Hi everyone. I haven't posted much lately and many of you know why. But for anyone I haven't managed to tell yet, on November 5, my wife Kim was diagnosed with Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma (i.e. cancer of the lymphatic system). The cancer has also moved into her lungs, and as a result is automatically classified as a stage 4 cancer (one that has spread into other systems from the initial site).

It started back in October when Kim noticed a couple lumps in her neck. The doctor prescribed antibiotics and that seemed to help for a while. But the lumps came back and became painful and Kim eventually ended up in the ER due to the pain. They did various tests over the course of three days, cumulating in a complete biopsy of one of the swollen lymph nodes. We had the results a week later. Since then things have moved fast.

We met with a wonderful hematological oncologist at St. Michael's hospital and she ordered lots more tests to help stage the cancer. The tests included CT scans, radioactive dye tests and a painful bone marrow biopsy. As I mentioned, it is at stage 4 due to the lung involvement, but the cancer is not in Kim's bone marrow and so the treatment is more straight-forward.

This type of lymphoma is one of the most common types and so the treatment is extremely well researched and standardized. The treatment is also very effective at not just reversing the cancer, but ultimately curing it in many cases. Kim will be doing six to eight cycles of chemotherapy at three week intervals. The specific chemotherapy protocol is known as R-CHOP which is an acronym for the drugs that will be used (rituximab, cyclophosphamide, hydroxdaunorubicin, oncovin and prednisone).

We were well aware that chemotherapy has lots of side-effects, however we were totally unprepared for the fact that cyclophosphamide (particularly in the doses Kim will be getting) has a high potential for sterility. As we are planning on having kids in the next few years this news was upsetting. However, the fact that we were already planning on having kids meant that we were excellent candidates for In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). The idea is that they extract eggs from Kim, fertilize them with my sperm and freeze them for future use. Although it is possible to just freeze the eggs, embryos freeze a lot better so it's great that we were already at this stage of our life.

We were referred to a fertility clinic as soon as the initial diagnosis came in and we got started on the process to get Kim ready to extract eggs. This process was projected to take about two weeks which was also the estimated time it would take to prepare Kim for chemotherapy. So a lot was going on in parallel but it seemed like it would all line up nicely.

The IVF process was extremely involved. Both of us had to get lots of blood tests, and Kim had to go into the clinic every day to get injections of drugs to stimulate egg production. She also had to get ultrasounds and blood tests every other day to monitor her progress. The whole thing added a lot of stress to an already stressful time, but we managed. Unfortunately, the IVF treatments were well underway by the time we got the information about the cancer being stage 4. Looking back, we probably would have skipped the whole IVF thing if we had known the cancer was so advanced. However at that point we had already invested lots of time and money into the process and the oncologist assured us it was OK to continue. So we kept going.

Then about a week ago, it looked like Kim wasn't going to be ready for egg harvesting before her first chemotherapy treatment. She also started having more problems breathing due to the cancer in her lungs. This combined to produce a lot of stress. We contacted the oncologist and she was concerned enough about Kim's breathing to admit her to the hospital (St. Michael's) on Monday afternoon of this week. They started her on steroids (prednisone, the P from R-CHOP) to help clear things up and that worked quite well. They've also been running lots of fluids through her intravenously to help flush out any toxicity from degrading cancer cells. Despite all this craziness, we were still able to go the fertility clinic today to complete the egg retrieval. That process went extremely smoothly and they managed to extract 24 eggs (we will find out how many were successfully fertilized tomorrow). An hour after the procedure we were able to head back to the hospital and Kim has been resting ever since.

Tomorrow Kim starts on rituximab, the first part of her chemotherapy. Friday she will receive the rest. Saturday will be recovery and hopefully she can go home after that. As long as all goes well future chemotherapy treatments should only take a day and will be done as out-patient procedures. The first treatment was originally scheduled to be done as out-patient as well, but we're all pretty happy to have it done while Kim is admitted as an in-patient. It means we will get immediate help for any side-effects and it should make it easier for us to handle recovery from future treatments at home.

A lot of people I talk to about this are surprised that Kim is being treated at St. Michael's and not Princess Margaret or Sunnybrook. Although it is true that both of those places are great for cancer treatment, St. Michael's also has an excellent cancer treatment program and we have been nothing but thrilled with the care and treatment provided so far.

Both Kim and I have also had a ton of support and understanding from our employers, for which we are truly grateful.

Finally, all of the kind thoughts, emails and phone calls from friends and family have been much appreciated and will continue to be appreciated in the future. Anyone should feel free to send messages whenever, just understand that we may not reply right away due to the craziness of treatment plus the fact that we have still have to move to our new house in three weeks.

I intend to try to update this blog regularly now with how things are going. This will be easier for me than trying to contact everyone individually with updates. It's not that I don't want to talk to people, just that there isn't always enough time.

