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Does Everything REALLY Happen For A Reason?

Often it is the deepest pain that empowers one to grow into your highest self – so I heard many times. But does one really have to go thru’ the pain of death or sickness to become one’s best? If it is true then it has gotta be the hardest lesson one has to go thru’ and no one in my opinion should go thru’ something so painful as health, sickness, and death. But of course in the perfect world, this ain’t gonna happen

Some ppl also said that one day, everything will make perfect sense, really?? But I guess, for now, one just got to live life at its fullest and do what makes one happy eh? And I’m trying to look at things even more simply and happily but sometimes it does get hard. I wanna do the right thing for everyone but sometimes others do not see it that way but do I wanna care what others think ? No not really , unless they are my spouse and kid , everyone else don’t matter.

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Voting & Illegal Immigrant

Every time when voting comes along – whether it is for town/provincial or federal – i don’t have to vote because I’m not a Canadian citizen but a permanent resident. I enjoy everything Canadian benefits but I just cannot vote and that’s alright with me because I wanna keep my Citizenship in my birth country.

But every time when election time comes, I have great fun in telling the volunteers that I’m not voting and only the spouse will be because I’m an illegal immigrant. LOL I have so much fun seeing their facial expression and their reaction. Most of them don’t know how to react and some just ignore me and that’s alright and no one was ever rude to me or calling immigration on me. So you see, the Canadian are fairly nice people eh.

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Eulogy For My Father-In-Law

Hi, my name is XXX and I’m Budd’s daughter-in-law. Since he has always said that I’m bossy, I think it’s befitting for me to do the eulogy. I know Budd doesn’t like long eulogies, so I’m going to keep it really short. Firstly, I would like to thank everyone so much for being here this afternoon to support our family.

Budd was a kind and generous man, he never said no to anything I asked of him even if he didn’t like it. He would reply “I suppose”. I’ve asked Budd to make me a flower bed at our cottage and he did it for me. I asked him to make a coat hanger on a nice solid piece of wood, and he did it. I asked him to grow some okra for me and he did it. During his illness, I asked him not to die on me and he tried his best to make it through. I told him I wasn’t ready to let him go, so he said to me… he will try. My father-in-law never said no to me except when I asked him for mahjong money, but even then when I was doing radiation in Halifax and was so bored and asked him to sponsor me for my mahjong, he said ok.

Budd loved his sons Chris and Richard and granddaughter Chloe very much and would do anything for them. He knew how much Chloe loves peas, corn, strawberries, and raspberries, so he would have them ready for her every summer. He was a good friend to many, he was smart and always had something knowledgeable to share. You would always learn something new from conversations with him. Budd had a good sense of humor as well as an eye for good-looking women and he never had a bad thing to say about anyone. He was the best father-in-law anyone could ask for and I was privileged to have spent 21 years with him. I want everyoneto know how important he was to me, I’m going to miss him dearly but I know that he is no longer in pain and is back with Olivette now.

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Just When I Thought ….

Just when I thought that everything is gonna be better from now on and easier, we found out that my father-in-law was very sick. Yes, so sick that he can’t drink the bottle of vodka that we had gotten him during Father’s Day. That was when it hit me that he was very very sick. My FIL never refused vodka – any kind to be exact for the 21 years that I’ve known him, so when he told me he cannot stomach the vodka, I knew there and then that something was really wrong. My gut feeling wasn’t good at all about it.

Fast forward, he did go to the hospital, had brain surgery for his tumor behind his head, didn’t wake up immediately but finally did, gave us a huge scare. We headed up to the city immediately to visit him, he recovered from that and came back to the hospital in town. Was doing so so well, and they discharged him and less than 10 days was back in the hospital by ambulance because he didn’t have the strength to lift himself up.

After much tests, they concluded that he had a c. difficile virus that attacked his colon. It was a wicked virus and my FIL fought the virus as best as he could. I know that till the end, he wanted to make it and he left us on the 9th August 2021.

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Maitri

“May I be happy, healthy, safe, and live with ease.” Repetition is key, as well as catching yourself when you aren’t being so friendly to yourself. You can recite aloud or silently any of those four slogans as necessary throughout your day.

I’m going to need to remind myself constantly from this day on to be kind to myself and that the whole world does not need saving. I’ve been pushing myself really hard these days and in return – also pushing the spouse to ferry me around to do good deeds and things I feel it is the right thing to do for others. But I need to learn to take care of myself first – especially now that I’m fighting cancer. In other words, I have to remind myself to stop being such a kaypoh !!!

Maitri is the path of developing an unconditional friendliness toward every part of our sweet selves—so that we can be fully available to ourself, our life, our loved ones, and this world.

Maitri is about more than self-care. It’s about more than spa days and epsom salts.⁠

It’s about becoming strong, grounded, confident, resilient, relaxed, with a light touch. It’s about becoming ourselves.

It’s not about Self-Help—it’s not about getting “better”—it’s about recognizing the sweet heart that’s always been here.

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Left Side Face Pain

I’m writing this for reference for my kid in the future – in case i’m no longer around and she is experiencing the same symptoms.

