Day 223, Year 11: Can’t Believe June Has Arrived
Date: Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Weather: Partly Sunny; High 73 degrees F in Boston, 77 in Falmouth
Location: At Home with the Goldstones, East Falmouth, MA
I’m having a hard time believing June has arrived. Since we did the super quick turn around and headed north from West Palm Beach in February, I have been in a bit of a time warp. I feel like not having my own things and not living in my ‘home’ gives the sense of being on vacation and time just doesn’t register. I got tickled at dinner tonight when Ollie looked at me and said, “Oma, you need to change your earrings. You can’t wear the same pair all the time.” The problem is that most of my earrings were left on the boat and the ones I brought with me are somewhere—just not sure where! I’ll try to find the ones I do have with me tomorrow so I can make Ollie happy by wearing a different pair. And hopefully when we unpack boxes from the boat, the rest of the earrings will reappear. But the earrings are just one example of how I have lost track of my things with all of these moves, and leave it to a four year-old to notice. However, now that it is June, we can start the count-down to moving into our own space and rediscovering our ‘things’. The actual move in is going to take place over several days, but it will start in 14 days on June 15th. That is an infusion day, so we will be in Boston until late afternoon. We stopped at IKEA today on the way home and picked out the bed we are going to buy. We will stop again on the 15th and bring the bed home with us, so that will be the first thing to go into the apartment. Then on the following day while I am moving things from storage into the apartment, Mark can put the new bed and the one we brought from Lynn’s condo together (if I can get it moved from storage to the apartment without help). Once the weekend comes, we are hoping to have reinforcements to help move the larger items and if all goes well, we might be able to make Saturday night, June 18th, our first night in our own little place. Then I can start keeping track of time and belongings once again!
Today Mark saw the research nurse, one of Dr. Kwak’s nurse practitioners, and the infusion nurse. All of them are very pleased with Mark’s current program. The research nurse commented that it is so wonderful that the hospital team had come up with a regimen that works for Mark. All I could think was, “Ha!” It is true that the hospital team prescribed a multiplicity of drugs for Mark to try, but Mark and I were the ones trying the different combinations and keeping track of what worked and what didn’t and then making decisions on what to take. And then it was Dr. Kwak that suggested adding the steroid to our regimen that finally did the trick and got rid of the nausea. So it has been a team effort. It is just too bad that the nurses don’t include the patient as an equal part of the team. Dr. Kwak does, and that is what makes her so special.
Tomorrow I am going to spend some time in our ‘original’ storage unit (not the new one with things from the boat and furniture from my niece’s condo) to start getting things ready for the move. There is no way we can fit everything in that storage unit, plus all of the things in the two new storage units we have recently acquired, into our apartment. It does have two bedrooms, but no extra storage space. So I’m going to try very hard to get rid of some things before the 15th. I know that is easier said than done. But I will get started tomorrow and see where that leads me.
