Got a bit of good news tonight. Turns out the spots (there are now more) aren't growing. They are stable for now. This is something good. I think we could all use some good news about now.
Chemo starts next Tuesday, right after my mom and dad's last trip to the shore for awhile (at least several months). It sounds like 3 days of chemo followed by 3 weeks of recovery. This is repeated over the next four months. The next few months scare the devil out of me. I cannot even imagine what its doing for my dad.
We've also made plans to head to Albuquerque in June for a long weekend. ES' dad is not faring well and we want to make a trip down to see him. I know how hard this will be for ES. His father was this larger than life man. I remember all the stories ES used to tell. This is not the man I know, and this is really tough for ES to see. Although I'm looking forward to seeing everyone in June, I think this is going to be a very somber trip.
This is a summer that I won't soon forget.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
ID, please
If asked to name one picture of themselves that never turns out well, 99.9% of people asked will say "my drivers licence photo." It's inevitable. A poorly trained "photographer" taking a picture in poor lighting (usually fluorescent) and with a digital type camera. Somehow the photos always seem to highlight the bags under my eyes, the wrinkles near my mouth, and the overall roundness of my face. In a word - awful. I once had someone tell me, "jeez, this doesn't look anything like you." Not sure if that was a compliment or an insult.
All that being said, as I came across an of ID that I actually like when I was fishing out my insurance card today. It's my old graduate school ID. In big letters across the top it still stays student. The card was never dated, but I think the picture was taken about 12 years ago. I love this picture. Perhaps it was the fact it was when I had great hair. Or maybe it was when I had those really cool glasses that I ended up leaving in Lord and Taylor dressing room only to find they'd been "claimed" by someone else when I traced back my steps a few hours later. Perhaps it was good lighting. Whatever it was - call it good lighting, being favored by the camera gods, or maybe just a good day - but I love that photo.
And I have to admit, yes, I still carry it about in my wallet.
All that being said, as I came across an of ID that I actually like when I was fishing out my insurance card today. It's my old graduate school ID. In big letters across the top it still stays student. The card was never dated, but I think the picture was taken about 12 years ago. I love this picture. Perhaps it was the fact it was when I had great hair. Or maybe it was when I had those really cool glasses that I ended up leaving in Lord and Taylor dressing room only to find they'd been "claimed" by someone else when I traced back my steps a few hours later. Perhaps it was good lighting. Whatever it was - call it good lighting, being favored by the camera gods, or maybe just a good day - but I love that photo.
And I have to admit, yes, I still carry it about in my wallet.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
A Long Weekend At the Shore
ES and I headed to the Oregon coast recently to spend a long weekend with my brother and his family. It was the first time in years (~20) that my brother and I had vacationed together. The weekend consisted of lots of seafood (love Mo’s chowder), making sandcastles, and roasting marshmallows (my nephew’s introduction to s’mores). All in all it was a great time at the beach with my family!
Cannon Beach, OR
Sandcastle building
Neighbor’s feeding the gulls
Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach
Easter Musings
On this holiday, I find myself reflecting (as I often do on holidays) about the importance of family. It's become ever so more important as both ES and I find our respective fathers struggling with disease, both of whom are effected in different ways.
I think for me, the hardest part is the feeling of complete helplessness. With ES' father, its not just the distance of over 1000 miles away, it's losing him to a disease that now matter how close we physically we, we're losing him to it bit by bit every day. It's so hard to watch him on the phone and realize his dad has trouble recognizing him and often is confused on the phone. Alzheimer's is a sneaky disease. One that robs a person of their dignity and steals them away bit by bit while those around them struggle to care and cope for their loved one. ES has an amazing family, who take extra specially care of my FIL by visiting often and posting updates to family blog.
While we've known about my FIL's illness for sometime and it's progression had only rapidly come on in the last year, my father's illness was rapid, unexpected, and very frightening. Cancer is such a scary word. Scary because, despite all the clinical progress that has been made towards a cure/treatment, there is still no much we don't know. My father's diagnosis came on Christmas eve. 3 spots. I wasn't sure what to think. Christmas was a bit of a somber affair this year, as we knew of the challenging surgery that lie ahead. Fast forward ~1 month. Surgery scheduled for early February. It was a sobering time, as my grandmother had just passed away and we were all preparing ourselves for my dad's surgery.
