My blogging history:
2012: diagnosed with and underwent treatment for Primary CNS lymphoma in my brain.
2012-2013: blogged on Caring Bridge.
2013: moved to Blogger.
2017: diagnosed with bladder cancer and blogged through 14 chemotherapy treatments and 37 sessions of radiation therapy, each with its own t-shirt and musical selection.
2018 to February 2020: Treated every 3 weeks with pembrolizumab for spread of bladder cancer to lymph nodes. As of June 2020, continue to be cancer free.
This is a strange
year in which Chanukah begins the night before Thanksgiving. There have been a
lot of cute cartoons and jokes about this. Some people have started to refer to
tomorrow as “Thanksgivakah.” But I think maybe the name should be shortened to
just “Givakah” in recognition of the amount of time we have spent accumulating and
wrapping gifts for our grandchildren! I am the first to admit that it perhaps
spun a bit out of control this year (I can see our daughters and sons-in-law
rolling their eyes as they read this, saying “ya think???”) but we are going to have a few extremely fun next few
days.
The tradition on
Chanukah is to eat foods fried in oil to commemorate a small amount of oil found
in the ruins of the Temple that miraculously lasted 7 days until new oil could
be produced. So I spent much of today making the Chanukah food traditionally eaten
by Jews of European descent, potato latkes.
For the uninitiated, latkes are pancakes
made of shredded potatoes mixed with grated onion, eggs, and flour and fried in
oil. I made two kinds: white potatoes and sweet potatoes (without onion but
with cinnamon and ground cloves). This activity makes a mess of the stove that
takes at least as long to clean up as it does to make the latkes, especially if you are as picky as I am.
We are all gathering
at Simmie and Ronen’s house tonight. We will probably need two trips to get
there, between the gifts and the 3½ dozen white + 2 dozen sweet potato latkes, not to mention the apple sauce
and sour cream. I am reasonably confident that this will satisfy ten hungry
eaters.
Tomorrow, our
children are preparing Thanksgiving dinner. A few years ago, Aaron bought a Char-broil
infrared oil-free turkey cooker (say that three times fast!) so he is in charge of the bird. Simmie usually makes a vegetarian dish, and Dina provides the traditional side dishes. Crank up Arlo Guthrie singing "Alice's Restaurant" and you have Thanksgiving!
For all of you who are celebrating one or both of these holidays, enjoy!
We have white shower
curtain liners in both bathrooms of our Sharon apartment. I have been noticing
for some time now that the bottom part of the liner in the master bath, the one
used most frequently, has turned a rather unpleasant brownish color. I had
already bought a new one, but decided to try washing this otherwise perfectly
good one first to see if the stain might come out.
I was able to get the
curtain down on my own, and, after running it through a wash, the stain is not
completely gone but much less apparent, so I decided we could get more use out
of it. But when it was done washing I quickly realized that I needed help hanging
it back up. Rather than get on a stepstool, and run the risk of falling and not
only hurting myself but having Barry very annoyed with me, I asked him to help
me with it. While he was putting it back up I said something about how brown it
had gotten, to which he replied, “yes, it had.”
Here is my question:
we both noticed the shower curtain needed attention, but why was I the one to
take care of it?
In Act 1, Scene II of
Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar,
Cassius says
The fault, dear
Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves,
that we are underlings.
Is it nature or is it
nurture? I’m not sure. But what I do recognize is that what makes a marriage
work is for each of the parties to recognize that the other may have special
skills and talents that, working together and capitalizing on those strengths, can
make their lives better. So while I may sometimes wish that Barry was even a
fraction of the neat freak that I am, I have to stop and remind myself that I
would be blessed if I could have even a fraction of his steady temperament.
Having reached our 40th
anniversary this year, I feel I need a pithy answer when someone asks about the
secret of our long relationship. I tend to reply that we have been very
fortunate. But perhaps the answer is not only in our stars but in our selves.
It is now Monday
afternoon. We are sitting here, classical music playing, and it feels like the
first time in a very long time that we have had a quiet moment.
Barry’s flight on
Thursday evening had been delayed, so he did not arrive home until 1:30 am (yes,
you read that correctly, am), which everyone knows is far past our usual
bedtime. But he had to be up for a 6 am teleconference, a time which normally
works quite well for him and certainly works well for his European colleagues
on the call. So by Friday evening he was pretty much drained, but Ella is so
charming that he had no trouble staying awake through dinner. While we ate a
wonderful thick corn and vegetable soup, she had her usual macaroni and cheese,
which should more appropriately called cheese and macaroni given the ratios she
likes (you can be sure that her Sabba happily obliges). We played some games
and she showed us some of her schoolwork from the week and the next thing we
knew it was bedtime. We were up early Saturday morning for more games before
heading off to synagogue.
We had two couples
over for lunch, one of whom we knew when we lived in Sharon over twenty years
ago, and the other who we have had the pleasure of getting to know in the last
couple years. They, like us, are part-time Sharon residents. Although still
maintaining a home and jobs in the New York area, they bought a house in Sharon
to be near one of their daughters who lives there with her husband and three children
and is a close friend of our daughters. Barry tells me that the food was good
(I was the cook, so I cannot be a fair judge), but we had so much left over
that we were able to serve Sunday dinner to our entire crew with only a little
supplementation.
After Sabbath, Eliana
and Maya came over for a sleep-over while their parents went to a Sister Hazel concert
in Boston. Any younger readers may
appreciate this but, frankly, if not for Simmie and Ronen, who have enjoyed
their music for years, I doubt I would have ever heard of this band. So as I
started writing today, I figured I should check them out. They sound pretty
good! [Message to Simmie and Ronen: you have nothing to fear, Abba and I
promise not to try to go with you next time!]
