by Judy Handley | Feb 16, 2012 | Cape Cod, USA, Sailing Logs Year 7 |
Day 100, Year 7: Day 100, Now and Then
Date: Thursday, February 16, 2012
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Temps in the 40’s F
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, MA
Where in the world was Windbird on Day 100 of the past six years on the Voyage of Windbird?
Day 100, Year 1: Kralendijk, Boniare, Netherlands Antilles
Date: Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Day 100, Year 2: Lautoka, Viti Levu, Fiji
Date: Thursday, August 2, 2007
Day 100, Year3: Flores Island, Indonesia
Date: Hari Minggu (Sunday), Bulan Agustus 17, Pada Tahan 2008
Day 100, Year 4: Boat Lagoon, Phuket, Thailand
Date: Friday, January 30, 2009
Day 100, Year 5: Cochin, India
Date: Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Day 100, Year 6: Arrival in St. Helena
Date: Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Day 100, Year 7: Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, MA
Date: Thursday, February 16, 2012
Our Day 100’s have taken us from Bonaire to Fiji to Indodnesia to Thailand, India, around S Africa and back to the US. It was fun to remind ourselves where we have spent the last six years and to wonder where in the world we will be this time next year.
Tomorrow we head to Boston with Sam and Jonah to take Mark to Mass General and to visit Museum of Science. We spent some time this afternoon reading about lizards to get ready for our visit to the exhibit on geckos. It reminded us of our visit to Madagascar, especially our trip to Ankarana. The Madagascar day geckoes are among the most beautiful in the world. We found out from Heather that the smallest gecko in the world was just discovered in northern Madagascar. I doubt that we will see this little guy tomorrow, but we are hopeful that there will be one of the colorful day geckoes.
Tonight we had dinner at the home of Jane and Bruce Wooden. We loved Bruce’s story about playing a word game with ‘Mark Handley’ this past week. He thought he was playing the game with Mark, but on Monday he decided to send a message to invite us to go to a movie with them. The Mark he was playing with sent a message back saying, “Who are you?” Bruce answered and the other ‘Mark’ replied that he had no idea who they were. He then asked where they were from. When Bruce answered “Cape Cod” the other Mark explained that he was in Manchester, England. So be careful who you are playing games with!
by Judy Handley | Feb 15, 2012 | Cape Cod, USA, Sailing Logs Year 7 |
Day 99, Year 7: Back Home
Date: Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Weather: Overcast with Rain Early, Temps Near 40 degrees F
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, MA
It feels good to be back home on Windbird tonight. We were only in Boston for two nights, but more and more, the only way I like to travel is if I can take my home with me. That’s one of the true joys of cruising. You travel, but everything is always with you and you get to sleep in your own bed. But, like it or not, more traveling is in our future. Mark has to return to Boston on Friday to have the catheter removed, but at least we don’t have to stay overnight. We have decided to take Sam and Jonah with us on Friday morning and go to the Museum of Science while in Boston. There is a special gecko exhibit that Mark and I want to see and I think both boys will enjoy it as well. And if not, there are plenty of other things to interest them, so it should be a fun day. As a first grade teacher, I used to take 25 six year-olds there on field trips, so certainly Mark and I should be able to handle having only two children with us. We are looking forward to a laid back weekend, however, getting rested up for that first chemo treatment next Tuesday.
by Judy Handley | Feb 14, 2012 | Cape Cod, USA, Sailing Logs, Sailing Logs Year 7 |
Day 98, Year 7: Happy Valentine’s Day
Date: Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Weather: Partly Sunny with Warmer Temps in the 30’s
Location: Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA
We hope all of you had a loving Valentine’s Day and we certainly send our love your way.
