3 weeks

Yikes, it's been 3 weeks since I last posted. Well, all in all not as bad as a certain sister of mine who will remain nameless who hasn't updated in almost 10 weeks! And in my defense, we've been a little busy.

The weekend after Echo's surgery I had Friday off to spend with him and I used that day to work on the deck a little more. I got all of the railing posts notched out and mostly installed which is great. It's getting a little crazy at how long I've been doing this stuff with not much to show for. We are pretty bad with "decisions" on it though and we've changed our minds about what to do for railing/benches a few times already. We are no longer doing bench seating around the one side and decided to do just railing. As far as spindles or balusters go, we are thinking of the black aluminium balusters sandwiched between two pieces of cedar with a top 2x6 for the handrail. I think it'll look good, and considering that I have little-to-no experience with building decks, etc, the whole deck looks nice so far.

On Saturday the neighbours and I rented an auger to dig the rest of the post holes, and set the posts for the fence building the next weekend - conveniently the weekend that we were in BC! That was a most-of-the-day affair, and was burnt to a crisp by the end... call me a red neck. literally!

On that Sunday it was Mother's Day and Marnie and I hosted brunch for my mom and Marn's family. It was a nice visit, even with my mom's broken toe! She broke it the day before carrying laundry down stairs, so she was pretty much out of commission for the next few days.... anyway, most people reading this know the story already, or read it on Adrienne's blog, so I won't go over it again. We had frittata (?), swarties, scones, fruit salad, fresh squeezed OJ, coffee, tea, etc.... in other words, way too much food. But it was delicious!!

The Wednesday after that I was up bright and early and left for Calgary to get some work done in that office. I spent Wednesday and Thursday there, then left early Friday morning for Vancouver where I met up with Marnie. We had a mini vacation for the long weekend, then I was back to work in Vancouver for (Tuesday), Wednesday and Thursday again.
For the long weekend, we had a lot planned, but unfortunately we weren't able to do the best part -- fly to Tofino (on the west coast of the Island) in the new plane and back.
Friday afternoon Adrienne picked us up and we hung out with her and Parker until Maddie got out from school. We got her then right off to see the movie Shrek the Third. It was ok, not great, but the kids liked it. After that it was off to Chuck E Cheese (Parker's pick) where the kids had a blast and the adults got a little competitive on some of the games... Food and atmosphere are not great there, but the kids all enjoy it as they get to run around like mad and win tickets for plastic $0.05 toys.
We had booked Adrienne's timeshare in Victoria for Saturday night stay and had fantastic weather on that Saturday for the ferry ride over. We walked around town and checked things out, but not before Parker opened his presents and ate birthday cake. We thought it was cute how he wasn't 4 until he blew out the candles.
Sunday, however, was crappy but we still went into town and toured around. We left earlier than we would have if it was nice out.
Monday was set aside as the day we were going to try and fly to Tofino, but the weather wasn't looking good. We couldn't go due to the heavy cloud cover. Erin, Marn's friend, called us in the morning to ask when we were going to be there to meet us at the airport. She said the weather was beautiful, clear and sunny and couldn't believe that it was crappy in Vancouver. Yes, we were all sad that we weren't going to be there to enjoy it!
We managed to go up for about an hour flying around the city during the later half of the day as the clouds started to break up. But it was so late that we couldn't really go anywhere "fun". We had fun anyway - how often do you get to go flying in a (family member's) private plane? That was the best part of the trip for us. So cool!
Tuesday I got sucked in to working for about 6 hours. I sort of knew this was going to happen as I had changed our Internet provider on the Friday and they were still working out some bugs with the connections for each office.
The rest of the week was spent hanging out and having fun - aside from my working. Marn and Adrienne hung out a lot as it was more of a vacation for her. I turned my work trip into some vacation as a bonus. ;) We might just have to move out there once we find out in a few weeks that we won the lottery dream home!

We boarded Echo for most of the week we were gone, and he had a great time. When we finally did get home Sunday morning after 3am, he was excited to see us, of course, but was extremely tired. He basically wanted to go back to sleep after about 10 minutes of visiting with us. We also got to see our yard completely fenced in - it looks so bizarre! It's so nice to let Echo out and not worry about him terrorizing the neighbours. Although we still have to watch him out there. He's a digger, and has already dug two holes, one large and one small), and pulled out a plant that was just finally making a recovery from the winter! ggrr!!! NOT happy about this behaviour...