The removal of the right lobe of the lung revealed what we'd hoped wasn't true. Cancer. Malignant cancinoid. Carcinoid I thought. Hmmm. Is that like a little tumor? That can't be so bad, right? The surgeon explained it could be one of two types. One type equaled a much better prognosis. The other, much more grim. The surgeon, however, gave us home it was the former, as less than 5% were the latter. Unfortunately, the path report indicated it was the latter. Atypical. Plus it had spread. The current thought is that it has spread to his diaphragm. I remember talking to my mom when they found out the results. She said she and my dad had a good cry and vowed to forge on. I can only imagine how challenging this much have been. Thankfully my family is very close as well. I think knowing this is a fight we are facing together somehow makes it easier.
Being I'm a scientist and my brother a surgeon, we took to the clinical studies with gusto. What's out there? What is the prognosis? Treatment? The more I looked, the more I didn't want to keep reading. Not responsive to radiation or chemo. Treatment by surgical removal of the tumor and surrounding tissue. This is where the scary part comes. Surgery and more surgery to remove the tumors as they are found. Round 3 with the oncologist this week, who may offer my father chemo. Given the clinical results (or lack thereof) from treatment with his type of cancer will this work? Plus my father's heart isn't the strongest (which eliminates him from any clinical trials - found that out the very day we got the cancer diagnosis while I was on the NCI website), making chemo risky.
Now it is a matter of deciding what to do. Cancer/chemo or treating his heart. I can only imagine the choice that my father must be having to deal with. We often have this picture in our mind of our parents, which were made quite young. Invincible. Always right/had the answer. Made everything all better. It's hard when this picture changes and disease starts taking them from you.
Happy Easter to all. Hug your family, friends, and loved ones. Cherish every day with them. Let them know how important they are to you. Make every day count.
I think for me, the hardest part is the feeling of complete helplessness. With ES' father, its not just the distance of over 1000 miles away, it's losing him to a disease that now matter how close we physically we, we're losing him to it bit by bit every day. It's so hard to watch him on the phone and realize his dad has trouble recognizing him and often is confused on the phone. Alzheimer's is a sneaky disease. One that robs a person of their dignity and steals them away bit by bit while those around them struggle to care and cope for their loved one. ES has an amazing family, who take extra specially care of my FIL by visiting often and posting updates to family blog.
While we've known about my FIL's illness for sometime and it's progression had only rapidly come on in the last year, my father's illness was rapid, unexpected, and very frightening. Cancer is such a scary word. Scary because, despite all the clinical progress that has been made towards a cure/treatment, there is still no much we don't know. My father's diagnosis came on Christmas eve. 3 spots. I wasn't sure what to think. Christmas was a bit of a somber affair this year, as we knew of the challenging surgery that lie ahead. Fast forward ~1 month. Surgery scheduled for early February. It was a sobering time, as my grandmother had just passed away and we were all preparing ourselves for my dad's surgery.
The removal of the right lobe of the lung revealed what we'd hoped wasn't true. Cancer. Malignant cancinoid. Carcinoid I thought. Hmmm. Is that like a little tumor? That can't be so bad, right? The surgeon explained it could be one of two types. One type equaled a much better prognosis. The other, much more grim. The surgeon, however, gave us home it was the former, as less than 5% were the latter. Unfortunately, the path report indicated it was the latter. Atypical. Plus it had spread. The current thought is that it has spread to his diaphragm. I remember talking to my mom when they found out the results. She said she and my dad had a good cry and vowed to forge on. I can only imagine how challenging this much have been. Thankfully my family is very close as well. I think knowing this is a fight we are facing together somehow makes it easier.
