Its Thursday night and I am at home with my son who will be four months old in a couple of days. My wife went to the theatre with a friend and was feeling guilty for having accepted the invitation, but al the more reason to not let things like this get in the way of our day to day.

My appointment has been rescheduled twice now because the pathology results were not yet ready from the lab. Since this appointment has not been cancelled, I am hoping that tomorrow with be the day that I know. In part I have not invested too much thought into the results, probably because I really feel strongly that this was solved with surgery. I am aware that that may also not be the case, but if it comes to that, I am sure I will find a way to deal with it…although I would really prefer not to. The other part is that I have had the tremendous support of my wife and priceless smiles from my son that just make me forget everything!

On the other hand, being an architect and not someone in the medical field may help. Cancer is something you need to understand, especially in ways that it relates to you, but I confess that I still feel like I am in a bad dream and that I am going to wake up and find out that nothing like this actually really happened. It is still difficult for me to understand that this has actually happened to me. I have always downplayed it and convinced myself that this is a more simple cancer and that I was lucky with the one that was given to me. In part that is true, I am aware that there are very aggressive cancers out there but I have also recently become aware that this can potentially be quite nasty.

Since losing my big toe, I have been searching for information of people that have been in a similar situation. To be honest, I haven’t found much. Most toe amputations are related to diabetes and I found a few cases of mountain climbers who lost toes to frost bite. Only recently I found some posts of other people who had this tumour and the topic was not about the lost toe, but rather the treatment to deal with the cancer having metastases in other parts of the body like the vertebrae in one case and in the brain in another case. The sense of despair and urgency in the conversations caught me off guard. People younger than me, with children… It still doesn’t make sense to me. I could see this tumour! I still can’t imagine that the black stripe on my toe nail could be so lethal. I have mentioned this before, but I still can’t get my head around it.

I have been watching a TV series and there was a prisoner who had cancer and was told by the doctor that she had a few months to live. I know it will not be my case, but I felt a chill go down my spine, imagining that soon it will be me, in real life hearing the news from the surgeon.

I am sure I will be ok. So wish me luck. My friends and family have been awesome, praying for me from different creeds and giving me strength. Even tomorrow, an architect and friend that works with me cancelled her dental appointment to babysit our little one while we go to the hospital.

So lucky to be surrounded by so much love!