by Judy Handley | May 20, 2016 | Sailing Logs Year 11 |
Day 211, Year 11: Packing Day
Date: Friday, May 20, 2016
Weather: Sunny and Warm, High of 77 degrees F
Location: Last Night at Home in Evergreen Preserve, Lowell, MA
Today was packing day and tomorrow is moving day. So this is our last night in this condo in Evergreen Preserve in Lowell. We have really enjoyed watching the pond wildlife here, but in two and half months we never really got to explore the forest paths as we would have liked. Somehow we just stay too busy or the weather just wasn’t cooperative. Tomorrow morning at 10 am family arrives to help us pack the furniture from the condo into a moving truck. My niece Lynn that owns the condo has moved into a studio apartment and she really doesn’t need the furniture or any of the things from the kitchen. This is very lucky for us as we have gotten rid of most furniture that was in our storage unit and we will need to furnish the apartment we will be renting as of June 15. But I know it has been very hard for my niece to let go of so many of her belongings. Since we moved in here in March, she has gotten rid of bags and bags of belongings and boxes and boxes of books. Today she had to make the last purge and at the end of the afternoon, the spare bedroom that had been absolutely packed with boxes of ‘stuff’ for the past three years was empty. I know how hard it is to downsize and get rid of things that were once precious to you. But Lynn has now done that and can hopefully get on with her new life without all of that old baggage. I just hope I am as successful in getting rid of things that we really don’t need out of our storage units.
But tomorrow the furniture will travel to the Cape and be put in the same new storage unit as our things that arrived last weekend from Windbird in South Carolina. We have to wait four weeks before making the final move, but I’m sure the time will fly by. Late May and early June are always busy times at the Goldstone ‘homestead’—bees arrive, the garden needs to be planted, and other spring projects abound.
I’m sitting at the kitchen table writing this log and I am surrounded by things that have still not been packed. But I’ll get up at 7 am when Mark has his first breakfast and complete the final kitchen packing. Mark will go back to bed until 10 am when the moving crew arrives. We were going to start earlier, but I really felt like Mark needs that extra morning sleep. He had an okay day today, but he just has no energy. And he is very frustrated that he can’t help with the packing and moving. He did take the bed apart and I could never have figured that out without him. So he is really feeling more useless than he really is. We’ve gone back to having him take the original anti-nausea med, Zofran, but he just doesn’t like the way it makes him feel. He still fights the nausea, but he was able to eat good-sized meals today. Hallelujah! He has lost another two pounds and just can’t afford to lose any more weight. So we’ll continue on this track for another couple of days and see how things go.
Every night when I write this log, I contemplate when I will write the last log in the Voyage of Windbird. My original thinking was to stop writing the log when we actually make the move into an apartment or when Windbird is sold. But recently I have been thinking that I should put an end to your misery sooner rather than later. I can still write my nightly log for myself, but I don’t need to publish it and bore you with the mundane happenings of our everyday life. Then I got a phone call this morning that made me reconsider. Jean Mason is a friend from our days in southern West Virginia. We stopped to see her on our drive south in December and since then she has been reading my daily log. She, too, is fighting cancer, and more than once since December she has read the log and then called to give us advice based on her experiences. Her advice is always helpful and I would never get it if I weren’t posting the log. So I’m not sure what I will do about continuing or ending the logs from the Voyage of Windbird, but what I do know is that it was so good to hear Jean’s voice today. Jean, thanks for the advice. We’ll keep fighting this fight against cancer together with you.
Heather called and talked to her dad today to tell him that her 19’ Cape Dory Typhoon, Peanut, sold and was being hauled away. She sent him a photo of Peanut being trailed away.
