I am stepping back from my blog posts in preparation for my surgery ahead. I need to mentally prepare and infuse my body with lots of water. I need to finish the tasks of getting forms in hands of local docs and lining up my post-op care. I also need to activate my pre-authorized insurances so timing is essential on these items or I lose out financially. I head for surgery in twelve days. Go to Toronto in a week (or earlier if there is a storm warning on the weekend of 5th thereabouts). Alice Finnamore - one of the “Voices Within” my book project has agreed to step in and post for me. She is a sister of faith and soul.

I will send her information to log into my site and encourage her to blog and also to lead you to her own site and projects if you are so inclined to visit her there.

Thank you Alice. Have fun! Keep posted!

Love Barbara

Update - December 29/07 You are very welcome, Barb. I’m happy at the very least to keep your readers informed of your progress.

Alice

Update December 30. Alice has successfully tested the site and will be posting until after my surgery. This is my last day of work (12 hours) and I am hopefully going to visit my daughter tomorrow (and grandchildren) with my sisters. Then final preparations for surgery. Roberta and I leave Saturday (or earlier if bad weather is called for. No way I am missing my appointment with Dr. Wunder on the 7th and surgery on the 10th.) I only hope for good health (no colds /flu) until I get there. We will try to send pictures and see if Alice can post them. Love to all until I get back then. Love Barbara xoxoxox

Barb has been trying to get me into blogging for quite a while. I have made some attempts in my own blog, but I look at what she does with amazement. I’ve been unable to be so consistent.

Barb has been a writer for a long time. I have too, but I’m not as prolific as she. You’d laugh at all the email she’d send me over the years. Sometimes just a line or two. Whatever thought was going through her head at the time.

Sometimes she’d send me pieces of her book as it came into being. I’d cut and slash, removing words. Then I’d send her some of my own, and she would edit mine in the same friendly way. We uploaded our completed documents to Lulu on the same day.

So now she has found a way to get me blogging. Surely she could have found an easier way than to get a tumor on her leg, but that is Barb. She does whatever is needed to accomplish a goal. Nothing stands in her way.

So, until tomorrow, I’ll sign off.

Alice, Barb’s Surrogate Blogger

New Years Day, 2008, and again I’m writing as Barb’s surrogate blogger. Yesterday I sent out a newsletter where I had the following New Years thoughts:

I have a magic wand in my office. I sometimes ask clients this question: If I could wave my magic wand, and make your life exactly right, the problem(s) fixed, what would it look like?

Perhaps that is a question for your New Year’s Eve meditation. What do you want your 2008 to look like? Then take your own (imagined) magic wand, as all magic wands only work by imagination anyway, and give it a flick. See your future unfold before you, and keep seeing it, as we move on into the next year.

Anytime you catch yourself imagining something you DON’T want, stop yourself. Shout NO! Give yourself a shake, and re-visualize your beautiful year. In fact, if you’d like, I’d be happy to receive emails from any of you, with a written description of your best 2008 ever.

Happy New Year!

Love, Alice

Surrogate Blogger that I am, I am happy to sit home on a day where the drifts are waist deep outside my door. Time to lay low and catch up on the mending etc.

My son, home for a Christmas visit from BC, brought three pair of jeans for mending. What else is a mom for? Oh, yes, the cookies and the good meals and lots of hugs and kisses, too.

Barb is up to her ears in snow too, but the forecast looks good for Saturday when she flies off to Toronto. Meanwhile, she tells me she is off email until further notice.

Alice, filling in for Barb

Took my son to the airport this morning. The 6:30 am flight. Managed to save my tears until I left. It will likely be next Christmas before I see him again at the happy (arrivals) end of the airport.

Tomorrow I will be at the airport again, this time with Barb. She meets with her surgeon on Monday, in prep for surgery on Thursday January 10. She doesn’t expect a long stay in Toronto, but will be offline for at least two or three weeks. She asks that until further notice, she does not want email coming into her inbox. Leave a message here on the blog pages if you wish, instead.

Yesterday Barb picked up her good friend Brent. Together they ran “about twenty” errands in preparation for the coming months of recuperation. A busy day.

Barb had it well planned though, to end the day with a three hour session at the Village Retreat in Stanley. Facial, massage, pedicure, manicure…. Today she’ll have her hair done, and will be off to Toronto tomorrow looking fabulous.

