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Category Archives: health


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Tests, treatments, and more tests – My Journey with cancer (Part 2)

In my last post, I told you about having been diagnosed with rectal cancer. That was on February 16. Hard to believe that was two and a half months ago!

Since then, I have had several blood tests; a diagnostic MRI and CT scan; and appointments with the colonoscopy doctor, radiation oncology team, the surgical oncology team, medical oncology (chemo) team, and my GP. I also had another MRI and CT scan – as prep for radiation treatment. At that appointment, I got three teeny, tiny little tattoos – one on each hip and one at the base of my tailbone. Not to mention a few rectal exams for good measure!

Through the jigs and the reels, here’s what we learned…Hmmm…let me pause here… I’m going to give details about what we’ve learned for the purpose of maybe it helping someone else somewhere along the line. If you don’t like medical details, though, you might not want to continue reading. Just because I have had to learn more about colorectal anatomy the past few weeks than I ever thought possible, doesn’t mean you need to! (I.E. Consider yourself warned. 😀 )

If you DO continue reading, I also need to provide the following caveat: All of the information I’m talking about is based on my understanding of what I have been told. I am not a medical expert. I am not an anatomy expert. This post is not meant to be read as any sort of reference or resource in that regard. I have very likely misunderstood some bits and am for sure oversimplifying many things. This is only meant to represent my own journey. If you want medical precision and exact details, you should definitely look to reliable sources. 🙂

Now…on with the show…

The tumour is about 4 cm long. It is towards bottom of the anal canal, about 1 cm above the interior sphincter. It has spread to a nearby lymph node, which is what has made it stage 3. Because it hasn’t gone any further than that, it isn’t stage 4.

When I met with the radiation team, they told me there were two options: surgery resulting in a permanent colostomy, or a clinical trial they were doing that was having really good results. That trial is called OPRA (Organ Preservation in Patients with Rectal Adenocarcinoma). I don’t know why there is only one P and not two (preservation and patients), but what do I know about creating acronyms and initialisms in the medical field? Whatever it’s called, I’m glad it exists because closing up shop in the back yard was not at all on my list of things to do during my 50s, so I was very happy for an alternative. If you are interested in reading more about it (the trial, not my back yard 😀 ), I am including some links below.

Essentially, in this treatment, I am doing what they termed as aggressive radiation and chemotherapy, following by intensive follow up. The radiation started on April 18 and is every day (Mon-Fri) for five and a half weeks. I am taking a “low dose” chemo drug during the radiation, as well, as it helps with the efficacy of the radiation. (I put “low dose” in quotes because it’s 1,800 mg at breakfast and another 1,800 mg at dinner – not normally what I would call “low”, but again, what do I know?) Blood work is every two weeks during this period and I will meet with the radiation doctor once a week. After this, there will be a break of about three weeks after radiation is done and then chemo will start. The details for the latter are a little uncertain at this point, but what I understand right now is that each week will involve blood work, treatment one day at the clinic, and then two bottles to come home with me. I’ll do that for four months. After that, there’ll be several more tests to see how it’s all worked and I’ll be meeting with the surgical team again. Probably with all of them, I imagine. Who knows! They’re a grand bunch of folks, though, so it’s all good. And by then they will all be very familiar with my back yard, so a reunion will probably be in order! ha ha ha ha ha

Assuming it all goes according to plan, I will then have tests and appointments of various sorts about every two months for… I can’t remember if they said two or three years. Then less frequently up to the standard tracking of five years. This treatment has a 50%-75% survival rate – meaning of me being alive in 5 years. There’s also a 50% chance that in 5 years I’ll need surgery and at that point the colostomy might be back on the table. The diagnostic MRI (or maybe the CT?) showed the tumour to be right on the interior sphincter. That was why the shut-the-back-door/permanent-colostomy was the other option. But the surgical folks were very…ahem…thorough in their…exam…and it paid off. They discovered that there is actually about 1 cm between the tumour and the interior sphincter.

I know…1 cm. Big whoop-di-diddly-do. What can you do with that? Turns out, kind of a lot. In case you don’t know, the rectum is not very long. The colon is about as long as from here to Mars. OK…not really. It’s actually about 5 feet or about 150 cm. (Interestingly, it’s about the same size in everybody – whether you are teeny tiny or biggie wiggie!) If you have colon cancer, they can frequently lop off 30 cm without too much trouble – taking the cancer cells and a decent amount of non-cancerous tissue on either side of it to be on the safe side (as in the recent experience of a friend of mine’s brother).

