Its kinda routine

Sorry I haven't written much. Not much is happening. Mary goes for her daily radiation treatment, comes home, has a small late lunch to match the pre-treatment small early lunch, takes a nap and I wake her up when I call late in the afternoon. She is definitely weaker and not able to participate as much in food preparation or other activities. This is only week 2 of the radiation and we have at least 3 to go. The technicians are telling her its a five week program but the attending physician originally told us its a minimum of six weeks and he may go to nine weeks if it seems necessary.

Our team of drivers has been such a blessing: Marge, Terry, MaryR, Bill, Ingrid, Gayla, PatA and PeggyV have all done at least one run and we have more volunteers who haven't matched up yet with needed drive days. It has gone smoothly except the time Mary forgot her cell phone and couldn't call Bill who had run over to the Stanford Shopping Center. We did get him, but it involved a long route to reach him. Now, Mary makes sure she has the phone--and the driver's number.

The week is developing a routine. Mondays are the longest because Mary has to arrive 45 minutes early to have a blood draw, then radiation, then wait for a visit with the attending physician, Dr. Cheng, the lead radiologist on Mary's case. On Tuesday, arrival is at the appointed hour, but then the chief resident radiologist requires a visit and one of the nursing staff who checks her weight and eating problems--or lack there of. Wed-Thurs-Fri are the most straightforward. Arrive about 15 minutes before the radiation appointment. Mary changes, they call her in, they zap her abdomen, send her out, she changes and finds her volunteer driver. Total time is easily less than an hour.

On Thursday evening I cooked a couple of chicken breasts, made a chicken-mushroom pasta dish on Friday, and today served chicken pasta leftovers for lunch and made a nice tossed salad featuring...(are you ready for this?)...chicken. Ok, it was only two chicken breasts but they were huge and Mary isn't eating a lot but does eat frequently. For breakfast today, I managed to make waffles again and this time Mary did not join me in the kitchen to rescue me if things went wrong. I don't know if she now has confidence that I won't poison her by accident or if she is feeling that tired from the radiation.

We had a great video chat with Mary's daughter and grand daughters who are currently visiting Wellington New Zealand. One of the topics was weather--Lara has only lived in Arizona and California and has never lived in weather, especially real winter weather which is what New Zealand has right now. Lara said the wind was so strong as they walked to the store she almost lost Emma as she started to blow away in the terrible wind!

They showed us on the video the currency and also the peanut butter--the brand was not Skippy. Food seems to be the challenge especially because Maddy has always been a picky eater.

Scott was hired to help finish the movie "Avatar" and it is supposed to be released in December. That means they all left on July 20 and Scott will be back by November. Lara and the girls will be back for the girls to return to school in six weeks or so.

That is all for now. Mary intends to do Farmers' Market in the morning and then join Ingrid and MaryR at the Purple Onion. This Sunday morning gather was our 'regular' event before the diagnosis. We are hoping to get back to that if Mary is strong enough. It is her intention, we don't know if her body will let her do it.