Lone Wolf Cabin

Its that time of the year and it has come early this year.  Its funny every few years we decide that its time to fill the reserves back up with our own maple syrup and we knew this was the year.  The weather for the next week here is perfect for doing our maple syrup.

This morning we woke up to a half inch of ice over everything, hopefully the plus 4 today will make things a little less slick.

We are very happy to report that Dwight is still with us and doing as well as can be expected.  He is active, eating and in very little pain.  His last MIR and CT scan showed his cancer as stable.  This is a great relief as the last report showed it as growing and would become problematic if it did not stop.  They dropped one of his meds and tried another. He is also on week 5 of his 8 week Rick Simpson Oil protocol so hopefully this combinatin will shrink them a bit and buy him some years!  In the meantime if that does not work Dwight has been accepted to do a PRRT in London Ontario and then hopefully they come up with something else that can help,

In the meantime Dwight has bought himself an old excavator to play around with in the back forty, the seeds for the garden have been ordered, maple syruping begins and lots of other things to keep us both out of trouble and happy.  I sure am looking forward to spring!

This week is setlar!  Cool nights and low 20's daytime temp.

The yurt has been sold, we are just lessening our work load but the cabin stays :)

Dwight's last MIR showed that he is stable, yippeeee! They say the median for it to start growing again is 11 months which brings us to November. Next MIR in 7 weeks and hope with all our heart that it stays stable.

We have signed ourselves up as host with workway.info and at the moment have a workwayer with us for a couple of weeks.  The deal is they help our for 4-5 hours a week for 5 days a week for room and board, so far it is working great.

Today I am tilling the garden and putting away garlic as well as planting another 150 for next year. 

Well our raspberry patch is giving us lots of raspberries and the blueberries will continue to ripen over the next few weeks.  Things are growing well this year with all the rain we have had including the damn weeds.

Loki is growing like crazy, a great puppy! I am pleased. He's like a big bear cub.

Dwight is doing well and picking up some weight, it turns out the stent got dislodged and now he has a new one in place.  The next MIR is August 30th, cross our fingers! I on the other hand am fighting off some melancholy this week, something that I rarely have and its awful!!! But it shall pass, I'm just so afraid for Dwight and what we are facing.

I have signed up for workaway.info  Just looking for a week or two of help once in awhile, they will give you 4-5 hours of labour in exchange for room and board so we will see how that goes.
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We are back from the hospital. The 4 larger tumours in Dwight Yachuk liver have grown but not the primary one in his pancreas. 
The shakes and fever he had on the weekend should have brought him to the hospital, they said that things can escalate very quickly at this point. 
Tomorrow we go back in to have an ultrasound, more blood works and endoscopy to see what is going on with the stent in his bilinary duct. With his jaundice, inflamed liver, fever, etc. they think that he may have an infection. His stent could have migrated or is blocked again, tomorrow hopefully they get this sorted. In the meantime they have him on an antibiotic.
His liver is still functioning and In 2 months they will do another MIR to see if it is still growing, if it is then something else will have to be done like 
TACE "Transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (also called transarterial chemoembolization or TACE) is a minimally invasive procedure performed in interventional radiology to restrict a tumor's blood supply. Small embolic particles coated with chemotherapeutic drugs are injected selectively through a catheter into an artery directly supplying the tumor. These particles both block the blood supply and induce cytotoxicity, attacking the tumor in several ways."
So we grab a book and enjoy the sunny day and each other

We just picked up two cherry trees for Dwights little orchard and will pick up two plum trees to join them. Of course while at the garden centre I just had to pick up more flowers!

We had an all night rain last night and puppy needed to go out 3 times so time for a nap!

Meet Floky our new pup.  He is a long haired shepherd, a buddy for Arthur.  I picked him up from a breeder near Toronto. He is 10 weeks old now and I think he is going to be a wonderful companion.

The black flies are near the end and the dragon flies have come out full force.  A few days ago it was very hot and humid and that has finally lifted and now we can do stuff outside.  Dwight has borrowed someones little kabota BX25 so a lot of work is getting done with that, it beats a shovel and wheelbarrow for sure.

I picked some nice oyster mushrooms this week, yum
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Yesterday Dwight saw 6 dragon flies, that usually means that we have about 7-10 more days of them up here. Weather looks good to make that happen and hopefully the dragon flies come out in droves and eat them all up! 

Moms crap apple tree is just starting to bloom and all the strawberries are almost in full bloom.

Today I plant the herb garden at the cabin and yurt and try to finish someone mukluks that I am working on.

Dwight is busy trying to finish splitting the last of the firewood.

This time last year I found my first two morels ever! So far all I am finding are a lot of false morels which are poisonous.

Today we hit a hot and humid 30 degrees! Thats a bit too warm for me.  The fiddle heads and ramps are out now as well as the black flies.  Hopefully it will be a short season, typically it is 3-6 weeks.  There is no frost in the forcast for the next week so next week I will be putting a lot of things in the garden.  I have the propane heater set up at the yurt and cabin now as well as at the house for our outdoor shower.  The hills are white with trilliums.

Dwight and I went for his appointment with the oncologist yesterday and all still stable for now. July he has another MIR scan to see if the cancer is still stable. Pills, injections, pancreatic enzymes, biliary stent for life are all palliative and working to stop it from growing. The oncologist says the median is 11 months and we are hoping for a few years. There are only 3 targeted drugs for this cancer and Dwight is on 2 of them. When those stop working there is one left to try and then of course there is that miracle :). He is doing very well and up to 150 lbs now and enjoying life.