The rectum, however, is only between 10 and 15 cm long total. My tumour, as mentioned, is 4 cm long. That only leaves 6 to 11 cm of rectum to play with. If it’s on top of the sphincter, then the sphincter has to come out with the rest of the rectum and colostomy here we come.

However, the surgeons explained that even with just that 1 cm distance, if surgery is required at some point, it might not necessarily and automatically mean closing up shop and going with the permanent colostomy. They might (everything is still, naturally, maybe and might) be able to remove the tumour and the rest of the rectum and bring the colon down to join onto that 1 cm bit. There would be other physiological challenges – a colon is not a rectum, after all – but nonetheless it was music to my ears!

That’s all still a ways away, but I wanted this post to include everything I’ve learned up to this point about the treatments and options so there you are!

Before I close, I need to add that everybody I have dealt with medically at all stages in this journey has been absolutely lovely. Starting from the nurses and doctors during the colonoscopy to currently in my radiation treatments. Most of them are very personable, several of them have a great sense of humour, and all of them seem to be very competent and also very genuinely caring. The colonoscopy doctor was away on vacation the week that my MRI test came back and he called me the Sunday he got back because he saw the results were in and wanted to see how I was doing. Reread that if you need – a doctor called a patient on a Sunday for no other reason than just to see how I was doing.

In other posts I will tell you how I am doing (spoiler alert – it ain’t all rainbows and bluebirds, boys and girls!), but whatever else is happening or however I’m feeling, I am being well taken care of. I feel truly blessed to have all these different teams of people taking care of me.

Resources

As promised, please see the links below for information on the OPRA trial:

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I went to a funeral today

Last Friday, on my way out to grab lunch, I checked my texts. I don’t do that very often – I am not even usually in the same room as my cell phone. But I think I was waiting to hear something from someone so I checked at lunch.

There was a message from my friend Marie, telling me that a friend of ours had passed away. For privacy of the family, I will call her Isabelle.

I had to read it several times. I honestly didn’t really understand it. I thought at first that it said that one of Isabelle’s sons had passed away, but after several readings, I got the right of it – Isabelle had passed away and Marie would call me later to give me more details.

It was really hard to grasp. Have you ever had that happen? You know something, but you don’t really KNOW it. It’s like your brain refuses to acknowledge it. Anyway, I had lunch and in a weird state of numbness I worked through the rest of the afternoon.

When Marie and I spoke later, she further explained that Isabelle had died from suicide the weekend before.

Needless to say, that added another dimension to the loss.

I knew she had struggled with mental health issues – it was something that we shared. She had been a great support to me in my struggles – it is always nice to be able to talk to someone who knows what it’s like. I hope I provided the same support to her.

We saw each other 2 or 3 times a year before the pandemic, in addition to keeping in touch on the phone and text. But the pandemic naturally put a stop to the visits. Instead, we talked on the phone a couple of times and texted. The last time we spoke on the phone, several months ago, she was in an upswing. She had loads of good, positive things going on and I was so happy for her.

This week has been a challenge because I’ve been fighting against going down the rabbit hole of “I should have done more. If only I had….” I know that is not a healthy place to go, but it’s hard to completely erase the thought from my head.

A couple of people I’ve talked to have asked the inevitable “I don’t understand…why would somebody do that?”

I know they are in their grief, so I don’t answer, but honestly, I get it. Now…don’t panic. I’m not suicidal. But I understand how someone could be if they have a really bad bout of depression or other mental illness.

From my own experience, I can see becoming tired of fighting it. Even when you are doing all the “right” things (therapy, medication, physical activity, etc etc etc), it doesn’t totally take it away. And it’s e.x.h.a.u.s.t.i.n.g. I can understand how, if it’s really, really bad for someone, they are just too tired to fight it anymore.

Then there’s the “false reality” aspect. Your brain can trick you into believing a reality that is different from actual reality. I’ve experienced it those times when it’s been really bad for me. I think: “I’m a horrible person. I don’t bring anything good to anyone. Nobody really cares one way or another if I’m here or not.” An entire litany of ways I’m a useless bag of flesh.

