travels, races, and other musings

At Sea I woke up at 7 AM to do laundry. Again. (Spoiler alert: there’s even more laundry ahead.) Things went a little better this time. Sort of. Ultimately we were doing laundry off and on between 7 and 10 AM. Yay. But between that we all went and ran a 5k. A lady on our FB cruise meet group had organized an unofficial 5k on Deck 4 and had medals made and everything (we paid her 10 Euros for each medal and they were really cute). We all ran separately (Emmaline ran with one of her friends) and then had some breakfast after that.  We regrouped at the room, showered, finished the aforementioned laundry and then went to lunch in Royal Palace which featured a rare sighting of Emmaline. Then all three of us went to see Elemental in the Buena Vista Theatre and it was absolutely packed. But the movie was really cute and we all enjoyed it.  Roger and I went after that to get coffee from Cove and Emmaline returned back to Vibe with her friends and we didn’t see her again until just bef...

Cherbourg We arrived in Cherbourg for our first port of the cruise and I had arranged a private tour with Brigitte from Unforgettable Normandy for a D-Day tour. Some months back, I found two other families with whom to share the tour on our Facebook group so all together we were eight: our family of three, another family of three (16 year old son) and one couple (empty nesters). We all met in the atrium at 7:35 AM to meet with Brigitte at 7:45 AM. The terminal building in Cherbourg is actually really beautiful. Fun fact: Titanic also called here after leaving Southampton. We hopped into Brigitte’s van and off we went into the rainy, overcast morning. Apparently this weather is pretty much par for the course in Normandy and the drizzle would continue all day long. We were prepared with our rain gear.  Our first stop after a little over an hour drive was Omaha Beach. One thing I really loved about our tour that day was that at each stop Brigitte had a big book with maps of each place...

Embarkation Dru and I had arranged to work out together in the park first thing in the morning so we met in the lobby at 7:10 AM for a 7:15 workout. I led Dru through a workout and we had a lot of fun before meeting everyone else for breakfast at 8:30 AM. After breakfast we returned to the room, got cleaned up and packed. At around 10:00 AM we went for a walk. We walked down to the original Southampton town walls and to Bargate, the original gate into the town which also served as a government building and prison built c. 1180. We did a little shopping (Emmaline packed a tube of mascara that ended up being empty) and then grabbed some coffee (Emmaline wanted British Starbucks) before going back to the hotel. By this point it had started to rain, not heavily, but it was somewhat steady. We checked out of the hotel and tried to get an Uber, which didn’t work. It seemed that there weren’t many XL cars available, so Nils called two taxis for us, which worked fine. We said goodbye to Dru an...

Stonehenge and Bath Breakfast wasn’t included at the hotel, but it was pretty cheap and seemed easiest so we just did that (breakfast for our family of three for two mornings worked out to 38 GBP, which seemed like a steal). Roger’s jaw was feeling a little better and unlike the previous day, he was able to eat more normally, but he still took some Tylenol. After breakfast we were picked up by our guide for the day, Jo from Undiscovered Cotswolds. She was right on time for our 8:30 AM pickup and we drove straightaway to Stonehenge, arriving a little before 10 AM. We started by going through the visitor’s center which was nice and informative before boarding a shuttle bus to take us out to the stones. I had heard you couldn’t get close to the stones, but honestly, I was not at all unhappy about our distance from them in the slightest. Some people may feel that they are just big rocks stacked, but I really enjoyed seeing them.  We left Stonehenge around 11:15 and drove to Bath. Once ...

Austin to Southampton It’s back to Europe for another adventure. As seems to be our lot in life lately, we figure out how to pivot and roll with the punches. I’m sure my trip reports would be quite dreary without a bit of drama! But we still had fun, of course. Traveling on this trip is Roger (my husband), Emmaline (our 15 year old) and me. For the first leg of the trip, we will be joined by my friend Dru and her husband Nils who live in Geneva. You may recall Dru from our 2018 European adventures. She was supposed to be with for our adventures in Europe in 2020 but, well, we know how that worked out. So I’m super excited that we were able to coordinate some time together for this year.  I wish I could say that our travel was uneventful, but it turned out to be quite the event. Our direct flight to Heathrow was scheduled to take off at 6:10 PM and it was slightly late departing (maybe 15 minutes) but we made up the time in the air. None of us slept very well on the flight and by th...