She and Jed bought the boat just before Sam was born and have used it very little since the advent of little ones. It was good to see that Peanut has found a new home. Now we just need to have the same luck Windbird. I so want her to be bought by a cruising couple that will love her as much as we have. She doesn’t deserve to just sit in a slip. She needs to be out sailing.
by Judy Handley | May 19, 2016 | Sailing Logs Year 11 |
Day 210, Year 11: Believe It or Not . . . Another Trip to Mass General
Date: Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Weather: Mostly Sunny, High Temp mid-60’s F
Location: At Home in Evergreen Preserve, Lowell, MA
Believe it or not, we had to make another trip to Mass General this afternoon. This one was not scheduled. Mark got a call from his oncologist, Dr. Kwak, telling him good and bad news. Yesterday’s CT scan showed that the trial drug is working. We won’t know the details until next Wednesday, but that was great news. But on the ‘not so good’ side, the scan showed blood clots in Mark’s lungs. This is not unusual for people with cancer taking chemotherapy drugs. Mark was so lucky for four years, never having nausea with chemotherapy and not developing clots. But now he is having to deal with everything at once. The reason we had to drive into Boston this afternoon was to get ‘training’ for giving blood thinner shots. We know how to do this as I had to shots for weeks when I broke my leg when we were crossing the Pacific. But Mass General could not prescribe the blood thinner without us coming in. So we did.
I had planned to work with my niece Lynn this afternoon to help her sort and pack things for Saturday’s move. Lynn worked without me, but hopefully tomorrow we will get to actually work together and finish this off.
by Judy Handley | May 18, 2016 | Sailing Logs Year 11 |
Day 209, Year 11: Yet Another Day at Mass General
Date: Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Weather: Mostly Sunny, High Temp mid-60’s F
Location: At Home in Evergreen Preserve, Lowell, MA
It was yet another day at Mass General and this was a long one. Everything went well until late afternoon when Mark had to drink the two liters of barium before his CT scan. That stuff never goes down easily for most people, but Mark has never complained. However, he has never been so nauseous before. Today the barium was just enough to tip the scales and make him sick. It was a tough ride home, but once we got here, he was fine. He does bounce back quickly and with such a positive attitude.
My niece Lynn was here when we got home. She had worked all afternoon to sort and pack her things and she made great progress. Shortly after we arrived, Candi and Char arrived to help move a number of boxes to Lynn’s apartment. Lynn still has a number of things to sort through, but I can definitely see the end of the tunnel. Hopefully by Friday afternoon everything will be packed up and ready for the final move on Saturday morning. Lots to do!
by Judy Handley | May 17, 2016 | Sailing Logs Year 11 |
Day 208, Year 11: Another Afternoon at Mass General
Date: Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Weather: Partly Sunny and Warmer, High Temp 70 degrees F
Location: At Home in Evergreen Preserve, Lowell, MA
We spent another afternoon at Mass General, but today’s trip had nothing to do with Mark’s cancer. It was a yearly check-in with this urologist. It was a quick appointment, but it took an hour to drive into the city and an hour and a half to drive home. So a “quick” appointment took a lot of time. Tomorrow we have a long day at Mass General. We leave here at 7:15 am and who knows what time we will get home, but hopefully by 6 pm. Mark has his weekly blood test, meeting with the medical staff, and then his infusion. When that is done, we head to a different part of the hospital for a CT scan. This will be the first scan since the he entered the trial. We won’t get the results until next week, but we are hoping the INC280 is doing its job and that we will be able to report good news.
If we are super lucky with timing tomorrow, the earliest we could finish up at the hospital would be sometime between 3:30 and 4 pm. If we are not so lucky, it could be later. But our hope is to get back here by 6 pm. My niece Candi and her husband Char are coming at that time to move more of Lynn’s things from here to her new apartment. Unfortunately Lynn has still not been able to come here since she got out of the hospital. She is really not feeling well. She’s hoping to get here tomorrow to start going through things, but tomorrow night we go ahead and move things that I have packed and hope that she gets some more packed tomorrow or on Thursday and Friday. Little by little, we will things done and by Saturday morning we will be out of here, one way or another.