Yes, tomorrow I’ll drop her off at the sad end of the airport, but it won’t be long until I see her again. Of course we don’t know what she really faces at Mount Sinai hospital, but, as Barb says:

“This is in all probability a low-grade recurrant liposarcoma of the thigh and I am confident that surgery with no follow-up radiation will be the path. I will be fine. And it COULD be benign.”

Yes, Barb, we hope and pray that it is, and you’ll be back here with us soon.

Until then, I remain, the Surrogate Blogger,

Alice

Got Barb off to Toronto this afternoon.  I spent a few hours with her, helping her tidy up and pack.  She is in an excellent frame of mind.  Such a good state of mind, in fact, that she was concerned that she might be feeling too good!

On the way to the airport, she told me that she was glad to have Roberta MacKenzie with her on this journey.  Roberta would be  down to earth and unemotional about all of this.  We had a great laugh, though, when Roberta arrived, teary eyed.  Poor Roberta has lost six people in six months, she said, the last being her good friend, Enid Inch,  the weaver.  

I know that sounds horrid, to laugh at such a time.  But Roberta laughed too.  And laughter is well known to be good medicine. 

We also laughed about Barb’s friends, near and far, who are having a hard time with the concept of sending healing light, etc, to the Medical System rather than to her as an individual.  People are refusing to do as she asks.  Which made me laugh, because she’ll probably end up with more prayers said on her behalf than if she hadn’t made her request.  After all, isn’t it true that what we push away from us comes back more strongly?

Barb and Roberta were laughing as they went through the gate toward the plane.  I will be imagining Barb laughing all the way to the operating room on Thursday.

Laughing with her, Barb’s Surrogate Blogger,

Alice

An update from Barb’s Surrogate Blogger:

When Barb booked her tickets, for her journey to Toronto for surgery, she requested seats near the front of the plane.  Somehow she and Roberta ended up with seats at the very back.  Why do things like that happen?  Too often we grumble when we don’t get our way.  But if we have the attitude that things happen for a reason, we open ourselves to the synchronicities of life.

As it happened, Barb and Roberta settled into their seats, and began to talk about Helen Bar-Lev.  They were trying to remember what kind of surgery Helen had.  If I understood correctly, as they were guessing various surgeries, a voice in front of them, belonging to a “very good looking man”, joined in with “Hiatus Hernia.”

The good looking man, it turns out, is a surgeon, a colleague of Barb’s Dr. Wunder.  He’d been home to Fredericton for Christmas and was flying yesterday with his mother and two wee girls. 

He assured Barb that Dr. Jay Wunder was the best in the country, that she was in excellent hands.  He also told her that fewer than one hundred Canadians are dealing with this type of cancer.  Yes, a rare cancer in our rare friend, Barb.  (Of course, we’ll only know for sure, after surgery on Thursday.)

That would have been enough reason to be in the back seat of the plane, in my opinion, but that was not all.  The woman with this surgeon, his mother, recognized the Gill name.  Her husband, a banker, had been the one who had put Gill Lumber into receivership so many years ago.

Barb has written about the receivership in Soul Gifts, in the end notes, where she speaks about Big P, Little p Politics.  The woman told Barb that her husband had felt very strongly about this, not wanting to put the company into receivership at all.  Out of his hands, apparently. Sometimes we never hear the other side of the story.  Usually when we do, forgiveness and healing occur.  I believe that one corner of Barb’s soul found healing in this serenditous meeting. 

Being in the back of the plane is only the beginning of this adventure for Barb and Roberta.  Life  is always an adventure, if we open our hearts, even in the back seat of a plane.

Alice

Alice, Surrogate Blogger, reporting on the life and times of writer, Barbara J. Gill. 

After five hours of pacing Mount Sinai Hospital, Barbara J Gill received positive news from her surgeon, Dr. Jay Wunder.

Dr. Wunder, a minimalist, according to Ms. Gill, believes that the mass/tumor is not attached to the surrounding tissue.  He intends to cut in through the original scar to remove the tumor, and expects to avoid damage to the three muscle groups in the area.

Dr. Wunder has pronounced Ms. Gill to be in good health as she does not smoke, and expects a positive outcome.  He believes she will have full use of her leg after surgery,

The procedure will be performed on Thursday, January 10, and Ms. Gill expects to return to her home in Stanley, New Brunswick as early as Sunday, January 13.

Following this excellent meeting, Ms. Gill retired to have a leisurely rack of lamb.  We look forward to her full recovery, with joy and expectation. 

 Ms. Gill’s companion, Roberta MacKenzie, forwarded the information on her behalf, and will be at her side assisting in emotional and physical preparation for surgery.