The whole next day he had to rest some more as we were gone for most of the day again. This time, back to Angus Glen for the 2nd Annual Booby-q to benefit "the weekend to end breast cancer" and help raise money for the team walking in Michelle's honor. It was fun as we got to catch up with friends and meet two of the new babies in my group for the first time. We also found out that a friend is pregnant again for number two... the first is only 8 months old, and they were married a month after we were! crazy!

Sorry, no pics of the fence, but I'll take some this weekend as well as how the deck is coming along.

Doing well

Echo's surgery went well, and he was a big hit at the Vet. Everyone loved him and they said he was a really good boy. They wanted to let him roam around the place during his stay, but didn't think the cats or other small dogs would like that. He is exhausted though. He didn't eat, drink, or sleep much over the 2 days. When we brought him home, he drank and ate right away and then about an hour later crashed. Too much action going on at the Vet to eat and sleep, I guess!

SNIP - Happy Birthday, Echo!

Echo goes in for surgery tomorrow morning, his 1st birthday, to remove the two kiwi's between his legs. Let's hope he comes out ok!
We're going to give him a bath tonight after a trail walk, which should have been done weeks ago after his play date at the Dantry farm. He was filthy from that experience, complete with an almost full submerge into their creek out back. We figure going into surgery clean is probably a good thing. I wonder if he'll have to wear a cone like his cousin Jake has right now?

Marn and I think we have finally figure out what it takes to get Echo to sleep in in the mornings.... a comfortable "full body" bed to sleep in!
All this time since starting to sleep in our room, and especially since the brighter mornings started, he's been getting up between 6:30 and 7:00 AM and waking us up by resting his head beside (or on top of) ours as well as the occasional lick to the face or feet sticking out the bottom of the covers. It was a RARE occasion that he'd sleep past 8 AM. Well, we finally got to cleaning up his room and took out the futon in there. For fun, I plopped it down in the living room where it stayed for a week. Echo loved it, so we thought we'd cut it in half and use it as his pillow/bed. The Costco pillows suck as they get compressed hard and lumpy after a month or so, and there's no reviving them.
Well this past weekend, I folded it in half and put it in our room for him as well as left his other pillow in the normal spot. He went to his normal pillow the first night - for about 5 minutes. It was pretty funny because we didn't prompt him to go to the new bed or anything. He just plopped down in his normal spot at first, and then as if to say, F this, I'm going to the comfy one! That morning (a Sunday!), Echo let us sleep until 9 AM, and WE had to get HIM up! It caused us to be late for breakfast in town with some friends, because who would have thought that he would sleep until 9 AM!? When I got up to go pee, he only lifted his head to look at me, and then curled right back up when he knew I wasn't leaving the room. He's only ever done that if he had a really long play day the day before.
Marn and I laugh at how easy he took to it - after 1 night he doesn't even look at the old bed anymore. Every night since "the switch" we've been able to sleep as long as we want to. Not once has he gotten up before us to wake us up. Hallelujah! (even though it's only been 3 nights so far).

We'll see how long this lasts, but if it continues, we're not touching that bed!

Flights and Echo are booked

Our short trip to BC is booked and Echo will be looked after while we're gone. We're really sad that we can't bring him, but we just can't do it - not for only a week at that price.
I am leaving for Calgary on the 16th, and then meeting Marnie in BC on the 18th morning where we'll spend the long weekend (4 days) with the Asbury's. We can't wait! I'm going to work in the BC office Wednesday and Thursday. We stay until Early Saturday morning. We're coming home Saturday, because we want to be back on Sunday to recover from jet-lag and also go to the "booby-q" at Angus Glen - the 2nd annual charity BBQ for Michelle and breast cancer.

Echo is staying at doggy day care/boarding. It sounds like a pretty good place with lots of playtime with other dogs. We're going to "splurge" the extra $5 for him to go on a few 1.5 hour trail walks during the week, and then opt for the bath before pick up. Can you imagine how dirty he'll be with how much he slobbers at the sight of other dogs and playing with them all week? Yuck...
Marn's parents are taking him for the long weekend and then dropping him off for Tuesday to Friday that we're gone.

We're going to miss the little beast! And by little I mean enormous.

Michelle's Dying Wish

Cut and Paste from a Toronto Star article in today's paper.
http://www.thestar.com/article/210235

TESTS BEGIN FOR DEADLY, INHERITED GENE MUTATION

TheStar.com - Health - Her dying wish

Her dying wish

Michelle Hobor's killer, a cancer gene mutation, is now being tracked through her family.

May 04, 2007 04:30 AM

Michele Henry

Michelle Hobor went to an early grave with the wish that her family members would not follow her before their time.