Thankfully, as I’ve come to know and understand more about my own mental health struggles, the other side of my brain is better able to combat those thoughts and say, “No, Lucy, that’s not true.” I force myself to run through lists of things in my brain that provide proof that the alternate “I’m awful” reality just isn’t true.

To be honest, I think I’m just lucky that I haven’t gotten to a point where both of those things (exhaustion from fighting and alternate negative reality) haven’t both been super bad at the same time, to the point that I accept it as truth. I try to stay vigilant with it so that doesn’t happen.

Naturally, I don’t know that this is what happened for Isabelle. But I can understand how it could.

So, sadly, the illness won this time and I was at her funeral today.


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A wintery walk to clear the cobwebs

I was out early this morning to get to Costco before all the stuff I needed was gone. On the radio they were talking about cross country ski trails within the city and it got me thinking about crisp wintery walks. One of my favourite places in the city is Jack Pine Trail. Conveniently, it’s only about 5 minutes from the Costco I go to so I thought to my self, “Self! Let’s go for a walk after we do our shopping!”

It was a beautiful, sunny morning with a clear blue sky and only about -6*C. I was wearing drive-in-the-car-to-go-shopping clothes so I wasn’t super prepared for it, but I figured even just a few minutes out in the fresh air would be better than none so once the bags were in the car, off I toodled.

And I was right! In fact, other than my legs (jeans are definitely not great wintery walk wear), everything else was toasty and I lasted 35 minutes! Turns out that’s actually how long it takes to do that particular loop (including little stops for photos, that is) and it was timed perfectly because my upper thighs were starting to get a bit numb at that point.

I should tell you, in case you don’t actually know me, that I am about 98% a homebody. The things I most enjoy doing – crafting, baking, reading, writing, watching TV – are indoors things. If there is a gene for that, it would be so prevalent in me that I don’t think they’d even need a fancy microscope to find it.

But there are a few outdoorsy things that I do enjoy and walking on a wintery day like today is one of them.

Beautiful, bright blue sky. Crisp white snow squeaking under foot. Half-fallen trees gently creaking against each other. Echoes of woodpeckers. Stubborn leaves clinging to twigs rustling in the barely-there breeze. Unseen critters scampering about. Cardinals, bluejays and squirrels competing for seeds that other walkers leave behind.

The only thing that could possibly make it better would be the sound of a gurgling brook or the water of a pond or lake lapping at a pebbly shore.

There were also plenty of other folks about, too – plenty enough that I (as a woman alone in the woods) felt safe, but not so many that it felt crowded. And, really, each time I encountered someone (duos and families for the most part), it was quite lovely – outdoorsy people are quite friendly, so there were a lot of hellos and it was very nice to have that interaction, even for just a few milliseconds at a time.

It’s an antidote, I tell you, for so much of what is going on and is a great way to clear out the cobwebs and rejuvenate your mind and spirit.

If you aren’t able to get out for your own mind refresher today, here are a few pictures that might help you place yourself there virtually. 🙂

(PS: I used to know how to put photos into these posts better, but there have been changes in how this is done and I can’t figure it out, so before my total zen from my walk is lost to technological frustration, I’m giving up and they are what they are. 🙂 )

A woodpecker looking for a snack.

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Catching up!

Sooooooooo…my grand plan of writing 50 posts in the year I turned 50 was a success. During my holiday in Ireland, I wrote my little fingers off and made my target. Yay me!

While I was quite happy with that success, it had the unplanned-for effect of writing burn out! As such, I haven’t written anything here since then. Alas and alack!!

Anyway…before I pick up the digital pen again in earnest, I thought it would be good to write a catch-up post. 1) It will be quick and easy. 2) It will at least get me back at it. Win-win!

Without further ado…here’s the scoop from the past six months. (Don’t blink…you might miss it!)

Since the Ireland trip, things have been pretty…standard. Nothing exciting going on. Work, friends, family, hobbies, repeat. With Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s thrown in for a little variety.

One thing of note (sort of) is the birthday “gifts” the province of Ontario gave me.

Within days of getting back from Ireland, I got letters from the health department telling me that, because I have now hit the golden age of 50, there are various medical tests I need to have done. They obviously did NOT waste any time on that!

Actually, it’s good that they are that on the ball. The timing was just super funny (to me): “Hey! You turned 50!! Here’s a letter so you can go get your boobs squished!! Woot! Woot!!”

