Gary's first day...

Today was Gary's first day with me in Seattle, after arriving late yesterday evening. While I had discussed the apartment and its surroundings quite a bit, nothing really conveys the reality of living in a small apartment next to a major hospital where a large crew of construction workers is building an addition to the hospital, quite like waking up to experience it. All day long. Loudly. Interestingly enough, we live right above where they gather for their start-of-the-day meetings, so we get to watch and listen as they prepare for their labors.

Gary also got to watch me meander my way through the myriad of pills I have to take every morning, starting shortly after I get up and eat something, with various others at certain times through the morning, culminating with the Temodar that is my chemotherapy. I have to take it two hours after eating and one hour before radiation. All this is very specific, and requires some thoughtful scheduling. Fortunately for me, Faith wrote all this up before she went home Saturday, so it's pretty simple for me to keep track of.

And he came with me to Radiology and met all the staff who provides the treatment every morning. They are a grand set of young technicians, who seem to enjoy helping their patients and spending time with them. After the 15 minutes or so that I was strapped down under my mask (look back a few blogs if you want to see a picture), we met with Dr. B, who runs the oncology radiology branch. He's a great guy to meet with, very positive and supportive. He was very happy with how things are going so far, as am I, and plans to meet with me every Tuesday to see how everything is going.

After all the medical work was done, we returned to the apartment for lunch (BLT, except we used spinach instead of lettuce. Yum!), then took naps for a good bit of the afternoon. Hey, it was too hot and the sun was too bright to go outside. After it cooled down and the sun was at a sufficient angle to give us shade walking, we hiked down to QFC Grocery to buy some stuff we needed for meals. This time we took a rolling carrier for duffle bags, that I use on airplanes mostly, and found that it's a great way to bring heavy groceries back from a store, at least when you don't have a car to drive.

So that's today's events...pretty nice all the way around. Hope all of you are having good days too.

Dennis & Faith, and Gary too for a while...