Day 231, Year 10: Beautiful Day
Date: Friday, May 29, 2015
Weather: Sunny and Warm, Temp in the Mid-70’s F
Location: Quissett Harbor, Falmouth, MA
It was a beautiful day and it looks like tomorrow should be almost as nice. But then we have a chance of rain for a few days. I don’t like rainy days, but we really need the rain. So like it or not, I do hope we get more than a few sprinkles.
Mark’s scans from last week’s brain MRI and chest and abdomen CT scans were posted on Mass General’s Patient Gateway this morning. I thought we had to wait until tomorrow, but that is because I thought tomorrow was the 29th,, not today. Anyway, the brain MRI was clean—no problems there. So his little bout with disorientation a couple of weeks ago was probably just a low sugar problem as we suspected. But it was a beautiful thing to know that the episode was not caused by anything going awry in the brain. His CT scan was as the doctor here on the Cape described, but when we read through it tonight we were encouraged. The cancer is trying to creep back into the liver, but only in one spot and it is not as large as it was in October. We’re going to hope the lapse in treatment effectiveness was caused by going to the longer span between treatments and that sticking to the two-week schedule will get things back on track. Keeping track of Mark’s blood work and all of the scans is becoming overwhelming. So tomorrow morning we are going to gather all of the reports and put them in a notebook that will make it easier for us to compare one to the other. Mark has gone through three full years of cancer treatment and it is definitely long past time to get all of the paperwork organized. It doesn’t sound like a fun way to spend a beautiful morning, but we will at least gather all the paperwork so that I can then spend time in the evenings getting it organized. Mark would like to thank all of you who have sent him well wishes since we got the news that the cancer is back. Maybe if we all put our positive energy together, we can turn this thing around. At the same time, the treatment he is on is very new and no one is sure just how long it will be effective. We knew that from the beginning, but when the early results were so fantastic, it was hard to keep remembering that there were no promises that it would even work at all. The goal was to give Mark the opportunity to cruise this winter, and cruise we did. That was a wonderful gift of time and now we just have to wait and see if that can maybe happen again next winter. But right now, we can’t even think about sailing until the problem with Mark’s left shoulder is resolved. The results of that MRI show that he has a partially separated rotator cuff and that might mean surgery. Ugh. It is quite painful when he lies down to sleep and it is not getting any better. This happened when we first returned to South Carolina and Mark installed new gear-shift cables. That was on April 16–six weeks ago. Going through the regular channels here to get this diagnosis has been VERY slow. He still has no recommendation on what to do from his Primary Care physician. So yesterday Mark called an orthopedic doctor and made his own an appointment for next Tuesday. Hopefully he will at least get some direction on what he should and should not be doing. In the meantime, I am having to do all of the carrying and lifting—getting stuff from shore to the boat. The biggest problem has been starting the dinghy motor on the chilly mornings. I can pull and pull and pull and still never get the engine started. Then Mark has to pitch in and I know he shouldn’t be doing that. But if we are going to get to shore, he has to. Hopefully the mornings will warm up soon and it won’t be a problem any longer. In the meantime, we are researching the possibility of getting our motor adapted to an electric start.
Mark doesn’t work tomorrow and we are looking forward to a day of doing very little. Ha! I’ll bet that changes, but we’ll give it a try.