They are serious about it, too.

I didn’t exactly rush out and have any of it done. My doctor and I were working on my blood pressure (all fixed now, thank you very much!) and I didn’t want to add a bunch more stuff to the medical list just yet.

In other words…I put the letters aside.

Then they sent them again.

Not one to succumb to peer pressure, I put them aside again. It started to look like this was going to be a game of medical paperwork chicken. Oh yeah?? Bring it! 😀

Then in late February my doctor brought it up. D’oh! I couldn’t exactly put him in the pile with the other papers, could I?

And if that weren’t enough, the FIT package showed up in the mail. Double D’oh!

By then I was starting to really take the hint, and had even gone so far as to read the FIT instructions, but wouldn’t you know it? The COVID-19 pandemic hit and I can’t do any of the tests now. Shucks and wazoo!

Hmmm…in a completely unplanned way, that little anecdote has turned out to be the perfect segue way from the trip to the present! Who knew!

Lest you think I am wont to disregard health things on a regular basis, I should clarify that I do take my health seriously…this was just a series of funny timing things.

Alternatively, it may just seem funny because of the social distancing thing. 🙂

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Productivity and mental health – A personal story

A few days ago I read a post by Wil Wheaton called i exist. It reminded me of a session I had last year with an EAP counselor.

About half-way through the session, the counselor said, “When I’m working with someone who is off work for a while, I ask them to commit to a 30-minute walk every day. Is that something you could commit to?”

The expression on her face told me that she fully expected my answer to be yes. Perhaps even with an “Of course I can” thrown in for good measure.

Her expression changed very quickly when, instead, I responded with a very definite “No.”

It was as though nobody had ever told her no before. She didn’t seem to even know how to respond to it. (Had I been in better spirits, I’d have found it funny…) I’m pretty sure at least some people who went to see her, who were in the same mental state I was then in, must have lied to her – probably because they felt they were “supposed” to say yes, so they did. And then they went home, didn’t go for their daily walks, and felt even worse about themselves for not having done it.

Well, I wasn’t going to do that. I definitely didn’t need more things to add to the “All the ways you suck and are a horrible person” list that my brain at that time was having a hey-day reminding me of.

Since she was so obviously not expecting my answer, I went on to explain that I was, at that point, struggling to even do things that I enjoyed doing, that I wanted to do. I don’t enjoy going for walks, and certainly not for 30 minutes, so there was no point in me telling her that I would do something that I knew very well that I would not.

I explained further that me just getting to that appointment that day was something to celebrate.

I was off work at the time because I had hit a limit that, for the previous couple of years, I knew was coming. Depression and anxiety (things I have struggled with for most, if not all, of my life since puberty) had been mounting gradually over time and I knew was going to hit critical mass on it before too long.

The week before I saw her, that moment had come. I still clearly remember sitting at my desk, looking at my monitor, reading an email when it happened – quite innocuously, it turned out. Nothing of any consequence brought it on. I was just…done.

I knew in that moment that I needed to leave, to go home, and that I wouldn’t be back for a while. I thought, “Huh…I knew this was coming and I wondered when it would happen. I guess this is it. This is what did it.” I remember being surprised that it wasn’t anything big or momentous that had tipped me over the edge. It was just a slightly annoying email that in any other context would have resulted in a “Tut tut…seriously?” and that would be have been it. But nope. It did me in.

I emailed my boss that I was sick and needed to leave and headed out.

The next about 10 days were absolutely awful. Horrible. Part of me wished I lived with someone who could take care of me and make sure I was fed, as I huddled under blankets like a pile of goo, while another part of me was very glad to have nobody around to tell me I needed to get up, get dressed, get showered, etc. I could be as much of a pile of goo as I wanted.

The only thing of any practical benefit that I did in the very first few days was find the number to our Employee Assistance Program and get an appointment with a counselor. Then I made another, last-ditch effort to get a new doctor. I’m amazed, actually, that I was even able to accomplish that much.

The day of the appointment – about seven days after “it” happened – I was still pretty much a wreck. I really didn’t want to go, but I knew I needed to.

Part of my apprehension was from a previous experience I had had with EAP. It was in 2008 – the year that both of my parents passed away. The counselor’s advice at that time (which she delivered as though it were some grand new revelation she had come up with on her own) was: “Keep your work stress at work and your home stress at home.” Really? And what if the problem is that you aren’t able to do that right now?? She had nothing.

