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As most of you know, on Friday the 13th I was re-diagnosed as having cancer. Back in 2004, they thought my tumour was a GIST (Gastro-Intestinal Stromal Tumour), which if not treated by surgery can be treated by a drug known as Gleevac/Imatnib in most cases.
After my re-diagnosis, they took my tumour out of storage (The BC Cancer Agency keeps samples from all tumours going back to the 80’s apparently) and re-ran some tests (and some new tests) on it.
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Back when I had my cancer scare in 2004, it hadn’t felt like I “had” cancer. I didn’t go through that whole “you have cancer” followed by surgery, chemo and endless dread. I was told “you had cancer”, and then put into “watch and shoot” mode.
For nearly six and a half years, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Last summer I was 5+ years cancer free. Another year goes by and the other shoe finally dropped.
You know how when things go wrong they really start to go wrong?
Alice’s daily driver is (was?) a 1999 Volkswagen Golf GLS A4. It’s been a decent car but a bit small. We’ve been pretty good on keeping up on the maintenance, but it finally caught up. Its last checkup revealed a need for a new head gasket (oil leak), new strut tower, and new back brakes and rotors. Looking at a couple thousand dollar bill.
We decided it’s time for a new car. We had researched new cars last year and had narrowed it down to a Dodge Journey or a Mazda 5. We were getting ready to buy a new car when my car (2004 RX8 GT) decided to die on the drive home from work. Initially it looked like a blown engine, but it turns out it was only 1200 bucks worth of engine coils, sparkplugs and a new catalytic converter.
The good news is that we still had enough in the budget to buy a new car. We decided on a Mazda 5 from Signature Mazda, and brought it home on March 30th. My car, newly repaired, followed home on the 31st. This left us with 4 driveable cars parked at our house with the loaner 1991 Jeep Pioneer from Dad. The Volkswagen spent its first night outside in 10 years.
Next morning, we found the Golf with its windows down in the rain. Turns out someone had broken in via the automatic window down feature (which neccesitated smashing a lock). Luckily, we’d emptied the car, and they only managed to break the door lock and glove box lock (without breaking into it!).
*sigh* at least it’ll be all cleaned up and repaired when we sell it 
At work and home I usually have a chat window or two running.
I ordered one of these the other day and just got word it’s shipping.
I’ll do up a little review when it comes in.
As many of you know, I was admitted to the hospital on March 27th… here’s why.