Many years ago, I experienced this pain on my left side of my face, nearer to my ears than my nose and I thought I had a toothache. After checking on my tooth, there was nothing rotting or bad at all, so I didn’t know what to think. I took lots of tylenol and advil for the longest time and it didn’t help. One day, I woke up and felt like I might have a cold coming along and took some cold tablets like Berkeley and the pain lessen. I now know that it was a sinus inflammation. Therefore, if you even have pain on the left side of your face or eyes, it may be a sinus infection and not some other thing.

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Father’s Day 2021

So Father’s Day is a few days away and on my facebook page, I see and am friends with a lot of upstanding fathers. I am so happy that there are so many good fathers out there including my spouse and his father – my father-in-law.

But of course, I cannot help but think of my own dad who was never there for me or my siblings. It’s actually quite sad for him because we were all good kids and we turn out pretty good despite not having him in our lives.

And I’m happy to tell everyone from my past and present what a good dad the spouse is to the kid. I cannot ask for a better dad for my kid, in fact, I think he is better with the kid than I am. Not only is he there for her , but he pays for everything the kid needs. He brings her to the doctors, the dentist and any appointments she has and pick her up and drop her off religiously to anywhere she wants to go. Understanding her and never forcing her to do anything she doesn’t want nor embarrassing her in front of her friends like her mom does. LOL.

Yes, anyone can father kids but to be a real dad – not many ppl are up to it. And I can proudly say that my kid’s Dad is the best to her.

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Tamoxifen

So I started taking Tamoxifen a few weeks ago, as per my oncologist’s instructions. I was kinda hesitant because of all the side effects I read online. But one has gotta do what one gotta do in my case – to heal, to survive, to rid cancer from coming back.

Is Tamoxifen 100% gonna keep cancer away? I don’t really know and no one can promise me anything as per the oncologist department. But if I don’t take Tamoxifen for the next 5 years the chances of cancer coming back is higher in the risk factor. Therefore, I’ve decided to take it.

Are there any changes in my body and stuff? Not much I think except for more discharge and I don’t even know if they are related. In the meantime, I’m gonna keep an eye on everything that is going on in my body and will update everyone.

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My Mother

Mother’s Day just came and went by and on that day, I cannot help but think of my own mom. Do not get me wrong, I don’t think my mom is a bad mom but she was definitely different. And even though she was treated with biased gender animosity, she too treated us, girls, with the same biasness. Sad but true, so the boys in our family always came first, no matter what.

But my mom did love all of us in her own way but differently. And I don’t blame her coz’ she had a really hard life and my dad wasn’t a good man at all, who didn’t give her any support in raising us. So we were practically raised by a single mom. When we were younger, we did not understand all the hardship she had to go thru’ but now as a mom I do. And I have full support from my spouse and extended family and friends.

I’m definitely luckier than my mom coz’ I had a little bit more education and wasn’t willing to stay in a bad relationship like my mom. I think during those days, women felt that they had nowhere to turn to but in this day and age, no woman should stay in a bad relationship especially one as irresponsible as my dad. I’m luckier because my partner is a good father and a good provider for both my child and I. My extended family is good to me and even though I cannot differentiate sometimes if my mom was a good mom or a bad one, I just have to remember that she tried her best to bring us up the best she knew how.

As for me being a mom, I credit my kid’s upbringing to her dad because he had always been a great example to/for her and good blood from his side of the family. I think my side of the family is bad blood. LOL. And as my kid’s mom, I just want her to be happy and to live her life to its fullest and not fear anything. Then my job is done as a mom.

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Too Much Coffee ?

When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer, like everyone, I wonder if I did something wrong and what was it. Could it be too much coffee with heavy cream that I have been doing for the past 1 year because I wanted to change my diet to a no sugar , no carb diet ? Or could it be the heavy cream? I do drink a lot more coffee these days and wonder and sometimes blame myself for changing my diet. But when the lump on my breast grew, I was at my healthiest weight and my AIC for my Type 2 diabetes was as low as 5.2. So what could it be?

For the past 8 months, I have been reading, I have been researching, I’ve been talking to people who’ve survived breast cancer, who are in remission but I’ve yet to come up with a conclusion as to what it is that had caused my lump to grow so big suddenly and become painful.

But then it also dawn on me that I was in denial too, because before the lump grew bigger, I had noticed specks of blood from my nipples a couple of times and had ignored it. And then my lump was uncomfy and I had been upset with my kid one time because I sense something wasn’t quite right but had pushed it at the back of my mind because we were on Covid times and my doctor was in the city.

So could I have seen it coming and felt that it wasn’t that important and that the kid and not upsetting the spouse’s business were more important? Maybe and most likely since most women and mothers are very likely to make sacrifices like that. I often wonder if I acted more quickly, could I not have had a mastectomy ? The what ifs has been on my mind a lot of late, but there is no turning back to yesterday right? So therefore, i’m only gonna move forward and not think about it but making sure that I let all my doctors know if I find anything unusual from now on. I also learned that you’ve gotta take care of yourself because no one will as no one knows how you are feeling except yourself.

As for the too much coffee? I think everything in moderation is the right thing to do and also prevention is better than cure. So to my kid and all women out there , if you are reading it, please see a doctor as soon as you feel something ain’t right – trust your gut !