Here is an Article by Conrad Black a Noted Conservative Explaining How I Feel as this Pandemic Drags On

Before providing you with the link it would be wrong to not give the Canadian and provincial  governments some credit on how they immediately provided relief to those (us included ) with the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit once we were told to stay home. Thank you for that and we all understand why you had to put the country in a huge deficit in order to do that.

But now since a few weeks we have pretty much flattened the curve and yet still we find ourselves very timid in reopening. Ontario had 122 new cases today and Quebec had 100 which pretty much makes up all of Canada. Like for instance Manitoba had 0 cases today. PEI had 1 new case. Anyway in all of Canada when all the numbers are in today out of a population of 37 million we will have under 400 new cases.

The CEO of the Ontario Medical Association today said that here in Ontario he thinks we are moving into Phase 3 too quickly and that we should get the infection rate lower. He is worried about the availability of hospital beds that may be threatened if indoor dining and bars are starting up again. I see a doctor who is frequently on the television giving some push back on moving on to phase 3 too soon. But then I saw a doctor who said realistically that there will be clusters of cases here and there and we should expect that so that is where the contact tracing and testing come into play to snuff them out. It should be expected and I agree.

I think this app the Feds and Ontario were pushing had some problems so that could be a concern now as that was supposed to debut last week but I haven't heard anything since they had a few glitches to sort out. There is a lot they are not telling us. Maybe the last shipment of PPEs masks and that were defective from China again? I do not think they are coming straight with us.

If they decide to reopen and there is a little surge I believe they will shut it down here again and go back to phase 2. If they do that you can fold up the economy and pay us all to stay home and the ones that are paying taxes thank you for putting food on our table because unless this provincial and federal government has a plan we are done for. We were heading down that road before the pandemic and it looks like we will continue on that path.

In the article he mentions that why not let countries who have done a lot better than us fly into Canada instead of making them do a two week quarantine when they arrive. So there goes the tourism industry. Yet we can be so proud of hosting NHL hockey teams coming here from hugely infected cities from the States to play here. My wife could not go to see her sister's wedding in Iceland ( doing much better ) or be able to visit her aging parents because we couldn't lift 2 week quarantine for them to travel here. We can go there but they cannot come here because who is coming on a two week vacation to spend all the time in quarantine.

But immediate family members can go back and forth over a supposedly closed border with the States ( the worst by far ) to visit their relatives. What gives? It is bullshit!

We now have infection case in Newfoundland from someone coming back from States and the one from PEI is from the States as well. What closed border?

This Ontario reopening plan boggles the mind. Indoor gatherings of no more than 50 so movie theaters with like 10 cinemas can only have 50 people in total amongst them all watch a movie at the same time. Like why open at all?
                                                          Here is the Article

Chemotherapy

So to continue on with my experiences, which I promise will be wrapping up very shortly, the oncologist decided that something had to be done after nearly dying a couple of times due to my low hemoglobin. My excessively high bilirubin levels in my liver was scary as well. With my spleen gone there was a load on my liver more than before. The hope was that whatever was killing my good blood cells could be extinguished by some chemotherapy.

Every third week starting off first in Kitchener for about 3 hours I would get 4 different IVs injecting the chemo. Intermittently  I would still have the blood transfusions while all this was going on. The doctors gave me pills to take if I was beginning to feel sick. The first night I took one but I realized I just needed to go to the bathroom. I never took one after that night. In fact I would be going to the local hospital after the first treatment. Then just drive home myself and continue on with my day.

One of the doses did cause me to have awful constipation so after that one time I made sure to take the suggested tablet so that I could do my business in comfort. Once I did that it was no problem. The other side effect was I lost my hair but it soon grew back once it was over.

The chemotherapy sessions ended and I can remember the day I stopped getting blood transfusions. It was March 7th of 2019. Each week I went for bloodwork the hemoglobin was holding steady. My white blood cells were low but other than that having no transfusions was great.

Another reason they were low was I was taking an immunosuppressant called cyclosporine which suppresses your immune system which was giving out these rogue Killer T-cells that was attacking my good cells as well as bad cells. So even though it may have been helping hemoglobin I was prone to getting sick. Lo and behold that September I caught pneumonia. My hemoglobin dropped shortly thereafter and I was back to getting blood transfusions again. So rather than continue on the cyclosporine I backed off and just concentrated on taking the iron chelation dissolvable tablets to try to get my iron down.

After the pneumonia bout I stayed away from blood transfusions. My hemoglobin high water mark was 110. My family doctor gave me some optimism by saying sometimes it takes a while for everything to work properly but give it some time. It appears whatever you had the chemo got it all.

My oncologist was less optimistic as she stated that she would not be surprised if there was still some T-cells that were still hanging around. Naturally I felt pretty optimistic as things seemed to be heading in the right direction.

I  passed an incident free winter but noticed my hemoglobin started slipping slowly as the months turned into Spring. Then the end of April arrived and the transfusions started again. I check my blood weekly but when I get the transfusion I check it again the following week. Well here we go again I thought. My family doctor now was less optimistic saying instead of heading in the right direction now she was just hoping that my hemoglobin would just hold steady in the 70's. That would mean transfusions all the time.

Tomorrow I will finish up this saga and then we can talk about something else. Enjoy the heat and Happy 4th of July to our neighbours down South.