Day 158, Year 11: Who Would Ever Have Thought . . .
Date: Monday, March 28, 2016
Weather: Overcast and Rainy with Temp in the 40’s F
Location: At Home in Evergreen Preserve, Lowell, MA
Six years ago today were anchored off an island in the Addu Atoll in the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean. Close your eyes and imagine us there on Windbird, anchored next to Ed and Lynne on Constance, with our only conversation with them dealing with plans for leaving the next day to sail to Chagos.
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| 160328 Day 158a Cape Cod, USA–Anchorage in Addu Atoll |
On March 28, 2010, Mark and Ed traveled to another island to check-out and Lynne and I made sure all of the food for the next couple of months was on board our respective boats and stored properly. Now fast forward to today. Our only conversation with Ed and Lynne this afternoon was about Ed and Mark and how they are dealing with their respective struggles with cancer. In 2010 we were talking about how best to keep bananas from ripening too fast and today we were talking with them about which kind of juicer to buy. Bananas to juicers . . . who would ever have thought?!!
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| 160328 Day 158b Cape Cod, USA–Bananas |
But today the reality is that Ed is in treatment for late-stage pancreatic cancer and Mark is hoping to enter a trial treatment for his late-stage colon cancer this Wednesday. Yes! Today his blood tests were normal and the physician’s assistant we met with felt confident that he would begin the trial on schedule. I don’t want to be too negative, but I’m not going to hold my breath after last week’s disappointment. We don’t have an appointment time on Wednesday, and Rhea, the PA, couldn’t reach the scheduler. Dr. Kwak was not in today, so we will hope to get a call tomorrow. But regardless, we are elated that Mark’s blood count numbers that were ‘out of whack’ are now back to normal and that he can eat ‘real’ food again. But it is a documented fact that under-nutrition is a major cause of death in cancer patients as the cancer cells gobble up all the nutrition. When you have cancer, you just can’t eat enough good stuff to sustain the body’s needs. So juicing is one strategy that helps. You can juice pounds of veggies and end up with just a liter of juice that has all of the vitamins and minerals of the pounds of veggies that you couldn’t possible eat in one sitting. But you can drink a liter of juice that is jam-packed with nutrition—enough for the cancer to consume and enough left over to nourish the body. So instead of talking about ocean passages and bananas, today we were talking about centrifugal force juicers versus single-gear masticating juicers. Let me say this again. Who would ever have thought?!! But the wonderful thing is that six years later, we still have Ed and Lynne’s friendship and we can still plan together. Just the goals of the planning have changed.
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| 160328 Day 158c Cape Cod, USA–Wonderful Friends 2010 & 2016 |