This and this both explain a lot. Unfortunately our new house falls on the other side of the magical boundary.

Update: The National Post has the nicest version I've seen of the mayoral results broken down by ward and if you haven't seen it already, check out Rob Ford's first post-election fail (a pre-scheduled interview with the CBC that was just awful, as a result of which the CBC is apparently now cut off from Rob Ford, just like the Toronto Star).

Today while blindly browsing teh interwebs I came across the Armstrong, Beere and Hime Panorama which is a set of the earliest know photos of Toronto forming a panorama of the city as it was in 1856 from the corner of King and York. I love seeing old pictures of the city because you can see landmarks that are still around today and it's neat to see how things have changed around them. In this panorama in particular you can spot Osgoode Hall, St. Lawrence Hall, and St. James Cathedral (before its spire was built!). It's amazing how different the city was back then.

You can read more about the panorama at the City of Toronto Archives. They also have a map of the city from the year the photos were taken. It's bounded by Bloor in the north, Strachan in the west and the Don Valley in the east. Toronto was so small back then!

Dinosaur Comics is my number one favourite web comic on the whole Internets. Not only is it hilarious and fairly nerdy, but the author, Ryan North, lives in Toronto so there are often vague references to things happening here.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to help spread the word about an awesome book that is going on sale which was inspired by a particular Dinosaur Comic. Ryan North and twenty-nine other people (including Randall Munroe from xkcd and Ben Croshaw from Zero Punctuation) contributed short stories based on the premise of that comic which have been combined into an anthology called Machine of Death (if you haven't checked out the comic yet, go do it now so you can understand the title).

Unfortunately they could not get a publisher to pick up the project and so had to publish it themselves. They are not bitter about this, as it is clearly a niche market, but they also don't want to just let the book slip quietly into obscurity. If you're interested in the book please buy it from the Amazon link above on October 26th. Apparently top sellers on Amazon only sell a few hundred books a day, so if everyone who is interested in this book buys it on the same day it should reach the number one selling book on Amazon for that day. That could be enough to make a difference in the future of the book and would be a great win for an independent publisher. For more information check out the Machine of Death website.

If you're not interested in buying the book without more information they are planning to release it for free as a PDF on their website eventually. So you could read it when that happens and then if you like it, support them by buying the book at that time. DON'T WORRY, THEY'LL STILL TAKE YOUR MONEY AFTER THE 26TH! :)

I find the current mayoral race in Toronto fairly depressing and I think the problem has more to do with the state of municipal politics in general than with the current crop of less than inspiring candidates.

For me, the largest issue is transportation of all forms. People (who don't actually live in Toronto) complain an awful lot about how terrible it is to drive here. The reason of course is that there is limited space for roads in the downtown core of any city and that the only way to alleviate the problem is to decrease the number of cars using those roads. The obvious way to solve this problem is through promotion of alternative means of transportation such as walking, biking and most importantly public transit.

But that's where it all falls apart. City council has enough power and funds to tackle bike lanes and neighbourhood walk-ability issues but they honestly don't have much hope on public transit.

The whole "Transit City" program, while better than nothing, isn't anywhere close to sufficient in addressing the current and future needs of Toronto. As a city we really need several new subway lines in addition to extensions and upgrades to the existing lines. Such projects are expensive and challenging and require long term plans that extend beyond the average term of any particular mayor. Most importantly, they are not financially feasible without significant guaranteed investment from the federal and provincial governments.

Such investment will never come though (despite the fact that cities all over the world get transit funding from higher levels of government), as it is political suicide to spend large amounts of money on things that only help Toronto. Over 10% of all Canadians live in the GTA but the national sport of Toronto-hating forver holds the city back from reaching its goal of becoming "world-class."

And so, since none of the candidates can really do anything to properly solve the issue that I feel is most important to the city, I find the whole election to be rather redundant. It would suck if Rob Ford won since he'd probably do a bunch of embarrassing and stupid things, but if someone else wins it's not like they'll be able to create new subways out of nothing (and yes I know Rob Ford likes subways, but his plans are ludicrously unrealistic in that regard).

Thus, I'm seriously tempted to ditch the strategic voting thing and vote for Joe "Pants" Pantalone as he is the only candidate who seems to say positive things about the city as it is now. George and Rob can only seem to talk about how terrible it is and it makes me think they don't actually like being here. In particular, Joe acknowledges that the city budgets are actually in fairly decent shape, especially compared to other cities around the world. All the "gravy train" business is mostly populist nonsense meant to stir up people who don't normally pay attention except when they see their tax bill (which is actually lower in Toronto than all the suburbs around, but whatever, facts are meaningless).

