No pain, lots of gain!

Mary had a full day yesterday! She made dinner without any assistance from me, did a quick drive to the store for some necessary kitchen items, prepared the house for The Maids cleaning service today and all in all behaved like there was no medical issue whatsoever! She was exhausted last night but in a good way--from being active and doing stuff all day long.

Mary's comment, "Its amazing how good you can feel and how much you can do when a stabbing pain in your back is no longer there."

We had talked about her driving. The warning on the prescription is to avoid driving until the full effect of the pain medication is known. Given her response so far, we figured driving a couple of miles to the grocery store in local, low speed traffic would be ok. The concentration needed to drive the 20+ miles on the freeway to Stanford should be deferred until we know how she is affected (or not) by the pain meds. Hence, Ingrid is doing taxi duty today.

For Thanksgiving this year, Mary's sister, Reenie, and husband, Tom, are coming to visit and Mary's youngest son, Daniel (below) aka DP aka Cheeseball, with his girlfriend, Kamie (no picture), are also coming.

From 2007-10 El Paso Texas

We planned that Reenie would be Queen of the Kitchen on the assumption that Mary would be suffering from chemo and not be very functional at all. Now that the doc has set aside the chemo for a while and the back pain is under control by the meds, Mary is going into turbo mode preparing and planning for the visitors. An unexpected turn of events but a welcome one, nonetheless.

Thanksgiving dinner will be spectacular, I am sure, especially given that Reenie proved her culinary skills during her two visits this year as primary care giver. With Mary in the kitchen too, it should be a blast. The highlight, however, will be the day after when Mary teaches both Reenie and Kamie her turkey enchilada dish. Mary's kids like this dish so much that in the past Mary has frozen the enchiladas and FedEx'd them to her offspring.

Today is MRI day. We won't hear results for a couple of days.