Hobor's dying wish prompted her father, Donald Hovey, to spend countless hours researching his family tree since Hobor, 32, died of breast cancer 2 1/2 months ago. It's why he's pored over genealogy charts and has made more than 200 cold calls to relatives he never knew he had.

It's all to let members of his daughter's bloodline know they may have a lethal genetic mutation – the one that caused cancer in his daughter, and took her life after a ferocious two-year battle.

Hobor's story touched Toronto Star readers when it first appeared last year in a special section about breast cancer. A Sunday Star cover story following her death last January prompted another outpouring of response and hope about the future of cancer care, treatment and prevention.

She left behind her husband Terry and two small children, Nate, 3, and Noelle, 1.

"It's something that I promised Michelle before she died," Hovey says. "I was going to get people in the family to be tested. The only way to do anything about this is to get tested."

Because of his efforts, two Toronto genetic counsellors last month flew to Fredericton, N.B., where Hobor has a large concentration of relatives. There, Rochelle Demsky and Alleta Pole interviewed and drew blood from more than 30 extended family members. That's how they hunt for the BRCA1 gene, a rare genetic mutation passed to subsequent generations through both males and females.

The gene can be carried through men – Hovey passed it onto Hobor. It wreaks destruction by increasing the risk of breast and ovarian cancer, and prostate cancer in men.

Testing positive for the mutation means a carrier has a 50-to-80 per cent chance of getting breast cancer and a 20-to-40 per cent chance of developing ovarian cancer. In the population at large, the risk for breast cancer is 12 per cent and 1.5 per cent for ovarian cancer.

Terry Hobor, Michelle's husband, knows that each of his kids has a 50 per cent chance of carrying the deadly gene that killed their mom. But they can't be tested until they're 18.

"I'm rolling the dice here," he says. "This is tough. We're adjusting. We're trying to move forward."

While Terry, a Toronto police officer, applauds Hovey's work, he hopes the future holds prevention for his kids – not just treatment or hopes of a cure.

Dr. Steven Narod, one of Hobor's doctors and Canadian research chair in breast cancer at Women's College Hospital in Toronto, has his sights and his work fixed on the present. He funded the two genetic counsellors' trip to Everett Chalmers Hospital, in Fredericton, through the Canadian Breast Cancer Research Association

He sees urgency in getting members of Hobor's family tested. Without Hovey's initiative, Narod says, this mission wouldn't be possible.

Physicians are reticent to go where they're "not invited," he says, so they don't often seek out potentially affected individuals for testing.

While genetic screening is available in neighbouring Nova Scotia, patients there face a year-long wait.

"I don't want to see situations like Michelle's, where a 30-year-old dies," Narod says. "I want to see that the family is taken care of. I'll go out of my way a million miles to do it."

Through his research, based in Toronto, Narod follows 8,000 women at risk or already suffering from breast or ovarian cancer. He'll add Hobor's relatives to his roster, which tracks the preventions and treatments that are working – and those that are not.In terms of testing for the BRCA1 gene, the sooner the better, says genetic counsellor Demsky.

"It's valuable information to have because it could save their lives," she says. "It gives them options."

Those who don't carry the mutation can't pass it onto their children. Those who test positive will have choices to make: they can undergo preventative chemotherapy; take drugs that might lower the risk of developing cancer; have surgery to remove ovaries or breasts; or decide to do nothing, but be frequently screened for cancer with mammograms or MRIs.

Sharon Hovey feels blessed to know they exist.

One of Hobor's aunts, Sharon was tested for the mutation in Fredericton last week and feels relived she can be proactive. "Before this there was no hope for any one of us," she says. "At least now we have an answer. There's things that can be done about it."

Demsky and Pole will return to New Brunswick in July with the test results and letters signed by Narod, advising local doctors of best prevention and treatment strategies.

In the meantime, Hovey will continue to hunt for other relatives the world over. Most will have a 50 per cent chance of carrying the mutated gene.

"Hopefully, if there's enough people tested then they can do something about it," he says. "It's hit so close to home and I want people to be aware of it.

"The only way you can do anything is through awareness."

$800 and up

That would be the cost to take Echo out west with us on our little mini-trip. Crazy!
WestJet Cargo was $402.80 each way, and Air Canada Cargo was $980 - I didn't ask if that was both directions, but the guy didn't specify.

So unfortunately, we won't be bringing Echo with us. If we were going for 2 weeks I'd say yes, but 1 week is far too short for that cost! I suppose we knew this was going to be a hassle when we decided on a Great Dane, but it's still sad.

So I'll be asking our Breeder if she would take him, or maybe a kennel - there seems to be a decent one near us and for fairly cheap ($28/day, I think).