To Pittsburgh and back, safe and sound. (My bag made it back only shortly thereafter...)
I had a good weekend. Not as much time to explore as fully as I hoped, but a lot of enjoyable things. Treated myself to a nice dinner Thurs night when I got there, explored a little Friday morning, then conference Fri afternoon and Sat all day. Lots of walking all around. Then another nice dinner Sat night before a nice early morning to get back this morning (4:30 wake up, oh and that's 3:30 our time!)
The conference itself wound up being an interesting mix of topics that applied to me personally and professionally. The focus was palliative & hospice care in cancer patients, so a lot was directly related to what I work with regularly. Then there were the pieces that were about cancer survivorship and how little is known about the long-term and late effects of cancer treatment and how much it impacts the lives of survivors. It gives me a lot to think about, along with reading more about "chemo brain" as a real phenomenon that can profoundly affect chemo patients. I don't have significant impact from it, but I certainly am not as cognitively sharp as I'd like to think I was. So anyway.
It was interesting to travel and contrast it to my getaway to Milwaukee last winter. Being bald really has an impact--strangers just approach you and welcome you in. This trip, there were a few people at the conference that could recognize what my appearance meant (compression sleeve, L arm scar from port, flat chest, short hair) and did approach me, but minimally. Just interesting.
Ben and Olive held down the fort while I was gone and Ben was even in pretty good spirits (but ready for a break)! And Olive is now in the bedtime-without-pacifier routine like a champion. Now to get ready for the un-casting... (Tuesday...) Oh boy.
1 comment:
glad you had a good conference and break...It's interesting to think about how friendly people are when they can SEE a problem and, usually, how good that friendliness feels to the person on the receiving end. Here's to getting and giving the friendliness without the badges of need!
And, as for chemo brain, I'm getting more and more interested in that. I'm working with my 3rd child in remission from leukemia, post chemo + radiation. We have so many questions--like would it be better to hyper stimulate the brain with speech/reading during the rx or is it, as with tbi, good advice not to stress the brain during rx? Not very much is written about these topics.
Last, but not least...Olive's de-casting. Grandma SO meant to have new jeans in the mail for her big day and so failed to achieve that! I hope you bring some pants for the girl to put on and that you send a picture...Tell Olive that we are SO excited to see her walking again and we have a big surprise for her.
xo
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