Never mind the fact that her office was a mess and she looked like she had come to work in what she had slept in…She didn’t exactly inspire confidence. Needless to say I didn’t go back. (I did, however, get some handouts from her with helpful information about insomnia.)

With that experience in the front of my mind and the fact that I really only wanted to crawl into bed and stay there until sometime around the turn of the next century, I really was not keen on getting to that appointment.

So, I resorted to playing mind games with myself. “We aren’t going to an appointment. We’re just going to get in the car. We aren’t going to an appointment. We’re just going to get in the car.” That got me showered, dressed and in the car.

Once in the car, I repeated, “We’re not going to an appointment, we’re just going to drive to Fallowfield Rd.” Once I got that far, it became, “We’re just going as far as the 417”, and so on until I found myself in the parking lot of the counselor’s building.

Even then, I had to do some convincing to get myself out of the car and into the building, and then the office.

I couldn’t have done it otherwise. I know…it sounds dumb, especially if such feelings are completely foreign to you. But that’s where I was at that time. To be honest, I still have to do it occasionally, and I will likely have to for the rest of my life. But that’s OK. The anxiety isn’t going to go away, so that’s why there are tricks to deal with it. Sometimes it still wins, but most times I do. (Yay!)

Anyway…back to the 30-minute walk request.

I explained to the counselor the whole process of how I had even made it to the appointment and she finally clued in: “Ohhhhh….you really are in a bad way!” (No…she didn’t say that… but she may well have thought it and who could blame her! 😉 )

After we talked for a little while longer, she circled back to the walk. She explained:

“The walking isn’t about exercise. It isn’t about breaking a sweat and doing cardio. It’s just about doing something. Getting yourself off the couch and putting your mind on something else. So, really, it doesn’t even have to be a walk. If you have a closet or cupboard you’ve been wanting to clean out, do that. If there’s some spring cleaning you need to do, do that. And it doesn’t have to be 30 minutes in a row. You can break it up throughout the day. The point is to just get up and move.”

That I was able to commit to. In fact, not only did I commit to it, I actually did it! Every day! They weren’t fancy, important things that I did, but I did them. Usually I had to talk myself into it, like I did to get to the appointment, but that wasn’t the point. The point was I did it.

I was also very blessed to have a good circle of friends who kept in touch with me and even got me out a few times for actual walks. 🙂

During that dark and difficult period, making sure I had 30 minutes of some sort of activity every day was critical to my healing.

And so I echo Wil’s statement:

“The single most consistent factor in how I feel about myself and my day, on the 5-point scale, is how productive I am.”

I’m not someone who needs to be constantly busy, busy, busy. I regularly enjoy heaving off on the couch to watch TV. But I have learned that being productive every day, in some fashion or another, is vital to me and my mental health.

AND…extra bonus! As I’ve thought about Wil’s post, I’ve realized that I’m actually way more productive than I give myself credit for. I need to remind myself of that more often. 🙂

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The wonderful convenience of freezer meals – or not?

As you know if you’ve read some of my other posts, I don’t particularly enjoy cooking. I enjoy it even less during the week after work. My go to? Picking up fast food on my way home from work.

However, the past few months, I’ve been making a concerted effort to do more of my own cooking – inspired by a trip to the doctor and a few weeks of high blood pressure readings. I’m sure it will come as no surprise that fast food is not exactly what you would call a low-sodium way to eat.

So, in keeping with that plan, I spent most of last weekend making more meals for the freezer so I could have yummy homemade food during the week without the bother of starting from scratch every day.

I made this 20-minute Tuscan Pasta. I fried some mushrooms (just till they browned a bit) and added them to the recipe. Boy was it delish! (OK…ignore the fact that Parmesan cheese is high in sodium…a serving of this dish is still way lower in sodium than my usual fast food choices – by about 75%, so still a win. )

I also made this Black Bean Mexican Chicken dish. It was low in sodium to start with, but I used low-sodium tomatoes,which really put it in the blood pressure sweet spot. Even when I added some aged cheddar to it and baked it in the oven… it was still sodium-safe and super tasty!

I made some other stuff, too, but don’t have recipe links for them so we’ll move on.

When I walked in the door from work this evening, I was thinking, “What delectable delight do I want to pull from the freezer today??”