Being I'm a scientist and my brother a surgeon, we took to the clinical studies with gusto. What's out there? What is the prognosis? Treatment? The more I looked, the more I didn't want to keep reading. Not responsive to radiation or chemo. Treatment by surgical removal of the tumor and surrounding tissue. This is where the scary part comes. Surgery and more surgery to remove the tumors as they are found. Round 3 with the oncologist this week, who may offer my father chemo. Given the clinical results (or lack thereof) from treatment with his type of cancer will this work? Plus my father's heart isn't the strongest (which eliminates him from any clinical trials - found that out the very day we got the cancer diagnosis while I was on the NCI website), making chemo risky.
Now it is a matter of deciding what to do. Cancer/chemo or treating his heart. I can only imagine the choice that my father must be having to deal with. We often have this picture in our mind of our parents, which were made quite young. Invincible. Always right/had the answer. Made everything all better. It's hard when this picture changes and disease starts taking them from you.
Happy Easter to all. Hug your family, friends, and loved ones. Cherish every day with them. Let them know how important they are to you. Make every day count.
Monday, March 15, 2010
The ultimate litmus test
I was recently cleaning out some old boxes and stumbled across a travel journal from 1998, my first summer of graduate school. I took a trip to Europe with one of my closest high school chums (Di). We'd been talking about this for years and kept trying to go each summer during our college days. She was in the process of doing a grad school fellowship in Europe for her program and wanted to know if I'd come and spend a few weeks with her and a friend of hers (J) seeing the sights and riding the rails. I jumped at the chance.
It's interesting how I have these memories of my mind of this amazing trip. Landing in Paris and finding the hostel where I was to meet up with Di and spend the better part of a week in Paris before heading off to points east and meeting up with J. Granted, the trip was amazing. I've got wonderful photos and memories of sights, sounds (saw an Opera in Florence - La Boheme), and eats to remember it by. The diary, however, tells a bit of a different story......Or perhaps I should say, "focus."
Apparantly J and I had different "visions" of the trip, and given that each was friends with Di and not each other, this proved ackward and led to "taking sides." I look at the venting I did in my journal and think - geez - is this really how girls are? We seemed to have some little something every day. She was wanting to do X and I W. Sometimes this involved food/where to eat and other times it was what we did on a given day. I suppose when you're 22 this is what happens?! It's interesting the things we remember in our minds..I remember the art, the food, and walking (lots and lots of walking), yet my travel diary fails to note really important thigns like hotel and restaurant names (esp. in cases where one of the other was especially nice/good if I ever make it back there), but rather the goings on of 3 girls who for the most part got along, but still had very different visions of traveling.
This has become my litmus test. When ES and I took our first trip together, I thought, ok is this going to be something where we are on each other's nerves by day 2 or we click so well and have a similar travel style it just works.
The latter.
We travel together like [insert cliche here]. We both like to rise early and pack a lot into our day by dinner time. Museums, galleries, and eating. Lots of lots of eating. Once we eat dinner, however, we're done for the day. Not night owls and not ones to go out late into the wee hours of the night. Sometimes we plan, esp. in the case where if you don't make a reservation = no room at the inn = sleeping in your car. This is usually the case when we go to any big city (esp. those in other countries) like on our honeymoon. Other times, it's just let's see where the wind takes us today/how far we get and we'll find a room here for the night. This happened when we treked out along the Eastern Shore in Virginia.
Traveling is the ultimate test of a relationship. You don't have much space to hide "morning breath," before you put on make up, ect. Its being in the car/airplane/train and spending a good part of your trip together. It's the discovery that you do indeed like - no love - to spend time with your spouse.
Granted, sometimes things go wrong. Ok a lot wrong. Like when your plane breaksdown on the flight right after your wedding and you loose a day of your honeymoon (and the person at the counter makes you cry). Or when the hotel valet gets into an accident that not only does major damage to your car, but wastes the better part of a morning of an amazing weather day. Or when he goes down and finds a drug store in the middle of the night when you've got horrible stomach cramps and the person at the front desk only speaks French the sign language your husband does (despite the French tapes, he's not even close to fluent) isn't enough to communicate "I need a drug store." But he's there too. And he's not crying, so you've got someone in your corner who's with you all the way making it better. Or perhaps that is what the free drink coupons are for?