Joyfully,

    Alice

 

Last night, Barb called me from her Toronto hotel room.  She keeps me well informed of what is happening on this, her journey into recovery from liposarcoma.

Yesterday, Jan 8, our Barb walked and shopped wearing her sequinned slippers, while others tracked through the grey Toronto landscape overheated in their coats and boots.  She will be glad to return to Fredericton, as she really doesn’t like the overcrowded hurry of the big city.

My reporting of the other day ended with the rack of lamb, which Barb says was delicious. The rest of that story is typical Barb.  She sat alone in the sparsely populated dining room, as Roberta was visiting family members. Across the room, a couple sat in one corner, while a table nearby served four cheerful women.  When their meals arrived, they joined hands and offered a word of thanks. 

From their conversation, Barb discovered that they were nurses, and, being Barb, she went over to their table to introduce herself, as a nurse from New Brunswick, in Toronto for surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital.

These union nurses, from Sunnybrook Hospital, gave Barb their number.  If she had any trouble, she was to call. Barb gave them her website address, telling them they would be mentioned in her blog. She calls them “four little angels”. So I am sending greetings.  Hello, Angels! Thank you for your kindness to my friend, Barb.

Although Barb did not join their table, she no longer felt alone.  Companionship, with strangers, far from home, but close in cause and comradeship.  Barb told them how she was the first president of the first graduating class in the two year nurses training program in Saint John, NB.  She was elected president in 1970, for the class of 1972. She won an award for “most elevating the spirit of the school”. 

This was the beginning of Barb’s political activism, connecting her with the NB Student Nurses’ Association, and eventually with the Nurses’ Union.  During that time, she created a scrapbook, which she has been tidying up in the last few weeks.  She intends to donate it to the New Brunswick Nurses’ Union.

Later in the evening, despite the rack of lamb, Barb was hungry for apple crisp and ordered room service.  The man who delivered it to her door had been working in the morning too, and was putting in an extra shift because they were short staffed. They chatted. Barb is very open about her situation. This man gave her a huge hug, she says, and told her, “You be okay.  I give this to you.”

Yes, Barb.  You be okay.  We give you our hugs too. 

Love, Alice, your Surrogate Blogger

Barb’s surgery went well.  The surgeon was able to remove the tumor all in one piece.  It had three branches, he said, and he had to take a tiny bit of muscle.  I’ll be talking to Barb tomorrow, and will write with more info when I get it.

 So while we are waiting for news…

Barb forms relationships with tumors.  In 2001, she spoke about “My Little Tumor”.  You can read all about it in Soul Gifts, where she talks about Bear dancing off into the sunset with “My Little Tumor”.  She, the tumor, looked like an orange.  This was before Barb made any connection between the liposarcoma and  the effect of Agent Orange spraying in her childhood playgrounds.

This time, the tumor seemed like the head of a snake. A thick, gnarly head, with a long tapering body, like a whip.  She saw herself whirling it around her head, holding it by the tail. She felt cruel doing this. One of us told her to just let go, but she was afraid letting go might hurt the snake. 

The snake, the tumor, was at the top of her thigh, near her groin, reminiscent of the root chakra, often symbolized by a snake, representing the kundalini energy resting there.

With that thought, Barb went for her MRI, visualizing the snake winding its way through her chakras, She says the snake went out through her head that day, but settled into her thigh again.

As this conversation developed, Barb heard from Kathi Zwicker, a United Church minister.  Kathi told her that perhaps the snake was a signal to go deeper, rather than an invitation to leave this physical life.

Kathi said: “it is when we let go (of that which we are holding on and twirling around) that we are able to not only remain grounded but dig down to the roots which help us to stand.”

Not long after this, Barb found her cane, at the Taymouth market, hand made by Stuart Douglass.  Her hand and eyes went to it.  She moved on, but Mr. Douglass brought her back, telling her it was his favourite.  It was hers, for five dollars.  She sees the face of the snake within the head of the cane. 

So today, the snake tumor was removed.  I am curious for more of what the doctor has to say.  Meanwhile, we are left thinking about the root chakra. The root chakra is all about security, rootedness, and our foundation for life. 

I think perhaps this is why Barb asks for prayers for the System, rather than for herself.  What is the root of the matter, after all?  We can trace Barb’s snake down through the delays within the medical system, down to the health of the environment, into the haphazard carelessness of human use of poisons such as Agent Orange. 

Alice, Barb’s Surrogate Blogger