Update 07/02/18
Still at home, with wounds healing nicely. My head is still a little swollen around the stitch sites, and leaking gunk at night from rubbing on the pillow. My arm, below my right elbow, has almost stopped bleeding and the holes on my right shin will take some time to be ready for the beauty pageant.
I have yet to hear about biopsy results, but that will come in due course, after the entire team has done its review and agree on what, if anything, will need to be done. If there is nothing serious, I probably will not hear until I have my follow-up with Dr. Harrington.
Times have changed. When I had my very first issue with melanoma, back in Toronto, I was waiting then, as now, for that biopsy. Rose Tompkins, who managed the lab at North York General, requested and received the results, indicating a positive reading for melanoma. She is married to Kath's brother David, and came, in tears to see us that night after work. Kathy remembers it clearly, still. We were sitting in the kitchen and she delivered the news. She felt compelled to tell us. That sharing of personal information could not happen today. To her, then, melanoma was a death sentence. She sobbed and sobbed. I'm still here Rose.
I would be remiss if I did not explain how appreciative I was for her interference in the system. She was brave and she was, and is, family. In fact, through every single serious operation I have had since then, and there have been too many of them, Rose has packed her bag and flown in to be with us. Rose truly loves us. There is no doubt, Rosie, you are the best of family.
About My Early Years
On the radio: Another Suitcase Another Hall from Evita
In my bloodstream: Lisinopril, Amlodopine, Omeprazole, Levofloxacin (Old folk drugs)
My parents were hard-working immigrants from Scotland. They were both active in WWII. I honestly have no idea of their occupations, their family relationships or anything at all of their lives after the war, until the day when I popped into their lives.
For whatever reason, they came to Canada in 1949, looking for a better life. They left all their family, friends, history and safety nets behind. I was three by then, and had little to say in the matter. I missed my Grandma Sanders after we left and didn’t ever really get to know her or any of my relatives the way I would have liked. I depended on my parents for stories of their families and their history. There were some things I remember about each of my parents relatives, but only a few stories that I always thought significant, or humorous and worth mentioning.
My Dad had a sister and a brother. I was fortunate to meet my Aunt Lily several times, both in Scotland and also in Canada. She made the trip twice - once to be with my Mom for my marriage to Kathy and once with her youngest, Lily, to see our girls and Mom. She reminded me of Dad so much in her quiet demeanor and her facial appearance. She was a beautiful lady, warm, filled with love and possessed the requisite humor required to appreciate daily life. Her four children, I know, have followed suit.
Her (and my Dad's ) Aunt Isa (Isobel) lived with Lily and her young family for years. Isa was our family’s legitimate eccentric. You know the kind - one cat away from making the nightly news. She corresponded with me for years, right up until her death. She sent cards for every occasion - birthdays, Easters, Christmases and on and on. However, every note came on a card which she, herself, had received. She simply crossed out all the writing and used the available space to give me the news from “home”. My Christmas card would be a birthday card she had received a year before from someone else. You get the idea. She singlehandedly gave the Scots their reputation for thriftiness.
She walked every day to her bank to take out the money she would need for that day. She did this for years and years. One day a new teller, who happened to be from India, asked her to provide identification. Wrong! Why was this immigrant whom she had never seen, questioning her as to who she was? “Who the hell are you?” she yelled. She went on a racist tirade, beating him over the head with her rolled-up umbrella, until she was kindly ushered out, with the manager's apologies. The next day when she made her daily visit, no one asked who she was. She had made her point.
John, Lily and Jim
My Dad always talked to me quietly when he mentioned his younger brother, John. I guess, every now and then, the thought of him simply passed through his mind. He remembered standing with him when they were both very young, looking longingly through a shop’s window at the candies in display and out of reach. Dad recalled him saying that day how much he would love just one candy. As much as John wanted that candy, I know Dad would have liked to see his brother even more.
Many years later, John became a radio officer on a fuel tanker in the Royal Navy. I still have the letter from the Queen to my grandparents, expressing sorrow in his death in the service to his country. His ship was blown out of the water. He was 18. I can remember my Dad’s wet eyes when he told me this story and gave me his mementos to keep.
I really don’t know anything about what happened to cause my family to make, what seems to me, such a drastic decision in their lives. Only later in life do you realize that so many questions remain unanswered. And there are none left living who can help. Let it go, right?
Our first Canadian home was a cabin with a single room. It had a pot-bellied stove, used for heat and cooking. Not much furniture. No television. But we had a radio with one station.
It was winter and we had no car and only a shoveled path to reach a side road. Dad worked for Ontario Hydro then, putting up power lines in northern Ontario. That first winter, with criminally cold temperatures and snow that seemed to never end, he was gone before sunrise and after long days, he would come home in the dark, whistling music he loved as he walked in, through waist deep snow, back to our little cabin. That was Mom’s signal to start the dinner. This was the better life they had sought? Thinking back, it is hard to believe these early days. (My good friend James Buttram, who grew up in Bessemer, Alabama, says I could “out-poor" anyone. I doubt that, but I do take a little pride that anyone would think so).
On one seminal day, I came back into the cabin in my stocking cap, winter coat, mittens, and rubber boots. My job, at four years of age, was to chop kindling every day so that Mom could increase the stove fire to make dinner. I had been happily chopping and singing the only song that I heard repeatedly on our little radio with one station. It was an advertising jingle, “Peoples’ Credit Jewelers, Peoples’ Credit Jewelers. From coast to coast we sell the most”, and so on. I walked in with my arms full of kindling. My boot toes were slotted from the axe. I had no idea. Fortunately, my little axe never cut all the way to my toes.
Mom burst into tears, grabbed me and crumbled and cried, deeply. That night, my parents decided that we would move, immediately, into the town of Bracebridge, Ontario. It was a few years later before I heard of the circumstances which caused that move.
My parents worked two jobs each, for as long as I can remember. They gave me every toy a boy could want on every celebration. I lived my youth, never being disciplined with anything more than a scolding - which was amazing considering the opportunities I gave them. I was a good student. I was the prized child. I had survived too many accidents and illnesses. I was still there, still happy and totally oblivious to the problems they endured. I was theirs. Their only family. We were everything to each other.
I learned early on to look after myself. I was a latch-key kid. I started to work at an early age. At different times, I delivered papers, stocked shelves at Loblaws, pumped gas - baby sat - anything and everything. Work was the brass ring of the immigrant. Work was not the way to success. Work, in itself was the goal. Work. in itself was success.
Holidays. Hope my Canadian friends had a fun Canada Day. Our Independence Day is coming up. Have a wonderful 4th y'all. To my overseas friends, keep up the good work.
Be safe my friends. Next Monday.....
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