This is it! I've reached the end of the road, more or less, in my treatment. 20 out of 20 radiation treatments DONE. I'm so relieved. I'm tired of the strange shooting pains, the burning feeling both inside and on my skin, and the fatigue, which also caused me some forgetfulness and fogginess at times. The fatigue was the worst, honestly and came in waves that would just suddenly hit me. I've never felt fatigue like that. Working out helped a lot so I was glad to have that outlet.  It's going to be really strange not going to Texas Oncology every single afternoon for my treatment. I won't see Connie, who was Deaf and had the appointment just before mine at 1:20, or Mrs. Smith who was 97 years old and in the 1:40 time slot (I was the 1:30). It's strange to think about them still there. Yesterday after the radiation techs all cheered and showered me with confetti (there's no bell) I wished the other patients well before I left. (I told the radiation techs ...

I count down every day of radiation. I'm apparently not the only one because on day 6 the tech asked me how I was doing and I said, "just counting down. 6 down, 14 to go." She sort of chucked and said, "yah." I replied, "you've heard that one before, I guess." And she said, "yes, pretty much everyone counts it down. Hang in there."  I have the routine down now. I check in at the front desk at Texas Oncology. The lady at the front desk greets me by name and tells me I can go back while she activates the remote unlock on the door. I go around the corner and go through. Once through the door, I turn left at the nurses station ("Good afternoon!") then I take a right into the waiting area, passing the control area (I'm not sure the official name, but its where they control everything and have view the camera feed from in the treatment room). I go into a changing room and put my things into a locker and put on a gown. I put an ear...

My cancer diagnosis is the second time I have felt betrayed by my body. The first time was when I was pregnant. I had HG, hyperemesis gravidarum, or severe nausea and vomiting during pregnancy, and it was absolutely debilitating. At just six weeks pregnant I wrote in my journal:  Someone turned the morning sickness knob up to 11 a couple of days ago. Last night they turned it up to 25. It's still there. :( This photo was taken at Thanksgiving, which was perhaps one of the most miserable Thansgivings of my life. I remember feeling like absolute hell when this photo was taken. I look at the woman in this photo and I feel so awful for her because it's about to get even worse. After we returned from our Thanksgiving holiday in California at my grandmother's house, I was 8 weeks pregnant and couldn't keep anything down. Not even water. Dehydrated, drained, and desperate, we finally went in to the ER over a weekend. I will never forget feeling absolutely miserable while I sat...

I'm now 5 weeks post-op and I'm feeling almost normal again. I still have some very slight cording pain/pulling in my arm, but with Dr. Wag's work, it's almost completely gone. What a relief! Both my incisions have healed up very well and I'm working my way back to full strength in BODYPUMP. I'm not there yet because I'm taking it very slow coming back in to get up to my full weight. It's not worth pushing things too quickly. I'll get there.  I was in sort of a crappy place emotionally last week. It's just hard sometimes. I'm doing a little better this week, but I started radiation today and it's not painful or anything, but there's just something about doing it that just feels...crappy.  The process began on Thursday with my simulation. I had to lie facedown on a table on a CT machine. Then they scanned me several times to pinpoint the exact area they will need to target. After they got me all lined up right, they put stickers on my ...

I met with my medical oncologist today. To recap, I have three docs: medical oncologist, breast specialist/surgeon (who I've been seeing since my original AHD diagnosis in 2019), and radiation oncologist. So this was my medical oncologist who looks at things from a broader perspective, and not just in the here and now, but she's also looking at preventing recurrence.  I mentioned the Oncotype DX in my previous post. This pathology test looks at a bunch of different genetic stuff in the cancer and it all gets scored and makes some determinations about possible future reoccurrence. If you're post-menopausal, you want that score to be under 26. If you're pre-menopausal, you want that score under 15.  Welp. That's not what we wanted. Sigh. I was given two crappy options: four rounds of chemo OR 2 years of monthly, painful injections into my stomach with a giant needle to block my ovaries from producing estrogen thereby putting me into "chemical menopause." Fun...