I just got back from the first and only event I'll be attending as part of Toronto Beer Week which was "A Night With Black Oak Brewery" at Bar Volo. It was a great event with nine Black Oak brews on tap and the Brew Master and Owner of Black Oak present. My favourite beer of the night was by far the Double IPA (!!!), "Ten Bitter Years." I don't even know how to describe it, it was just so good! Also fun was that the Brew Master came and chatted with us for ten minutes or so about his beers and about beers from around the world. I love living in a city that lets me enjoy events like this.

For anyone who missed my Facebook update, we bought a house! It's just off St. Clair West between Lansdowne and Keele and it's a little semi-detached, 3 bedroom place with a nicely finished basement and a big deck. We're quite excited/happy and can't wait to move in (which will happen on December 18).

Not sure how long this link will work, but for now check out the virtual tour for pictures.

I enjoy beer quite a bit and for the last couple years I've made an effort to try lots of new and interesting styles and brands. In particular I've developed a great fondness for local craft brewed beer; a scene which is exploding all across North America. Ontario has a number of truly amazing small breweries and the LCBO has become more flexible lately and has taken to featuring those breweries on a regular basis. Unfortunately, due to the strange rules of liquor distribution in this country, the LCBO rarely gets anything from outside of Ontario. So it is quite difficult to access craft beers from the US or even from other provinces in Canada.

Sometimes though, the LCBO works something out with a particular brewery from out of province and we get a chance to buy wonderful beers from other regions. This fall, the LCBO is featuring the Quebec-based brewery Dieu du Ciel. I've tried four different beers from them and my favourite by far is their American IPA "Corne du Diable."

IPAs (India Pale Ales) seem to be extremely popular among people who, like me, seek out new and interesting beers (many would call such people beer snobs and personally I'm OK with that...I'd rather drink fewer delicious beers than many average beers). I've never been able to really get into IPAs though, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps it is because the style has such a large amount of variation and I've just never had one I liked. Just a quick aside, the definition of what makes an IPA is a hotly debated topic among beer aficionados. I won't step into that argument here except to say that if all you've had is Alexander Kieth's then you've never had an IPA.

Now that I've tried Corne du Diable, I am reevaluating my attitudes towards IPAs because it is just so good. It's flavourful with a good amount of bitterness and it's also super dry in a way that reminds me of dry white wine. I have three more bottles in my fridge and I'm thinking I'll have to pick up some more before it's all gone. Either that or start making regular trips to Montreal!

Toronto is electing a new mayor soon and it's causing me stress. Something that has been bothering me about politics lately is the apparent desire of many people to have candidates that are "down-to-earth" and "just like me." For example, Sarah Palin in the US and Rob Ford in the current Toronto mayoral race. For a converse example, see criticism of Stephan Dion or Michael Ignatieff for being too smart/educated. Also noteworthy is Stephen Harper's aversion to listening to advisors who are experts in their fields as well as his push to make the long form census non-mandatory.

Seriously, on what planet does any of this make sense? I want the smartest, most educated and most experienced person possible to win elections. It shouldn't be about who is nicest or most approachable or about religion. It should be about who is actually best for the job. I want someone who is better than me. Running countries or provinces or cities is hard. An average person isn't going to cut it. Why would you vote for someone average? So that the country can be average? We should all aspire to greatness.

The only explanation I can think of is that perhaps people don't like to vote for someone who is smarter/better than themselves because it makes them feel bad about their own lack of accomplishment. To those people I say, if you can't stomach voting for a person who is better than you, do everyone else a favour and refrain from voting at all.

For a more amusing take on this same topic, check out this blog post from the Real Johnson.

Late last night the downtown Toronto location of Canada Computers burned down! Well, burned out I guess. The building is still there but will need to be totally gutted. The apartments above were destroyed too, which is pretty sad. No one was seriously hurt though and apparently it could have been a lot worse. They were able to contain the fire to just the Canada Computers building and prevent it from spreading to all the adjacent buildings (which are equally old and flammable). We walked by this evening and it was sad to see all the bits of computer stuff blackened inside the store (see my slightly blurry photo below, be sure to click for the full resolution version).

Tonight I updated my main RSS feed to include both my blog posts as well as photos I post to my Photos page instead of having a separate RSS feed for each. So if you read my blog from an RSS reader you'll have noticed five new photos pop up in your feed in addition to this post. Please let me know if you see any problems.

Finally, although I am normally pretty good about backing up my data, I have always been reckless with my lists of recipes to cook and restaurants to visit. Both are kept as drafts in my Gmail account. The other day, after adding a recipe to my recipe list, I pressed the discard draft button instead of the save draft button. Gmail is pretty good and will let you undo stupid stuff like that, but I didn't notice I had done it until three days later when I went looking for a recipe. By then it was too late and I was sad. So I'm going to push ahead a little on some plans I once thought up to add a recipe section to my blog so that I can store the data more permanently. I should do something similar with restaurants, but I think it's best to focus on one thing at a time.

Burned out Canada Computers