by Judy Handley | May 16, 2016 | Sailing Logs Year 11 |
Day 207, Year 11: Phase One Completed
Date: Monday, May 16, 2016
Weather: Partly Sunny, Very Windy and Cool
Location: At Home in Evergreen Preserve, Lowell, MA
This move of ours is going to be made in so many different steps that it’s even hard for me to keep track. But I am going to declare that receiving the first load of personal belongings from Windbird, getting them into a storage unit in Falmouth on the Cape, and returning the U-Haul truck and trailer is ‘Phase One’. We left Heather and Jed’s at 7:30 am this morning, drove north off the Cape, and returned the trailer at the closest U-Haul center. We drove back to Evergreen Preserve in Lowell to pick up our car and then returned the U-Haul truck in Nashua. Phase One completed!!! It was 11 am by the time we got back home, so I quickly fixed a second breakfast for Mark, left him at home to rest, and went to pick up my niece Lynn who was being released from the hospital. This required driving south again, but thankfully at mid-day there was not much traffic. I picked her up, drove her to her apartment, did some measuring for another piece of furniture that she is contemplating moving, and got back home by 2 pm. Unfortunately, Lynn did not feel up to coming here to continue the sorting and packing routine, but she does hope to come over in the morning. One way or another, we will get everything packed up and out of here by Saturday morning. That will be Phase Two.
Mark decided to take no anti-nausea medications today and that yielded some good and some bad results. He was on the verge of nausea all day and that was the bad. But he was able to eat and he was alert and felt ‘human’ (his words). That was the good. So we will continue this for a few days and see if we can find additional non-med ways to keep the nausea at bay, only taking an anti-nausea drug if he gets really sick.
Tomorrow we go to Mass General in the afternoon for Mark’s annual urology appointment. And on Wednesday we spend the entire day at Mass General. Mark will have blood tests, get his infusion, and then he will have a CT scan. This will be the first scan since he started the drug trial, so we are all anticipating what we hope will be confirmation that the trial drug is working.
by Judy Handley | May 15, 2016 | Sailing Logs Year 11 |
Day 206, Year 11: Continuing the Journey
Date: Sunday, May 15, 2016
Weather: Partly Cloudy and Much Cooler
Location: At Home with the Goldstones, East Falmouth, MA
The journey from being cruising live-aboards to becoming land-based people continues. We are making progress and today we made a giant step in that direction. We transferred our first load of “stuff” from Windbird to a land-based storage unit. It was hard day on Mark, so as soon as we unloaded and arrived at Heather and Jed’s, he just had to sleep for a couple of hours. But he was able to eat dinner and this evening he feels great. Let’s just hope he has the energy to repeat this next Saturday when we move furniture from Lowell to the Cape.
This journey from sea to land started in February when, instead of heading to the Bahamas as planned, we had to turn around and sail north. We got ourselves from Florida to Cape Cod with the help of our friend Kevin Russell. Then my niece Lynn offered her unoccupied condo as a temporary home for us. It was a very generous offer and we have enjoyed our time there. Today we met our friends Heather and Jon Turgeon who brought a trailer load of our personal belongings from Windbird in South Carolina. We switched the trailer from their SUV to our rented U-Haul truck, had a fabulous lunch with them at the Blue Ribbon Barbecue in Newton, Massachusetts, and then headed to the Cape. We were met at the new storage unit by Jed, Jonah, and Ollie, and we unpacked the trailer contents into the storage unit. Hurray! This was one big step toward becoming land-based. Unfortunately, there are many steps to go, but one step at a time, and with the help of many wonderful friends and family, we will make it. Tonight we once again want to thank Lynda and Lee Kaufman for packing up all of our things from Windbird, getting that huge amount of stuff to a storage unit, and then packing about half of it into the trailer we received today. My nephew Tommy’s son, Ryan, helped with the trailer packing, and then Heather and Jon so gallantly volunteered to haul the trailer north for us. Now we just have to figure out how to get the other half here.