I hmmmed and I hahhhhhed and happily ran through my mental freezer-meal Rolodex. There are so many options from so many weekends of cooking! But nothing tickled my fancy. WHAT??? That can’t be possible.

You know what my taste buds did get excited about? Toast with peanut butter and Nutella. Yup. Spent all that time cooking – this past weekend, as well as other weekends – so I’d have all that yummy food to choose from and I go for toast. With a glass of milk.

Livin’ on the edge, folks. Livin’ on the edge.

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How to avoid regrets – Or, “Hey – your last post said they were fine!”

If you looked at my last post, you may think that there is a contradiction between the title of that post and this one. 🙂

It’s just that in writing that one, I had a few other thoughts that take regret in a bit of a different direction. So, I guess this post is kind of a partner post (if that’s a thing) to the last one. 🙂

As you may recall, the previous post talked about regret in the context of things that have happened in the past.

This post talks about avoiding the regret in the first place.

Really, it’s quite simple: Don’t do anything you will wish you didn’t do and do everything you will wish you had.

Ta daaaaaaaaaaa!! That’s solved.

“Then,” you might ask, “why are there still more words on this page, Lucy???”

Well, naturally, nothing is ever really that simple, is it? I mean, in a way it really does come down to that, but there’s a bit more involved.

When I was 18, I was at university and having a lot of fun. There was a party one night (well, lots of nights, actually… 🙂 ) and I had to work. I really wanted to go out with my friends so I called work and quit. Obviously, at that point in my life, I thought I’d regret missing that party more than I’d regret quitting that job.

Now, I can’t even conceive of doing such a thing!

What I would regret now is considerably different than what I would have regretted then.

That said, there are some general suggestions we can follow that can help us avoid some potential down-the-road moments of “I wish I had….”

In fact, if you ask Mr. Google for advice on how to prevent future regret, you’ll get a LOT of advice. There are all kinds of lists, with 5, 10 or even 15 tips in them.

Here are just a few of them, if you’d like to check them out:

There are things common to most of the lists I’ve read, such as spending time with loved ones or not living the life other people expect us to live. But there is some variety in there, too – something for everyone, I would say.

None of it is rocket science (unless, perhaps you might regret one day not having learned rocket science 😉 ), but they are still good reminders.

Sometimes in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, we forget to do the things that are important to us and need those reminders every now and then.

In some time management stuff I read years ago, I learned something that has stuck with me to this day: We put our time into what is important to us.

I didn’t (and don’t) intend this to be a time-management post, but I think it is relevant to touch on it a tiny bit. It can be a useful exercise to sit and look at what we spend our time doing and compare that list to a list of the things that are important to us.

I would suggest that the things we say are important to us and that we don’t spend our time on are probably the things we will regret.

By bringing those lists into alignment with each other we can in that way create our own customized list of ways to prevent our personal regrets down the road.

We probably can’t completely avoid “I wish I had…” statements, but doing that one thing can help us avoid some of the biggest regrets that we might otherwise have had.

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I have regrets – and I’m glad

I used to buy into the whole “regrets are bad” thing. It sounds good and it makes sense: Regret is a bad feeling, so not having regrets would be a good thing, right?

When I sat and really thought about it, though, asking myself if I have regrets, I realized that I do – many, in fact. Most are small – things like wishing I hadn’t said something to someone or said it in a particular way. But there are a few big, life-impacting decisions, too. And I genuinely regret them.

At first I felt badly about that. It seemed like I was doing something wrong, given the pervasiveness of the “no regrets” movement.

For example, when I just Googled “live without regret”, the following three items were the top results:

  • How to Live Your Life Without Regret
  • 40 Ways to Live Life Without Regrets
  • How to Start Living Life Without Regret Right Now

There are also a kajillion memes and quotes about it, in case you are interested.

So, I tried to convince myself that I shouldn’t regret those things. “Regret is bad” seemed to be everywhere and so many people I knew were adherents. Many people, in fact, talked about it as thought it were a badge of honour. “I regret nothing I’ve ever done!”

But I couldn’t quite convince myself to really get on board.

Maybe it’s a matter of semantics. For me, regret is about wishing I hadn’t done something (or in some cases, wishing I had). A couple of definitions I found online says pretty much the same thing:

  • Merriam-Webster: to be very sorry for
  • Cambridge Dictionary : a feeling of sadness about something sad or wrong or about a mistake that you have made, and a wish that it could have been different and better

From what I’ve read and heard, though, regret seems to have been equated with dwelling on things. If that’s where you’re coming from, then I agree: We shouldn’t dwell on things to a negative degree.

