Yay for Remicade!

I'm excited about today – for the first time since May I'll be getting a treatment for my Crohn's disease. Oh, and I can't wait. I haven't been feeling good at all. Low grade fevers, constant headaches, stiff joints, bumps all over my legs (erythema nodosum) and no energy.

Up until I moved to Alberta in July, I was getting a treatment called Remicade every two months at the Huntsville, Ontario, hospital. I'd go to the chemotherapy clinic and they'd hook me up to an IV and give me this ultra expensive drug (about $7,000 every two months).

Remicade has literally changed my life. My doctor wanted to take out my colon until we tried this. And while I was on the drug, I had no Crohn's symptoms. I carried on like a healthy person! It was wonderful.

Moving meant losing my doctor, my job and my health insurance – the latter was a huge deal. Getting any insurance company to cover that humongous bill is like pulling teeth without anesthetic. I have had to jump through a myriad of hoops in order to get coverage from Dave's new insurance company. Not only that, I had to find an internist, as well as a family doctor. And the paperwork! My gawd, the paperwork and the phone calls and the e-mails have been overwhelming. Meanwhile, I've been getting sicker and sicker.

Oh well. Not anymore. Today I go to the Cold Lake Hospital for my first treatment in a long time. I'm so excited! Wish me luck!

The Band-Aid Trip

That's my Band-Aid. The nurses always put happy stickers on everyone's Band-Aids to cheer patients up. It works! Look how happy that sparkly Band-Aid is! Every two months I pay a visit to the Huntsville Hospital chemo clinic for an infusion of Remicade, the drug that has tamed my Crohn's disease and changed my life. (If you, or someone you know is struggling with Crohn's, you need to try this drug.) I take it with a side dish of Benadryl and the whole thing makes me goofy for the rest of the day so I always take the whole day off. Last Friday the weather forecast was good, we had no kids and no plans, so we decided to use the extra time to make an impromptu trip up to Kiosk to see if the fishing situation had improved. We were there a month ago and the fish were apparently still sleeping in, their cosy blanket of winter ice barely thawed.

See my hair? It's literally oily with bug spray. Going camping/fishing this time of year is crazy because of black flies. They're tiny little pains in the arses that swarm in your face and literally scrape the flesh off you, one teeny divot at a time. I don't know what we were thinking. Look at my smile, though. That's a Benadryl-looped smile if I've ever seen one.

The bug arsenal: Dave works feverishly to light a Pic. At his elbow is a liberally used can of bug dope. Both are probably highly toxic chemicals. I sprayed my leg with Off and then it literally STUCK TO THE BOAT. It was like I was Krazy Glued! When I finally peeled my leg away a whole bunch of BOAT PAINT came with it! 

Our dog Misty HATED the bugs. She tried to hide everywhere. Even in the grass. Eventually we plopped her in the tent so she wasn't such an all-you-can-eat bug buffet.

Our camping buddy did a lot of mooching. Bagels, popcorn, whatever was being offered.  Chipmunks are the friendliest little critters. Dave's late father used to call them "bush tigers" because of their stripes. I love that expression. 

A white pine near the beach. All the new growth is directed towards the sun, creating a uni-directional pattern that reminds me of the old tuft quilts Dave's mom used to make.

Dave and Misty take a stroll down at the beach.

The call of a loon. So haunting. So quintessentially Canadian. They're curious birds, diving underwater and popping up close to the boat, curious to see what we're up to and who is catching more fish, us or them. Usually it's them.

Fishermen with a lot of money have down-riggers and lots of fancy equipment to get down to where the lake trout hang out. Some parts of Lake Kioshkokwi are 160 feet deep and more so the average fishing line will not get down that far. Here, Dave uses his father's old Murphy troller for steel line fishing. It's a bit of an art, letting out all that steel line, then keeping it at a perfect distance from the bottom of the lake. It's one of the things I admire about Dave – his proficiency with simple, old-time tools and his knowledge of the outdoors.

Now THIS is MY fish! We didn't weigh it but Dave figured this bass was at least six pounds – the biggest bass he has ever laid his hands on! No, we didn't keep it. First of all we always catch and release because we want to preserve fish stocks for future generations. But bass is also out of season. We were trolling for some speckles when these hungry monsters jumped on our lines. This was the biggest one, by far, but man oh man there are a LOT of big bass in this lake.

The fish master in action. "Keep a bend in your pole" is what he is always yelling at me as I reel in my catch.

And he's into the net! So exciting!

Dave's not happy at all, can you tell?

Another mighty bass smiles pretty. Check out the scenery. Isn't it spectacular? I love this lake. I can hardly wait to go back up – hopefully when the black flies are done.

Misty loves fishing almost as much as we do. She curls up in a pile of life jackets and catches some Zs.

If you didn't know already, Dave's been a Chrysler mechanic his whole life so you'll understand if he's a little bit Chrysler-happy. While we were having breakfast the other morning we heard the distinctive sound of a vehicle getting stuck at the boat launch. "Go help," I said to Dave. Sure enough, a nice young couple in a Ford Explorer was trying to pull their boat and trailer up the rocky shore – to no avail. Dave threw a tow rope on the back of our Jeep and, without even spinning a wheel, walked that Ford and its boat and its trailer right up that bank like nobody's business. As soon as we were out of earshot Dave smirked ear to ear. "My Chrysler just pulled a Ford out of the lake," he said. He could hardly wait to show the photo to his buddies at work.

In closing, I just want to say that sometimes I get tired of fishing in a lake. Sometimes I want to try my luck in trees, to see if the fish are any different there. For some reason, Dave gets grouchy when he has to pull my line out of a tree. Men, eh? Go figure...