Mark was released from Mass General this afternoon, and after a shopping spree in Cambridge, we arrived at Sue and John Reed’s home at 5 pm. We had decided to spend the extra night in Boston to make sure everything is fine before heading home tomorrow morning. And staying over gave us the opportunity to have a special Valentine’s dinner with Sue and John. We didn’t know that February 14 is their anniversary, but we knew when the champagne bottle came out that it was a special occasion. We had artichokes, beef roast, and potatoes for dinner with strawberries and cream with chocolate truffles and mini-meringues for dessert. Yummy. Our pre-dinner shopping spree was totally functional, nothing fancy. We got Mark’s antibiotic prescription filled, bought ceramic-lined skillets to allow us to cook with less oil, and spent time in a book store just browsing.
Mark had a Power Port installed in his upper chest today. This required sedation as they go in through the juggler vein in the neck to stall the thing. This device allows the chemotherapy drugs to enter the body and also has the ability to allow power-injected Contrast-Enhance Compute Tomography (CECT) scans. The Power Port is a little different from what we were expecting, so both Mark and I have to study this thing to understand exactly how it works. But all is well here and we head home to the Cape tomorrow morning.
I have to end on a sad note–not a happy ending for Valentine’s Day. My nephew Todd’s father-in-law died today after a long battle with cancer. The death was expected, but the timing was not good. Todd and Shelley had just gotten home from the memorial services for my sister-in-law Conda and I know they are devastated to think of their little ones having to lose their only living grandparents within days of each other. Our thoughts are with Todd, Shelley, Ashlyn, Kaelin, and Kyler, as well as the greater family.
by Judy Handley | Feb 13, 2012 | Cape Cod, USA, Sailing Logs Year 7 |
Day 97, Year 7: Long Day . . . All is Fine
Date: Monday, February 13, 2012
Weather: Sunny, Windy, and Still Cold
Location: Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA
What a long day. We got up early and went to the Falmouth Hospital for Mark’s blood tests and then headed to Boston. Nothing took as long as we thought, so we arrived at Mass General early for a surgery that ended up happening later than scheduled. So we had lots of wait time. Mark’s surgery was scheduled for 1 pm and that means that you have to be there by 11 am. But the surgery didn’t get started until after 2:30 because the previous surgery in the OR took longer than expected. And then Mark’s urologist, Dr. Cutie, had to make a decision. The GreenLight laser machine that he was planning to use for the procedure malfunctioned. Instead of postponing the surgery, he decided to continue using the alternate technology which cuts the tissue out rather than vaporizing it with the laser. If the GreenLight laser machine had been working, the procedure would have been called a Photo-selective Vaporization of the Prostate (PVP) or a TURP laser. The exact same procedure when done with a tool called a Gyro, a resectoscope or lighted tube that cuts and cauterizes, is called a TURP or Transurethral Resection of the Prostate. I know this is more than you ever wanted to know about prostate surgery, but the researcher in me demands that I document the details. So stick with me just a little longer. After the surgery when I talked with Dr. Cutie and he explained the switch from laser to cutting tool, I was very concerned. But he said that in the end he was glad that he was forced to use the Gyro as he had to remove more tissue that he anticipated. Evidently there was more obstruction from the prostate than he expected and he was able to do the job more thoroughly with the cutting tool. My next question to him was this. When you enter the body with a tool through the urethra, how do you get to the prostate to remove the tissue? I have looked at diagram after diagram and just couldn’t figure this out. Well, what they do is actually go right through the urethra, basically eliminating it where it passes through the prostate gland. After the surgery, they insert a catheter and the urethra immediately starts to regenerate itself around the catheter. With laser surgery the catheter can be removed the next day. With the traditional TURP, the catheter must stay in for four days after surgery. So Mark will be released tomorrow but will return on Friday to have the catheter removed. At that point the urethra will continue the rebuilding process for another couple of weeks. Pretty amazing. I must say I was a bit upset when I learned that the procedure was not done with a laser, but Mark seemed to take the news in stride. Unlike me, he is not one to micro-manage. He figures you choose a good surgeon and then let him make the decisions. And Dr. Cutie is very optimistic that this procedure is going to restore Mark’s ability to urinate normally without the aid of a catheter. Mark is extremely hopeful as well, but we won’t know for sure if everything is going to work normally for a couple of weeks. I guess patience is once again the name of the game.
