Hard to believe it’s already. November. Time is really flying.

This morning, when I showed up for my appointment at Florida cancer labs, one of the gals upfront made my day. “Miss Starr“ she said, “you always look so pretty. “Thank you,” I said “no I mean it you just are such a pretty woman“. What a nice way to start the morning.

I’m waiting for the doctor. In the meantime, I had a nice conversation with his nurse. She had noticed how soft  my cardigan is which led to a conversation about cancer treatment and wardrobe. I related  that when I shop, all my tops have to be cut so I can pull them over to expose my port for treatment.  No turtlenecks on treatment days!  She remarked that she’s heard that from more than one patient. One lady confessed she had never worn button up tops before treatment became a part of her life … she now has a closet full of them :-).  

I’ll relate my visit with Dr. Berry while it’s fresh in my mind and try to unpack everything he said. My numbers look fine and we discussed what the week was like. I described the effects from the last chemo and how I had coped with them. This led to a discussion about quality versus quantity of life  with the chemo. Dr. Barry feels that I have responded well and that he would like to take the nasty drug that we usually go to 80% on completely out for some of my  future treatments. We will keep nasty drug in for my treatment on the 15th though because I will have had an extra two weeks without treatment. 

Going forward, we will just have to play with different doses and see what works. But, the bottom line is that I am doing well enough to scale back the treatments so that I can have a good quality of life 

To Sum Up……

When I first came here to see Dr. Barry, my symptoms were caused by cancer. Since I  respond to the treatments and recover from them, we can conclude that my symptoms come from chemo.   

When I first came here to see Dr. Berry, we had to pound the cancer with everything we had.

We still have to fight, but we can put down a few weapons for now. 

After two more treatments, we will look at scans and see where we are    Meanwhile, I am to monitor the neuropathy in my left leg and if I feel like it’s getting worse, we will definitely cut back on Mr Nasty Drug. . Apparently neuropathy can actually become permanent for some patients.    

Dr Berry and I agree that by keeping track of my symptoms/reactions during the treatment, we can  tweak treatment formulas to maintain a good quality of life for me.  I am so happy I found him… Thanks, Dr. Becky!

I will confess that I took quite a bit of tincture before coming to the appointment and it was kicking in during the office visit. Hans would have been mortified to hear me read out loud from my journal. It started with me just looking up information on how I felt during the last treatment but once I scrolled past the lyrics to my songs, I couldn’t resist. 

Dr Berry is around my age and grew up with Mad Magazine and the same music. He laughed a lot as I read (not sung 😱) the words to songs from my imagined production of Colon Cancer: The Musical.  “Those are really well done,” he laughed.” You oughta get your kids to help you put it on TikTok or something….you’ll be famous. 

On to the treatment room where I had a wonderful conversation with my nurse, Caroline.  We shared stories about our parents, passing and burials. Turns out she’s from Massachusetts, where I was born.  Het father was in the military and his ashes were buried in a beautiful military cemetery near Cape Cod. His resting spot was peaceful and had a great view. Her dad has been gone for six years by the time her mom passed away. Mom did not want to be cremated so they put her body in a beautiful casket. Trouble began when it became clear that the burial staff had not told the cemetery staff that her mom was in a casket The harried Funeral Director reluctantly approached Caroline and said, “this is going to be weird to say.”   You see her dad’s idyllic resting place didn’t have enough room for a casket. The only solution was to dig up dad and move him to a new spot where the spouses could  be buried together. The Funeral Director asked Caroline and her family if they would like to say goodbye to him again while he was out of the ground. Soon afterwards, they all gathered around her parents’ remains. Despite the fact that her dad had been gone for six years, Caroline confided, the tears flowed.   What a crazy and beautiful story.

And yes, in case you’re wondering, Caroline did give me express permission to use her story. In fact, she thought the idea was great.

I’ll share another Caroline story before I move on. Caroline and her family and friends have a tradition of volunteering  on Memorial Day  and Veteran’s Day.   They join a diverse group of voluteers who place American flags on the graves at local military cemeteries. They also remove the flags after the  holiday which she says is much easier work.  Right beside Caroline, her family, and her friends are a very diverse group of people that include Boy Scout troops, bikers, church groups, etc.  When I picture this,  I see a wonderful example of Americans all working together, regardless of their political or religious backgrounds.  That’s a rare thing these days unfortunately, but I am  glad to know that it still happens.  

Enough about funerals and cemeteries for a bit. Here’s some adorable puppy pictures from this  afternoon.. 

How cute are these two rascals? Paddington is becoming a lapdog like his sister.

I know, I said enough stories about funerals and cemeteries, but I do have a good one for you

Back when my dad was in hospice , we naturally discussed his wishes for burial. It’s important to understand that my mom was already buried at Arlington national cemetery in January 2009 and could not stay there if dad  did not get buried there as well… anyway, dad was very concerned about “being on ice “ for an extended period of time. In the two weeks that my mom was at the funeral home, he insisted on visiting her every day so she would not be lonely. Unfortunately, because of Covid, there was a longer than usual backlog at Arlington national cemetery. We knew that his wait time would be considerably more than two weeks. In fact, at that time, they were quoting me eight months or longer. (Turns out it will be 18 months!) 

The story makes a lot more sense if you remember, my previous remarks about my dad and his ability to make very complicated —unnecessarily complicated plans. To continue…

Dad went through a lot of scenarios in his mind, and presented Judith and me with the following options, which I’m sure he felt were well thought out.  I’ll let you decide.

Option A 

Since dad didn’t want to wait too long for his own burial, he came up with the idea to have my mom dug up from Arlington and buried with him somewhere local. I indulged him to the point of asking someone from Arlington national cemetery about this idea and they said that since mom was buried in 12 years ago, there was probably not much to dig up.  Shudder  

Option B

Option B is a lot like option A except in this scenario dad is cremated, mom is dug up and cremated and their ashes are mixed together. Said ashes are then equally distributed in three urns — one for my brother Richard, one for Judith, and one for me.   

Judith and I tried not to be too mortified by both ideas and instead proposed that he could be cremated and we would wait until Arlington national cemetery  was ready to give him the full honors burial. Happily, we all agreed that this was the best plan of all.  

In just nine days, we will put that plan in action.