Lymph Journal # 67 Back in the US of A

6/7/2012

 Well, after an uneventful journey, we made it back United States. “Uneventful, as far as I'm concerned, is a great word in the context of travel.   I tried to play the stem cell transplant low immunity card in order to upgrade to 1st class trick but it didn't work. 1st class apparently was already full. But we're able to sit together near the front of the plane and we only experienced just a little bit of turbulence. Our daughter Sam and Amanda were there to meet us at the airport. It was a bit of a gloomy day in Boston but the trip home was also uneventful.

 Jet lag has not been too much of a problem. I slept well for 3 nights now. I traveled with my mask and I don't seem to have picked up anything detrimental on the plane. My mom is been doing her best to set me up. Her best is pretty good. This morning I achieved one of my goals for the trip home. I took an early morning walk on the Narragansett pier beach. Fog covered the pier itself. But there was open sky to the East North East. I made it from the south end to the north end of the beach and back. Hopefully next time it will be a little bit warmer.

I'm trying a little experiment here. Trying to compose this on my new speech recognition software. It's a little bit awkward to begin with. But I hope this will streamline some of my writing in the future.

I feel very good. I appetite is terrific. More and more the side effects of chemo seemed to be slipping away. Of course I'm still pretty hairless. It's interesting how difficult it is for some people to recognize me. Without hair including eyebrows, people see a different face. It's kind of fun to play with. When you know they know you, but don't recognize you, you can have quite a bit of fun. I went to RadioShack on our first day home. The store is managed by a former student from the Narragansett Pier School.  The manager remembers me quite well with hair. He was busy with a long case when his associate asked if she could help me and I asked for the manager by name.  He kept giving me furtive glances while helping this couple. I could almost see him thinking who's this bald guy that knows me by name. When he was finally free to serve me, I of course asked him if he knew me. He didn't. Once I gave my name he did. This guy sets me up with a SIM card every summer. Of course he had the nerve to ask me at the end of the transaction, “Would you like to contribute to the LiveStrong foundation?” And I said it's quite unfair to ask the cancer patient that question. And then I contributed. We had a good laugh.

It's been great seeing all my kids in getting to know the grandchildren a little bit better. I look forward to much more of this on this trip. Our calendar is beginning to fill up with all sorts of visits and we do hope to see many people so please let us know if it would be convenient to visit with you.

Any weird sentence construction in this post can be attributed to my new dictation software – so far it’s not a timesaver but I trust, as we get to know one another, it will be.