The pinky coral on my toenails is almost completely worn off from my Pedi in September. It’s now just on my big toes, with a dab or so here and there. It was from our getaway to Walter’s Falls. This photo was taken that September 17th…it held up well. And lets just clarify that this is THE BEST my feet have ever looked, and that is the ONLY reason I took the picture.  My feet I think are ugly from 20 years of jazz and baton and all kinds of abuse over the years. My toenails are the only thing I paint; doing my fingernails is a complete waste of time.

September 5th – 7th of 2012. I get so emotional when I think about it, so I haven’t written much about it. Tim was so gung-ho on me having my Spa Weekend he’d always promised. Funny he remembered that at the end. The year we met, 2008, I had a free pass for a massage at Scandinave Spa up at Blue Mountain outside Collingwood, Ontario. He kept saying that whole October we would go, but the pass ran out and we never did.

I was very reluctant to go, truth be told. Tim was not well, in alot of pain and I just wasn’t sure what to expect. He had a pain pump at this point, and was supposed to have 1 of these bags of saline a day.

When we were down at University Hospital in London, Ontario they had put in this thing into his arm, and for some reason now I can’t recall the name of it. It was a line that went directly to one of the outer valves of his heart. There were 2 connectors that came out and one had the pain pump attached to it, and the other connector I used to hook up the saline bag once a day. The saline was perscribed because his body wasn’t processing fluid as well anymore, mostly due to his liver and pancreas being so damaged by the cancer.

You can perhaps appreciate my anxiety at this whole getaway. I was the one who changed all these pumps and organized what we needed, troubleshoot problems on the fly if need be; I being the primary caregiver. We had nurses that came in at home, sometimes towards the end every day. The dressing’s on that thing whose name I have somehow washed from my memory, was changed once a week by the Homecare Nurses.

The links in the footers of this blog are the organizations that were involved in Tim’s care. Let me tell you that those men and woman work HARD for their money. Every day, all day, they go from home to home and care for the sick and dying, infirm, elderly and a whole list of patients with individual needs, requirements, states of mind, abilities and I admire each and every one of them.

Oh, that pink coral toe polish. Funny how something so simple can mean so much. The wonderful thing is…we had a great time at Walter’s Falls. We really really did. The food was superb, the staff fantastic, the view spectacular and Tim was even strong enough to go for a bit of a walk around the falls. So we poked around the grounds for almost a 1/2 hour and we hadn’t done that together in months. It was the last time we were just Tim & Paula, not the sick guy and his caregiver. It wasn’t all wine and roses but we had a good time, everything considered. I had my massage and my pedi (I’d never had one before) and for 3 whole blissful hours I almost forgot.

Here are some shots from our time at The Falls Inn.

Morning Light hitting the old wheel mechanism for the sawmill