For me, though, regret and dwelling on things are totally separate items.

The things I regret, I regret for very specific reasons: they either hurt other people or myself.

As such, I’m glad I regret them because the regret reminds me why I don’t want to repeat those actions (or inactions).

I still wish that in those moments I had made other choices and I’m glad I feel that way. They weren’t OK choices to make. Honestly, to me, I should regret them.

Yes, I learned lessons from them, but me having an opportunity to learn a lesson isn’t a valid reason to excuse those decisions – decisions that caused hurt and pain.

Learning the lesson, rather, is the way to turn a bad thing into a not-so-bad thing. It still doesn’t turn it into a “good” thing (to me), but it kind of makes the best out of a bad situation.

The important thing is that I don’t dwell on those things. I don’t use them to torture* myself or to paralyze myself from moving forward. And I have forgiven myself for them.

I could be wrong, but (going by the “I wish I hadn’t done that” definition) I don’t think it’s truly possible to have absolutely no regrets about anything ever.

Setting an expectation of “no regret” seems, then, to be setting ourselves up for failure. (If you are one to beat yourself up about poor choices, you probably don’t need another “failure” to add to your list. 😉 )

I think it’s just another one of those things where the pendulum seems to swing entirely to one direction or another.

Generally, we land, I think, somewhere in the middle.

We recognize we shouldn’t have done something, we learn from it, we take that learning with us and move on, with the regret in the perspective in which it was perhaps intended:

“Hey – that wasn’t so fun. Let’s not do that again, K?”

Want to learn more?

In finishing up this post, I thought I’d go back to the ol’ Google machine and see just how off-base I am with this whole “embrace your regrets” thing, and found an interesting article in the Huffington Post. It contains some comments from Brené Brown, if you are interested.

*There are times, yes, when my anxiety is on overdrive and my brain decides to replay every poor decision I’ve ever made (from decades ago even) and every unkind thing I’ve ever said. It even throws in several moments that weren’t poor decisions or unkind moments – it twists normal, everyday interactions and interprets them negatively. But that’s not about regret. That’s about brain chemistry. When I’m not in the throes of anxiety, I know the difference. But that can be a whole series of posts in and of itself. 🙂

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Hand lettering and meditation

As you know, I like to dabble in different things. A few months ago, I decided to learn about hand lettering, also commonly referred to as brush lettering, brush calligraphy or modern calligraphy. I make cards and I wanted to learn some different lettering styles so that I’m not always restricted by the stamps I have on hand and so that I can make cards that are 100% made by me, as opposed to just stamped and coloured by me.

As usual, I went off to the Google machine and began my search. I found a lot of resources. I printed off some worksheets, even bought some stuff from Amazon, and started in.

You may remember from a previous post, I’m not the most patient of individuals when it comes to learning new things. I have good handwriting and printing so I thought this would be a snap. Turns out it wasn’t and I was tempted – a lot – to throw in the towel (my standard go-to response when something doesn’t come easily to me).

Thankfully, pretty much all the resources I had read talked about the importance of practice – practice, practice, practice. So I didn’t give up.

One key thing that I learned early on is that hand lettering is completely different than writing. You can’t think of them the same way at all. Hand lettering is actually more like drawing letters than writing or even printing them. Drawing each individual letter and, in fact, each individual stroke of each letter. Where I can write a stream of lovely, flowing cursive, I can’t do the same with hand lettering.

I know I can’t because I tried. It didn’t work. And it didn’t look good. At all. So I forced myself to slow down. I stopped at each stroke. I made each stroke intentional. I learned to breathe in on the upstrokes and out on the downstrokes.

Where I was initially impatient to be able to fluidly write beautiful words, in all the colours of the fancy (and unnecessary) markers I’d bought, I have since come to enjoy the actual process of the drills. Breathe in, light stroke upwards. Breathe out, firm pressure downwards. Lift the pen; turn it so as to not permanently bend the nib in one direction. Light pressure up; firm pressure down. Breathe in; breathe out.

If you’ve ever done any meditation, some of that will sound familiar. I found myself quite surprised about that familiarity, actually.