An hour and a half after the surgery ended, Mark was in his room, totally alert, and asking for food. He looked and felt great. He was in a normal hospital double room this time with only a view of another building. It was definitely not the pent house suite we had after his colon cancer surgery, but Mark didn’t care as long as they would give him food. Well, they wouldn’t. At least not for another hour or so. In the meantime, I walked to the nearby Whole Foods to get dinner for myself and for him. When I returned the nurse said he could have food, so he ate the macaroni and cheese, green beans, and chicken breast I brought him and then ate the turkey, mashed potatoes, and broccoli on the hospital tray. He was going to eat the fresh fruit and yogurt I brought him as well as the apple crumble on the hospital tray later in the evening after I left. So obviously anyone who can eat that much just three hours after surgery must not feel too bad! Mark will be released from the hospital tomorrow, but not until he has one more little procedure. The port-o-cath that will be used to infuse the chemotherapy drugs will be inserted into his chest before he leaves the hospital. We had hoped it could be done today, but the coordination was just not possible. At whatever point Mark is finally released tomorrow, we will return to Sue and John Reed’s home for a Valentine’s Day dinner and to spend the night. If all is well on Wednesday morning, we will then drive back to the Cape.
During the afternoon I got a call from our friend Lynda Kaufman in South Carolina. She and husband Lee had attended my sister-in-law Conda’s memorial service today at the Little River Methodist Church. The first memorial service was in West Virginia on Saturday, but because Conda had been so very much a part of the church in Little River since moving there only a few years ago, the second service was planned. Lynda said the service was very impressive and that it was obvious that many people cared deeply for Conda. We so wish we could have been there, but as my nephew Tommy said, our job right now is to take care of Mark and get him back on the wellness list. A year ago I would never have dreamed that today I would be so familiar with Mass General Hospital that no one even has to give me directions to get me from one section of the hospital to another. It’s a wonderful, life-saving institution, but by this time next year we’re hoping we are ready to wean ourselves and get on with life. We just bought the newest cruising guide to the Bahamas. It should make great reading during those three hour chemo sessions every two weeks for the next six months.
by Judy Handley | Feb 13, 2012 | Cape Cod, USA, Sailing Logs Year 7 |
Day 96, Year 7: The Food We Eat
Date: Sunday, February 12, 2012
Weather: Sunny, Windy, and COLD
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, MA
We’re not used to this cold weather, so when the temperature plunged to the mid-teens during the night and didn’t rise above the mid-twenties today, it felt very COLD. It didn’t help that the wind was blowing, but at least the sun was shining.
Friday night we watched a DVD sent to us by a faithful blog reader, Cheryl Fraunhauser (Cheryl, please let me know if I have the spelling of your last name correct.). We met her as ‘Cheryl in Maine’ when she sent her first email to our blog site. We have never met her in person, but we feel a true connection and friendship. The DVD Cheryl sent is entitled ‘Forks Over Knives.” This is a documentary that “examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting animal-based and processed foods.” Those are very bold words, but the personal journeys of the two men featured in the film put the research behind the statement. Dr. T. Colin Campbell, a nutritional biochemist from Cornell University, and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, formerly a top surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic and currently the head of The Wellness Institute at the same renowned institution, make a very convincing argument. The content of this film has had a profound effect on Cheryl and when she read of Mark’s cancer she wanted to share it with us. The information is not new to us, but over the course of our voyage around the world, we have strayed from our commitment to healthy eating. When you don’t visit a supermarket for six months at a time, you eat what you can find or store and unfortunately that includes a lot of processed and canned foods. Due to our son’s commitment to being a vegetarian for many years, we ate a basically vegetarian diet for those years as well. But gradually meat re-entered our diet. Seeing this film gave us a wake-up call that is time to return to a more plant-based diet. It also gave us a great incentive to do more research to find the best diet for Mark during the six-months of chemo and then the best sustaining diet to continue afterwards. Cheryl, thank you so very much for sending us the DVD. The timing was perfect and we promise to send the DVD on to others to spread the word.
