Day 263, Year 7: Time for a Fresh Start
Date: Saturday, July 28, 2012
Weather: Overcast with Rain in the Evening
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
For the past seven months, Mark and I have been so focused on his health
issues that we haven’t had time to think beyond that. Today was a bit of a
down day with no pressing chores and that gave us time to start thinking
ahead. During the next month or so, Mark will be rebuilding his strength
and we will be making decisions about the months ahead. Diet and exercise
will be the major focus. The goal of the past few months has been to keep
Mark’s blood counts and weight from dropping. Now we have to settle on a
diet and exercise regime that will keep us healthy. Another major focus
will center around the decision of where we will spend the winter months.
We love it here on Cape Cod in the warm months and hope to spend May through
October here, but we don’t want to live where we would have to cover the
boat in the winter. So we are deciding between the Bahamas, Florida, South
Carolina, the Chesapeake Bay, or a combination of all for the November to
April time period. We are going to have a very hard time pulling ourselves
away from the grandchildren, but we feel so lucky to be able to move our
‘home’ south for winters and back north for the summers. Mark had his
charts out today looking at possibilities, but the major deciding factor
will be his health. We have to wait and see how fast he recovers his
strength and figure out where we can go and still get back here for three
month check-ups. Mark’s baseline testing at Mass General will be done on
Monday and then on Tuesday he will meet with Dr. Kwak, the oncologist that
he will see now that the chemotherapy sessions are over. He also has to
deal with his parathyroid issues and see his urologist to figure out if
there are other things that need to be done in those areas. If everything
can be worked out health wise, we will head south in early November. But if
not, we might stay here. So we just need to be flexible and make plans for
various contingencies.
We bit the bullet today and paid for the work that has been over the past
week on our Ford Taurus. Massachusetts law demands that you be notified of
the costs of work that will be on our vehicle. We were not notified and
therefore never had to the opportunity to stop the repairs that added up to
almost $2000 on a car that is certainly not worth that much. We’re not good
at arguing over the price of things, but we were able to get a little
discount on the work and just hope that the car will run for the next few
months with no further problems. We are hoping to put health repairs and
car repairs behind us and look forward to boat repairs. There’s always
something!
