Day 165, Year 11: Happy Anniversary to Justin and Jo
Date: Monday, April 4, 2016
Weather: Overcast with Snow All Day; High 27, Low 22 F
Location: At Home in Evergreen Preserve, Lowell, MA
Is it April or January? Can’t tell by the weather! We have a lovely blanket of white covering everything outside here and the high temp today was in the 20’s. But at least the snow held off long enough to allow me to drive JJZ&C to the airport and to allow their plane to take-off on time.
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| 160404 Day 165 Cape Cod, USA–Airport Farewell |
They left Boston a 9 am and arrived in sunny San Juan, Puerto Rico at 1 pm. I sent a text message with photo attached of the blanket of snow here.
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| 160404 Day 165 Cape Cod, USA–Blanket of Snow |
In return I got a photo of Jo, Ziggy, and Coco out and about in San Juan in the afternoon sun. Today was Justin and Jo’s ninth wedding anniversary and I think maybe they were going to celebrate in San Juan before driving home to Aguada. In any case, we hope they had a wonderful day. Happy Anniversary to Justin and Jo. It was so wonderful to have them here for the long weekend. There is nothing more wonderful than having your children and grandchildren together and we feel blessed to have had that experience this weekend.
Justin and I had a late night conversation about the best strategies for helping Mark control the nausea he is experiencing from his current treatment. Mark is so lucky that he hasn’t had to deal with this until now, but now we do need to figure it out. He ate a big dinner last night and felt great afterwards. He has to eat prior to 8 pm and then he takes the chemo drug at 10 pm and doesn’t eat anything until morning. He needs to eat breakfast by 8 am and then fast until 10 am when he takes the chemo drug again. Justin suggested that since Mark was able to eat a big dinner and feel great that maybe eating a big protein-filled breakfast would be a good idea. His breakfast and dinner are both eaten two hours before he takes the chemo drug and it does seem that having a good hit of protein helps. I spent my afternoon making comfort foods–tapioca pudding and chicken vegetable soup with ginger meatballs. The meatballs were made of ground turkey and the hope was that the added ginger would help with the nausea. Both the soup and the tapioca pudding were a go. But I definitely need to do research to find out what other things he might be able to tolerate. Cheese seems to be a definite no-no but eggs and high protein smoothies are definitely in. We’ll keep trying things and recording what works and what doesn’t.