What I had intended to be a means to an end – learning necessary skills so I could make pretty letters and words – has inadvertently become so much more. I have come to look forward to and really enjoy the calm and focus (which so often elude me) of the drills. I particularly enjoy how they force me to slow down, especially my racing thoughts.

Surprisingly, the meditative aspect has become even more important to me than becoming successful in the artistic side of it. I almost (heavy on “almost” 🙂 ) don’t even care if I become adept at making the words that had initially drawn me to this practice.

Who knew!!

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Want to learn more?

If this is something you think you might be interested in, here are some websites I have learned a lot from. I particularly enjoy the drills from The Happy Every Crafter site.

There are a lot of different tools you can get but you really don’t need anything fancy.

For pens, I recommend getting a smaller brush pen to start. I couldn’t really find any around here (Ottawa), but ordered a couple of packages of Tombow Fudenosuke brush pens and started using them for my drills when I got them a couple of weeks ago. I wish I had gotten them at the start. They’ve made a real difference. You can also start with a soft-leaded pencil and regular paper, if you either can’t get or can’t afford any of the other stuff.

For paper, find something smooth – rough paper is hard on the pens and it’s also hard (for me, anyway) to get the smooth brush strokes.

For both pens and paper, definitely don’t go fancy until you get some of the basics down and decide if it’s something you even want to go any further with.


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Yes, I talk to my bladder

I’m not sure exactly when it happened. I don’t think it was a gradual thing, but maybe it was so gradual that I didn’t notice until all of a sudden, one day, my bladder decided it wanted the upper hand in this whole relationship we have going.

While I don’t remember the exact date it happened, I know it was sometime within the last year. I originally tried to pass it off as something else. “I must have forgotten to go before I left work” or some such. But then I really started paying attention and it didn’t matter when I did or didn’t “go”. My bladder seemed to have found an on/off switch and learned how to use it.

Now I go from happily sitting on my car or on my couch or out doing things with not a care in the world to all of a sudden very urgently needing to find the nearest loo. What the heck!?!

Naively – and completely incorrectly it turns out – I had assigned all those bladder-control commercials to being something relevant only to my friends who have had children. Everybody knows that women who have kids have bladder control issues when they get older, right? All that talk about pelvic floor and stuff – damage done during pregnancy and so on. Well, I haven’t had kids so, of all the not-so-joyous parts of getting older that are on my radar, I happily thought I had escaped that one.

Evidently not.

And so, nowadays, I find myself frequently and sternly lecturing my bladder.

I’ve noticed that there seems to be direct, exponential relationship between my proximity to a bathroom and the urgency to use it. A woman at work and I were talking about this a couple of weeks ago and she finds the same thing – at least I’m not alone in that. (She did not, however, admit to conversing with the organ in question, so that bit might be just me…)

At first glance, it might seem to be a good thing that the urgency increases with proximity. I mean, if you really have to go, wouldn’t you want to be near the appropriate facilities?

In general, yes. But in this case, no. The urgency and possibility of an “accident” is so great that the fact that I am close to the washroom is only a tantalizing, possibly unattainable tease. You know: so near and yet oh so far. Think about it: How much would it absolutely suck if you lost all control a mere three feet from safety? If you were out in the bush, miles away from civilized plumbing, well, nobody could blame you, right? But three feet from the porcelain god? Really? You couldn’t wait five more seconds?

My bladder seems to take particular advantage of and joy in its newfound control whenever I get home. Putting the key into my lock appears to be a gleeful trigger for that on/off switch. “Oh ho ho!!!!” my bladder seems to cry. “She’s close to a bathroom, but can’t do anything about it from here! I’m the one in control now!!!!!”

And I negotiate: “OK…Listen. We’re in the foyer. You know we can’t go here. I just need 40 seconds – 1 minute tops – to get my boots off and get to the loo. You didn’t need to go at all 20 seconds ago, so surely you can give me one literal minute. Please!!” The lecture, you see, turns quickly into pleading.

Thankfully, it’s never come to the embarrassing scene I’m negotiating to avoid, but if there were cameras in my house, they would catch me doing a quite laughable, cross-legged-penguin waddle (if penguins could cross their legs) to the bathroom – negotiating the whole way. “Only 10 seconds to go…c’monnnnnn…work with me here!”

And so, this is what I have come to.

My name is Lucy and I talk to my bladder.