I talked to my sister briefly tonight and found out that the memorial service yesterday in West Virginia for my sister-in-law Conda was beautiful, despite the cold and snowy weather there. There is another memorial service tomorrow (Monday) in Little River, South Carolina. Our thoughts are with Conda’s children, my nephews, and their families.
by Judy Handley | Feb 11, 2012 | Cape Cod, USA, Sailing Logs Year 7 |
Day 95, Year 7: Tribute to Conda Ganelle Fisher Martin
Date: Saturday, February 11, 2012
Weather: Overcast with Snow, Temps in the High 20’s
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, MA
Before I get to the tribute to my sister-in-law, I’ll share some of our activities today. It was spitting snow out when we got up and the dock was a bit slippery, but we headed to the Saturday Farmer’s Market anyway. It has been such a mild winter here that the local farmers have been able to keep the market open supplying us with locally and organically grown vegetables. There are white potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, cooking greens, salad greens, baby spinach, cherry tomatoes, cauliflower, and squashes. You can also buy chicken, beef, and lamb and an assortment of breads and bakery items. We are in the process of shifting our diet to be more plant-based, so going to the Saturday market is going to become an important part of our food shopping. In the afternoon we went to the near-by home of our friends Claire and Dick Wiklund for a gathering of some of the members of their local RV association. When you own an Airstream you can join the Wally Byam Caravan Club International and the friends who came to Dick and Claire’s today were from this region–some from Massachusetts, some from Rhode Island, and one couple from New Jersey. They invited us as “waterstreamers” and we had a great time getting to know new people and talking about their camping experiences. The company and the food were both great. We walked over in the snow, but by the time we left the snow had stopped. We didn’t get the three to six inch accumulation predicted, but we did get colder weather. I guess it is about time. And tonight we have talked with a few cruising friends on Skype and talked to Justin, Jo, and Ziggy. So it was a busy day.
Two years ago today Mark and I were in India when my brother Dickie died. Today was the memorial service for his wife, my sister-in-law, Conda Ganelle Fisher Martin. I can think of no greater tribute to a person than the words written by grandchildren. Just after Conda’s death on Sunday evening, the young grandchildren gathered around her to say their goodbyes and then they sat down to write letters to send away with her. I am copying here the letters they wrote.
Dear Grandma,
I ‘now’ you loved church, so I drew this (arrow pointing to a cross). I love you soooo much and I will never forget you and you are the best thing that has ever ‘happend’ to me. And you will always be in all of ‘are’ hearts. We will never forget you.
Love, Ashlyn (age 6)
Dear Grandma,
I hope you have a good time up their (there). We hope you can see Grandpa again. We really love very much.
I Love You, Olivia (age 7)
Dear Grandma,
You were the best grandma a kid could ask for. You are in a better place. Tell Grandpa I miss him and love him. You might not be down here with us but you will always be in my heart. I love you sooooooo much. I miss you so much. You will always be in my prayers.
Love, Kaelin (age 10)
Dear Grandma,
I love you. You have done so much for me and I can’t thank you enough. (I) Am going to live life just like you. I can’t wait to tell you about my faith and my career. You are my inspiration to be great and give every last bit of my life to become better. Tell Papal that I love him and that I can’t wait to see him. I am going to help all of the kids and I am going to help everyone her(e). Please promise to help us out and I will do whatever it takes to help out this family. I can’t wait to see you and Papal and I will never forget you. Can’t wait to see you.
Love, Cory (age 13)
