Some revelations and a difficult start to 2020

I would like to start this January 3, 2020 blog with very best wishes to all my faithful readers of my writing efforts, and all the new readers that I hope for in the New Year. We have a new decade ahead of us and may you all thrive during 2020. 

My only New Year's resolution is to write something every day! I hope that I can keep it.

The revelations in the title are that on the first day of the new 2020 decade Sandra and I very belatedly decided to look up all of the side effects for the many medications that I am taking for cancer recovery. I have been having many things change in my daily life, such as: drowsiness, very unsteady on my feet, dizziness, dry mouth, mild nausea, constipation, weight gain, variable appetite, headaches,etc. I have been worried that these things are indications of cancer progression.

Lo and behold, these are all expected side effects of the two main medications I am on, namely Pregabalin for the shingles nerve pain and Butrans 20 (Buprenorphine) for the cancer-generated pain in my lower left sacrum area. The other drugs I am on have similar side effects. So the worry about all of these effects being cancer increasing, cancer spreading, etc are not right at all. All of my present ailments (but one that I will mention below) are not caused by cancer, but by the drugs that I am on.

The one nagging thing NOT caused by the drugs is increasing pain in my lower left sacrum tumor. Not a fun way to start the New Year. Twice over the past three days the pain has increased very close to 10/10 intensity, lasting for hours at a time. Now, that could just be a natural progression of the tumor's presence, or, the tumor may be growing. I will be going to Yellowknife next week for oncology consult on Thursday Jan 9 and nivo (Nivolumab) treatment on Friday the 10th. I have asked the Cancer Coordinator to request another CT scan sometime during those days to see if that tumor is growing.

Today marks the first day of Inuvik's 3-day Sunrise Festival, celebrating the return of the sun, with huge bonfires down on the ice of the Mackenzie River, with lots of food, and singing and dancing. We have had one full month from December 5 through to January 6 when the Sun does not come up at all. Of course we have the sun just below the horizon during the day so we have a beautiful twilight, sunrise/sunset that drifts across the sky from about 11 am to 3 pm (if the sky isn't cloud covered, that is, and we do have a lot of cloud cover).

This is a photo taken from our deck on December 7, 2019 at about 12:30 pm showing that we have twilight, not darkness.

This lower photo shows how the sky looks when the sun first peaks above the horizon in the first week of January. In this case it was January sunrise in 2015.

Right now, as I write, it is 4pm and the dark of night has returned.