The Simpson Blog

The baby is becoming more and more fun even as Amanda's cancer treatment becomes more painful. He's babbling and bouncing and kicking and smiling. She hasn't been doing much of that. It's been nearly four months now since my wife gave birth to our son Gordon by c-section and doctors discovered ovarian cancer in her abdomen. Surgeons quickly removed most of her omentum and put her on course for treatment: three rounts of IV chemotherapy with Carboplatin and Taxol , cytoreduction surgery (tumour removal, usually called debulking surgery) , then intraperitoneal chemo squirted directly into her abdominal cavity. The surgery took several hours and Amanda was in rough shape afterward. They sliced from around her breastbone down to just about meet the perpendicular incision scar from her delivery. Her gyn-oncologist says the surgery removed the rest of her omentum and along with it a bunch of cancer, a tumour about the size of a cherry tomato from her sigmoid colon , an

2013-07-13 - Rush - Halifax, NS - Clockwork Angels Tour , a set on Flickr. For my first time in the photographers' pit at a concert, it's Rush, probably my all-time favourite band. Rush hasn't been to Halifax since 1987, so the fans were so rabid, the band added a second show. Here are some of my best shots from the first night at the Halifax Metro Centre. Very exciting! I had a great time shooting these pictures and learned a few things along the way. Big thanks to the promoters for the photo pass and to the other photographers for being so welcoming and generous with their advice! I hope to do it again. They say I should come back for KISS on August 1, but my sister's in town, so that's probably a no-go. One day, though, I'll be in the pit again!

With everything around here being so, well, HEAVY lately, I thought I'd put some of my other activity up here. It might be good for a laugh. You may recall that I was working with a new wrestling promotion in the Halifax area a few months ago to publicize their debut and capture some of the highlights on photo and video. That outfit, NWAAtlanticCanada.com , seems to have trailed off into silence, but my fandom has not. Along came another promotion, seemingly out of nowhere. Twin City Wrestling promised to bring the kind of action I'd been hoping for with NWA-ACCW: regular events at a fair price, run professionally, featuring capable local talent in simple, understandable and entertaining stories. Basically old-fashioned territory wrestling in the modern age. I got in touch with promoter Cyril Richards and offered my services for their next show in Dartmouth. I went out with three HD cameras and an audio recorder and took some pictures and video. I don't have much

It's been a rough few weeks. We met with Amanda's gyne-oncologist for a serious sit-down about the future. We pressed for information about the remaining course of treatment, how likely her ovarian cancer is to return, and a prognosis for future survival. The often-quoted statistic for surviving newly-diagnosed ovarian cancer is 20% at five years. That means that out of every five women diagnosed, all but one of them will be dead five years out. Her doctors suggest a more accurate current stat is about 24%. Still not encouraging. We've been holding on to hope that her mitigating health factors would raise the likelihood of survival. After all, her tumours were discovered during childbirth before they caused symptoms, in contrast to most patients whose cancers are found only after they were big enough to be noticed. Amanda's relatively young -- in her mid-thirties -- and in otherwise decent health. She should be able to endure aggressive chemotherapy. The cancer was