Golly Those Travels
About a month ago I got some rather distressing news that I had intramucosal esophageal carcinomas or something like that - in a word cancer. Well I was darn near hysterical. But I could not mope too much because I had a week travel with Dan in Charleston, Oregon with a one day stopover in Seattle on the way home. And then one day to wash clothes for two weeks travel with Rita in Italy. Sigh!! This probably was a good distraction,
In Oregon Dan was taking a nature printing workshop. This is where you take things like leaves and put ink on them and press another thing on top of them to make prints. There were more advanced things like fish or octopus, dead of course. Still it takes a lot of skills to get ink on them and rub it off to look like the original. Dan made me a very nice octopus tee shirt. Dan also made some prints from tree rings that were pretty interesting.
On the day off we traveled along the coast. We saw a whole lot of seals sitting on the rocks and barking loudly. I saw a large field of cranberries just ready to scoop up. The next week was the cranberry festival. The hills along the coast were covered with very tall evergreens. We read in their local museum in Bandon it seems that every 30 or 40 years they have a bad drought and then the evergreens catch fire and burn everything to the ground. It seemed to me that building everything out of cedar might have been a poor choice. I'm sure it is very cheap but brick or stone might have been better in the long run. At the place where they had the workshop, Oregon Institute of Marine Biology, there was a marine museum, Charleston Marine Life Center. I liked going there to look in the big aquariums. They had lots of big anemones and nudibranchs, two octopuses, some jellyfish, and so on.
After all this printing we stopped to say hello to Dan's brother John and his wife Suzy. In Seattle. We really enjoy seeing them and as they are far away, we do not see them as often as we would like. We brought them some cranberry cookies., We had a low key drive around the city looking at the new gentrification. The area of West Seattle has picturesque small houses on small lots which are landscaped beautifully like Suzy has done with their place. The flippers and floppers are trying to make the houses as large as possible or condos but the results are often less than ideal. Sometimes less is more.
After we returned home I had frantic day washing and repacking with Dan's help and advice.The next day I was off to meet my sister Rita in New York for a t!ip to Italy. The things is, several relatives were worried about Rita, who is seventy and apt to wander off on impulse and physically challenged with breathing issues, being let loose in Italy. So I who am - 69 and physically challenged in terms of knees, eyes, and ears and general condition - was sent along as a chaperone. Neither of us knew more than a few words of Italian but I knew a little Spanish and Rita knew a little French. And when in doubt Rita looked charming and I looked piteous. However I was in Italy last year with Dan so I know the ropes. I was to fly from Columbus to JFK airport in New York. Now these airports keep getting bigger. I swear one of these days you will get on one of these little airport trains in one place and get off on another airport train somewhere else and you won't need planes anymore.
Be that as it may, I had ordered a wheelchair because I did not think I could deal with JFK. When I got in the chair I could tell the pusher had an attitude. "Where do you want to go?" she growled. " To the shuttles, " I replied; I was supposed to meet Rita there. "You can't get to the shuttles in a wheelchair," she replied triumphantly.. This confused me, "Why not?" I asked. "You are not allowed,'' she told me. "Do the best you can," I told her. Usually I am a pretty good tipper but this woman was getting less and less in my mind; little did I know! She wheeled me around for quite a while stopped at a little train pushed me in and shoved my bags in after and dashed out with the chair. "No chairs on the train!" she shouted, "get off at Bri…" In my return trip through JFK I discovered that there are in fact buses that take wheelchairs around; whether the grumpy pusher knew this or not I have no idea but she did not get a tip! HE HE HE!
The train rushed off and I began to fall. Luckily I was caught by two kind ladies who attached my hand to a pole and told me to hold on. They rescued my luggage which was careening about the car and put it in my other hand. "Where are you supposed to get off?' the ladies asked. "The shuttles," I answered. Then commenced a carwide discussion as to which stop I should take. Meanwhile the train is rushing around stopping here and there. I hoped a decision was reached before I passed my stop. "Brighton," was the decision. It is two stops more." The kind ladies arranged me near the door with my bags. "You have to get off as soon as it stops", they advised, "Then just follow the signs." The train stopped and someone pushed me off. As I stumbled to my feet my bags plopped down beside me. The train took off and I looked up and saw a green arrow "shuttles." I felt like Blanche Dubois, always depending on the kindness of strangers.
I began slowly toddling off down one side walk after another dragging my luggage behind me following the green arrows. I had three cases, one rollie stuffed quite full of clothes, one case holding the CPAP machine for night breathing, and a small backpack full of small but necessary items, according to the prepared travelers list. These would have to last me two weeks. According to Dan I had far too many clothes. It turned out he was partially right; no duchess asked me to tea but you never know. After about a half hour of toddeling I found Rita. We were both very excited and a little relieved. We never really admitted any accuracy of the others reservations about our adventures but we did understand their reasoning, even if it was flawed.
FROM THE EDITOR:
Here is where Mrs.T stopped writing this current newsletter with the intention of finishing it at the condo; the editor has had on the briefest look at it. However, on Sunday, 20 October, while at the hotel in Columbus getting ready to leave for the condo Rebecca suffered a stroke. She had laid down to try to get some sleep. When I attempted to rouse her to take some nighttime medicine she was unresponsive even after a couple of slaps and some cold water on her face. I went to the hotel desk and asked them to call a squad. The airport EMTs came and took her to Mt. Carmel East hospital where the diagnosis was made. An MRI showed that only her speech center had been impacted.
It has been about a week and she is substantially improved. Physically she is about normal with perhaps a bit more wobble than usual when walking. The other major initial problem was that she could not swallow. That was heading towards some sort of feeding tube. However, that has resolved itself and she has a good appetite - no tubes necessary. But she can only eat mushed up food.
In the next few days she probably will be discharged from the hospital and transferred to an inpatient rehabilitation facility where she will be given several hours a day of speech and physical therapy. That should last a couple of weeks. At her current rate of improvement she should be nearly normal fairly quickly.
That brings us back to the very first sentence. We found out about the esophageal cancer through her routine screening in the spring. She has had Barrett's for a number of years and needs to have routine endoscopies. The one in the spring looked abnormal to our local GI doctor who referred her to a specialist at OSU. The examination by The OSU GI doctor in August just before the trips found the cancer when he removed a couple of nodes for biopsy.
The early detection means that the chances of recovery are quite high. Mrs.T had virtually no symptoms so the initial scope was quite valuable. She is scheduled for additional treatments about every three months starting after the second treatment in October which showed that the cancer is still there. However, it has not metastasized, which is also a good sign. They are using a newer treatment, radio frequency ablation, that does not involve radiation, chemo, or surgery. After her recovery from the stroke we will be speaking with her OSU GI doctor to see if he wants to treat her earlier as we are still in Ohio.
Many thanks to Rita for coming to visit for a week. Daily visits by daughter Marla have of course been appreciated. And the visits by Tori, Waverly, Cheryl, and John T-L (#johnsbeercapart) were most welcome. The many flowers have brightened Mrs.T's stay.
That brings you up-to-date in the world of Casa de Terrible. Fortunately we will not need our urns yet; check out the picture of those.
Some results from Oregon: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmHdH5fV
Just two nice pictures: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmJ2EKw
Love to everyone. See you soon.
Dan and Rebecca
www.casa-de-terrible@blogspot.com
News Flash: Rebecca is being transferred to the Ohio Health Rehabilitation Hospital in Columbus for at least two weeks of intensive work starting 28 October. For those familiar with Columbus that is the old Doctor's Hospital in the Short North / Victoria Village area.
Sent from Outlook
