Back to the rat race......

Laugh your heart out.  Dance in the rain.  Cherish the moment.  Ignore the pain.  Live, laugh, love.  Forgive and forget.  Life’s too short to be living with regrets.  – Beauty, Brains, and Beyond

We had a great time in St. Augustine with our good friends, Debbie and Bill.  Debbie and I did our best to support the local economy with some serious retail therapy (a.k.a. ‘shopping’) while the guys went for a bike ride on the beach and took the dogs for long walks, etc.  On Saturday, the weather wasn’t very nice in the morning so we went to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum, which was pretty interesting, and then to Harry’s Seafood for lunch (one of our favorite places).  Saturday evening we went on a Ghost Train Adventure, which also was pretty interesting, although we didn’t see much “paranormal” activity.  We all had EMF meters to measure said activity, but the meters weren’t too active.  It was fun anyway.  On Sunday morning, we went for a nice walk on the beach.  It was VERY windy and quite chilly but really beautiful….with hardly a soul on the beach.  Then we all went into town for another nice lunch at a Cuban restaurant and then we caught the tail end of the Halloween parade – lots of cute costumes on kids, dogs, and adults.  Debbie and Bill had to leave Sunday afternoon to head back to Merritt Island, so Kenny and I went to Sangrias where they have a 2^nd floor balcony overlooking St. George Street – the main pedestrian drag (no cars allowed).  It’s a great people-watching spot, so we got to see lots more costumes while having a glass of homemade Sangria and listening to some good live music.  Very fun afternoon.

Sadly, we had to pack up on Monday morning – in the rain – and head back to Brevard County ourselves.  It rained all the way home, but we arrived safely.  We actually stopped in Titusville and unhooked the car so I could go to my appointments.  Kenny continued on to Melbourne in the RV and got set up at our next campground.

Yes, it’s back to reality and the rat race of the medical world!  Yesterday I had 3 medical appointments – all at the same place, fortunately.  I had to have blood work (my INR dropped, which means another Coumadin adjustment), had to have my port flushed (needs to be done once a month), and had my pre-radiation ‘molding.’  As it turns out, the actual tattooing will come later this week or on Monday.  Right now I just have some blue crosses on my chest and abdomen, but they will actually be tattooing some “dots” in various places.  If I have to get a tattoo, it oughtta be something more interesting than a dot!  For the ‘molding,’ they rammed all this stuff up against me and then sucked the air out of it, which formed a kind of mold.  This is so I’ll be laying in the same position each time I go for a rad blast. 

They called me today and said I have to go in on Thursday for another pre-radiation appointment – for a “series of films” and possibly the tattooing?  And then on Friday I have an appointment with Dr. Sprawls about the DVT in my leg.  On Monday, radiation begins.  Oh, it was SO nice to be away from all of this for a few weeks!  I want to turn around and go back to the mountains!  No such luck. 

Our new campsite is pretty nice.  In fact, I think we have the best site in the park – nice and private and away from all the other sites.  Good bike riding and walking here.  And it will be a nice change of scenery for awhile.  We’ll stay here at least a month, maybe longer.  We’ll see how it goes. 

Kenny is anxious to go see his boat.  So he’ll go up to Merritt Island tomorrow and spend the day working on the boat.  Unfortunately, I have too much transcription to do to join him.  In fact, I’m pretty tired right now from typing most of the day today, so I’m going to head off to bed (with my Kindle, of course).  Hugs to everybody!

You know you’re a cancer patient when…… you see "BMX" and think bilateral mastectomy and not bicycle motocross racing.