded to her question had told very few people outside their immediate families about their diagnosis. I’m quite the opposite. Though I’m naturally an introvert, I’ve been living my cancer journey out loud since the very first day I heard that fateful C word!

In the summer of 2013, when my doctor called and told me that I had cancer, I’m sure that I was in shock. One of the first things I did was sit down and make a list of who I needed to call and then I started. I called our pastor, several close friends, and of course, our family. Just three days later, I wrote the blog post that shared my diagnosis with the rest of the world. At that time, we didn’t even know what kind of cancer I had. I shared that news a couple of weeks later in this post.

Why? Why did I choose to share my diagnosis so openly?

Learning that you have cancer is overwhelming and I knew that this wasn’t something I could handle on my own. As a Christian, my first instinct was to call the people I knew would pray for me. Without realizing it, I was beginning to build an invaluable support system that would make the journey so much easier.

There were two reasons for sharing my diagnosis on the blog. Writing helps me process things and boy did I need to process! Since I’d already been blogging for several years, that seemed like the logical place to start writing about what I was going through. Secondly, posting updates on the blog was an easy way to communicate what was happening with our large extended family and with friends who are literally spread around the world. It meant that I didn’t have to repeat myself over and over again which would have been mentally and emotionally exhausting.

As time went by, however, sharing my journey openly and online also became a way to educate people about neuroendocrine cancer. Ten years ago, NETS was considered a rare cancer, but the number of people diagnosed with this type of tumour has been increasing over the years and it’s no longer fair to say that it’s rare. Sadly, however, it’s still not well-known, so education and advocacy are extremely important. Like any other cancer, early detection means more likelihood of successful treatment and long-term survival. Family doctors need to know that when a patient presents with symptoms such as abdominal pain, diarrhea, shortness of breath, wheezing, heart palpitations, high blood pressure, and/or flushing, neuroendocrine cancer is a possibility. Patients need to know that when their symptoms persist after a more common diagnosis is made, they need to persevere until they get a correct one. It could be NETS. Patients with neuroendocrine cancer, particularly the newly diagnosed, need to know that there is hope. More research is needed to find better treatments and ultimately a cure. Until these things happens, I’ll continue living my cancer life out loud!

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Hiking again!

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We’ve tried to go for a walk almost every day since hubby’s prostate surgery. The first was a very slow shuffle to the end of our short block and back, but it wasn’t long before he was able to handle a couple of kilometres. Last week, when we saw the surgeon for his six week check-up, we got the good news that he is cancer-free and that with the exception of very heavy lifting, he could resume his normal activities. Today, exactly seven weeks post surgery, we did a fairly strenuous 6.5 km hike!

About an hour from home, the Willow Canyon Trail at Donalda, Alberta has become one of our favourite hiking spots. The tiny village of Donalda is perched on the rim of picturesque Meeting Creek Coulee, the northernmost point of the Canadian badlands. It is best known for the 42 foot high replica of an oil lamp that lights up at dusk each day and and sheds its light over the coulee.

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The trailhead is located just north of the lamp and the old restored train station located nearby.

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The hike begins as a woodland trail that passes through private land to access 120 acres of fenced Donalda Ag Society property where visitors are free to leave the marked trails and explore to their hearts content.

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The established trails, which have been enhanced with signage and maps since our last visit, are generally quite easy and stay for the most part along the upper edge of the coulee. We, however, like to leave the beaten track and drop down into the valley wandering up, down, and around the bluffs that form its walls.

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We climbed to the top of that little knoll because… well, just because we could!

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I was delighted to discover that we were early enough in the season to find a few prairie crocuses still in bloom. It was a windy day, but these two were in a slightly sheltered spot where I could get a reasonably good photo.

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Eventually, after a couple of hours of wandering and eating the picnic lunch that we brought with us, we made our way up out of the canyon and back to town where we enjoyed a treat at the recently reopened Coulee Tea House. Under new management, it’s a delightful little restaurant serving a wide variety of teas as well as other beverages, sandwiches, soup, salads, and wonderful desserts. Since we often pass by Donalda on the highway, we’ll definitely plan to stop in for lunch another day even if we aren’t there to hike!

Golden years?

/ edebock / 13 Comments

Have you ever wondered why they call our retirement years, the years from 65 to 80 and beyond, the golden years? The phrase was actually coined in 1959 as part of an advertising campaign for Sun City, Arizona, the world’s first large-scale retirement community for active seniors. The goal, of course, was to portray retirement as a life of leisure; a time to travel, play golf, and pursue hobbies, but is it true?

For Christmas, I gave hubby a sweatshirt with one of his favourite sayings on the front. Retired: The ability to do what I want when I want. Lately whenever he wears it, he hastens to point out that it isn’t entirely true. These days, our lives seem to revolve around countless trips to the city for tests, scans, specialist appointments, and most recently, his prostate surgery. Maybe these should actually be called our rusty years because parts are continually breaking down and our bodies aren’t running as smoothly as they once did!

We certainly aren’t alone in this. At our recent senior bowling windup I looked around the table at our team and realized that all five of us either have or have had cancer. Many of our peers have had hip or knee replacements. Another has recently had a stroke and still others are waiting for biopsy results and/or surgery. No, retirement isn’t all traveling and playing!

I’m not really complaining… well, maybe just a little! I love the fact that we no longer have to rush off to work every day and that the government pays us for simply waking up every morning. I also realize that I’m fortunate to be alive. When I glance at the obituaries these days, many of the deceased are younger than me!

Some people claim that our true golden years are between 40 and 60 when we’re still physically and mentally fit and have probably reached some level of financial security. That led me to wonder, when were my golden years? When were yours? The first decade of my life, living in a waterfront house on the coast of British Columbia with the beach as my playground and the sound of the surf as my lullaby at night, was definitely golden. I look back on the years when my children were at home as golden. I loved that time of my life. There was a dark interval during the fourteen months that our oldest daughter fought her losing battle with leukemia, but even during that time, there were golden moments. When we were in our fifties, the year that we spent teaching English in Japan was golden.

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2 Corinthians 4:16b says, “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” In spite of the limitations of physical aging, I have no intention of passively resigning myself to coasting along and waiting for my name to show up in the obituaries! It was Abraham Lincoln who said, “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” So what can we do to make these years count, whether they are golden or rusty?

We may not be able to travel as often or for as long as we once could, but I’ll cherish the relationships that we have with people both near and far and when I can’t be together with them in person, I’ll remind myself how fortunate we are to have the internet, something that we didn’t have in our younger years. When I can’t explore far away places, I’ll seek out and appreciate ones that are closer to home. I’ll continue to offer the best of myself through volunteer work. I’ll read and learn and stay as physically active as I can for as long as I can. Always, I’ll remember to be thankful!

And finally, a message for those of you who are younger, don’t waste what might be the best years of your life yearning for the golden years. After all, they might turn out to be a little bit rusty!