“Seems like a lot has happened since my last blog.”

This has become a bit of a refrain. Last time I wrote I was still recovering from having a pacemaker put in. I’d written at length about being ‘wired and waiting’, not sure what was going on. Then once in the system, moving from inpatient to operational patient to outpatient in just over a day.

My pacemaker Geordie and I spent a happyish summer slowly recovering, still continuing on at Yorkville with an end date in September, with the highlights of the Garden Party in July and the delights of a bumper crop of tomatoes later in the summer.

So there we were, beginning of September, and I was asked once again if I could continue my interim role as Dean of Education at Yorkville. Once again I declined. Once again they said I just didn’t like them. I said, No, no, that’s not the truth! —With each refusal slipping back down the slide into the lobster trap.

A week later, I got a call. Was I still planning on leaving my position at the end of September. Yes, I replied resolutely, even excitedly. Good, they said. Would you like to take on the position—interim, of course—

Of course, I agreed, that’s a given.

—Interim Vice-President Academic.

Ah, I said, casting my mind over my colleagues and refraining from the obvious comment that we already had one of those. Instead I said, Well, you can tell me about it …

So they did, and it sounded interesting. When would it start?

Tuesday, they said.

A week later, I had a new job and was appointed VP Academic. A bit of a whirlwind adventure, all told. “Welcome to the private sector,” my daughter the lawyer said, laughing.

We got an apartment in Fredericton and I spent a month trying to figure out priorities and areas of immediate focus. I was just settling into the job proper when at the beginning of October I found my eyesight was getting pretty weak.

I called up my optician for a check-up, and a day or two later went in. He looked at my eyes for about 30 seconds, certainly no more than a minute, then said, “Excuse me, I need to make a phone call.” He came back in and gave me a piece of paper and said, “Take that to the ER and see the ophthalmologist on duty right away.”

So we did. The ophthalmologist looked at my eyes for 30 seconds, said, “Excuse me, I need to make a call …” He came back in a few minutes later and said I needed to go get a CT scan. I asked what was going on. He said he thought I’d had a stroke.

Oh, I said, went down, got the scan, and was sent home.

That evening, my GP called to confirm the diagnosis. She’d talked to the neurologist and they’d agreed it looked like a stroke that had affected my visual field.

My sight got worse over the next few days, but it wasn’t till the weekend that everything went, and I woke to complete blackness. Sally called 911 and I ended up back in hospital, where I’ve been ever since. However, during the last week they’ve discovered I probably didn’t have a stroke, but rather some kind of brain tumour that is affecting both my optic nerves and the pituitary gland. So I’m taking a daily dose of radiation for the week and waiting to see what happens next.

[Note from Victoria, who typed this: please feel free to send private messages or comment here and we will read them out to Tim]