It's interesting how I have these memories of my mind of this amazing trip. Landing in Paris and finding the hostel where I was to meet up with Di and spend the better part of a week in Paris before heading off to points east and meeting up with J. Granted, the trip was amazing. I've got wonderful photos and memories of sights, sounds (saw an Opera in Florence - La Boheme), and eats to remember it by. The diary, however, tells a bit of a different story......Or perhaps I should say, "focus."
Apparantly J and I had different "visions" of the trip, and given that each was friends with Di and not each other, this proved ackward and led to "taking sides." I look at the venting I did in my journal and think - geez - is this really how girls are? We seemed to have some little something every day. She was wanting to do X and I W. Sometimes this involved food/where to eat and other times it was what we did on a given day. I suppose when you're 22 this is what happens?! It's interesting the things we remember in our minds..I remember the art, the food, and walking (lots and lots of walking), yet my travel diary fails to note really important thigns like hotel and restaurant names (esp. in cases where one of the other was especially nice/good if I ever make it back there), but rather the goings on of 3 girls who for the most part got along, but still had very different visions of traveling.
This has become my litmus test. When ES and I took our first trip together, I thought, ok is this going to be something where we are on each other's nerves by day 2 or we click so well and have a similar travel style it just works.
The latter.
We travel together like [insert cliche here]. We both like to rise early and pack a lot into our day by dinner time. Museums, galleries, and eating. Lots of lots of eating. Once we eat dinner, however, we're done for the day. Not night owls and not ones to go out late into the wee hours of the night. Sometimes we plan, esp. in the case where if you don't make a reservation = no room at the inn = sleeping in your car. This is usually the case when we go to any big city (esp. those in other countries) like on our honeymoon. Other times, it's just let's see where the wind takes us today/how far we get and we'll find a room here for the night. This happened when we treked out along the Eastern Shore in Virginia.
Traveling is the ultimate test of a relationship. You don't have much space to hide "morning breath," before you put on make up, ect. Its being in the car/airplane/train and spending a good part of your trip together. It's the discovery that you do indeed like - no love - to spend time with your spouse.
Granted, sometimes things go wrong. Ok a lot wrong. Like when your plane breaksdown on the flight right after your wedding and you loose a day of your honeymoon (and the person at the counter makes you cry). Or when the hotel valet gets into an accident that not only does major damage to your car, but wastes the better part of a morning of an amazing weather day. Or when he goes down and finds a drug store in the middle of the night when you've got horrible stomach cramps and the person at the front desk only speaks French the sign language your husband does (despite the French tapes, he's not even close to fluent) isn't enough to communicate "I need a drug store." But he's there too. And he's not crying, so you've got someone in your corner who's with you all the way making it better. Or perhaps that is what the free drink coupons are for?
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Spring. Here. Officially. (or at least what I call "officially")
Our lillies have sprouted. Our forsythia has bloomed. And the magnolia has blossomed. All together = spring. My 2nd favorite season, lead only by Fall.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
What a difference a weekend makes or how a lucky find at Home Depot = finished bathroom
As ES and I delve down the slippery slope of home renovations (we keep seeing more and more visions of things we’d like to change…), we put together a list of the things we needed to finish the bathroom. Although I had ordered the faucet last night, we still needed to pick up the tools for the installation (anyone heard of a basin wrench?). Love YouTube. Anything you ever needed to know about how to change a faucet. The ultimate stop for the amateur DIYer.
A little elbow grease and some contorting on ES’ part (the pedestal sink is quite tight against our bathroom wall) and a lot of measuring on my part (putting in towel and tp bars) and voila! A completed bathroom. We picked up a few more accessories to finish off the room. All for under $225, including all the paint, paint supplies, socket covers, towel bar/tp holder, and the faucet. Our new bathroom….
As the paint dried, it took on a slightly darker (but not too much) appearance. When I held up the chip, it still matched 1 shade lighter on the label. I’m almost thinking when the person at the store mixed it, it wasn’t quite right. I guess, however, if I had to err on the side of caution, I’d go for lighter. The space is so small (so small it has a pocket vs a traditional door) it would look even smaller with a darker color.
Although ES and I are wiped out, it’s a good kind of tired. Feels good to accomplish something ourselves.
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