We had fun with Eliana and Maya, who of course stayed up a bit later and woke up a bit earlier than they were supposed to, but what are grandparents for? We had breakfast and played some more before they went back to their house so we could all get ready for the next item on our agenda.
Simmie has for some years taught in the Hebrew School of one of the local synagogues, and a few of her former and present students had parts in a local production of The Wizard of Oz, so the ten of us went. It was quite an impressive production, with a number of really talented young people. It was during the intermission that we found out that the cowardly lion had been one of Simmie’s students, and he was really very good. I cannot even begin to imagine how much work, how many hours, went into this production which was only performed four times, but I am sure it was a very valuable experience for all the children and their families.
After the play, everyone headed over to our apartment for dinner. By the time they left and we cleaned up, we were pretty much exhausted! We even slept until 6:30 this morning, so we must have been tired.
As a closing thought, I wanted to share a report from the BBC that I happened to hear on the radio yesterday. This brought to mind a course that Barry has been teaching for a number of years now. It started back in 1996, when a radiation oncologist in Tel Aviv whom we had met initially through friends in Sharon, asked Barry to come and teach a week-long course in clinical radiation biology to radiation oncology residents in Israel. Barry taught that course quite a few times, about every three years. But then a few years ago the course broadened to serve about twenty radiation oncology programs in Middle Eastern countries and was moved to Istanbul, Turkey, where it now attracts a group of about 80 radiation oncologists from throughout the region. Barry has taught in Turkey twice; the third time he was supposed to teach was the spring of 2012 when I was undergoing treatment and everyone well understood why he was unable to travel. Hearing about the women traveling to Israel to ensure the birth of healthy babies reminded me of the training that Barry’s colleague has established. I have supplied a link to this heartwarming story here.
Anyone born in the
United States before 1958 or so likely remembers where they were and how they
heard the news on that fateful day in November of 1963. As an eleven year old
girl, I was not especially interested in politics, although I do remember being
in awe of those two adorable little children running around the White House in
their perfect clothes. How could anyone not love that good-looking and
photogenic family? I was in the sixth grade at Grandview Elementary School,
which was so close to our house that we kids were able to walk there. I
remember the principal, who was a woman who seemed quite old to me but was
probably not even 50, came into our classroom looking as if she had been
crying, and very somberly sat down and told us that President Kennedy had been
shot and killed. If memory serves, school was dismissed shortly after the
announcement and we all went home. I have only fuzzy memories of the days that
followed.
Less than three
months later, on February 9th of 1964, the Beatles gave their first
live television performance on a variety program called “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
When I look back, it’s difficult for me to believe that these two events were
so close in time. They feel like light years apart. Part of the reason may be
that time passes differently as a child than as an adult; after all, three
months is a much larger proportion of the life of an almost-12-year-old than of
someone over 60.
Looking back on those
two events, I have to admit that, at the time, the Beatles seemed far more
important than the goings-on in Washington and far-away places. But now, much
as I love music, noting the anniversaries of these two events in rather close
proximity seems jolting to me. How could we have seemingly forgotten the assassination
and moved on to such mundane things so quickly?
The adjustments to personal
hardships may well be quite different for adults than for children. Again and
again you hear about children who survive a cancer diagnosis and treatment and
quickly return to normal, happy, lives. But most adults who go through this are
left changed physically, mentally, or emotionally, and the road ahead, which
may be an entirely different road than the one on which they had been
travelling, is a little less straightforward. The best I can advise is to crank
up the Beatles’ music and keep on dancing for as long as you can!
To that end, I’ve had
a lot of nice time with the children during this week here in Sharon. The one thing
I had somehow forgotten to pack is my camera, and yesterday, as I wanted to
take a video of Eliana and Maya singing a song and doing a dance together, I
discovered a problem with my Galaxy Note. It turned out to be that there was no
room left in the memory, which I presume is in no way related to my own memory
issues. This afternoon I moved all the pictures and little videos off of the
device so now I will be able to use it again.
We have a full
weekend ahead. Ella is coming over tonight for dinner and a sleep-over.
Tomorrow we have friends coming for lunch, and on Sunday the ten of us are
going to a local production of The Wizard of Oz in which one of Simmie’s Hebrew
School students is performing. It is being presented by a group called the
Un-Common Theater Company. Here is some information from their website:
Founded in 1980, The Un-Common Theatre Company is dedicated
to producing quality productions performed by aspiring young actors, singers
and musicians and supported by aspiring young technicians. We are one of the
few children's theatre companies in New England that provides an opportunity to
work under the guidance of theatre professionals and perform in professional
theater houses.
Our fall show kicks off our season and is our Fall Family Production (November) with a cast of all ages. Past shows have included kids, young adults, parents and even grandparents! It has been a fantastic way for young and old to learn from one another and encourage cross-generational mentoring relationships.
The only downside to
this weekend is that on Sunday a cold front is due to move in, leaving the
temperatures well below freezing. Whenever this weather comes it is too soon
for me! The only upside I can see is that Barry bought me a beautiful wool
scarf when he was in the UK last month, and now I will finally have a chance to
wear it.
I was a stay-at-home
mom from the time that our first daughter was born until she was five and her
sister was three and I started full-time graduate school in statistics. Life
quickly became a juggling act for Barry and me. I knew I was one of the lucky
ones because Barry was almost more enthusiastic about my return to developing a
career as I was, and took his additional responsibilities in stride.
That first year was
difficult. Not only was I adjusting to a very different schedule and structure,
but, having been out of school for more than six years, I was trying to
re-learn study habits, not to mention basic calculus (which I had taken as a
senior in high school some 12 years earlier). It was a rocky start. One vivid
memory is of my professor in Mathematical Statistics (sort of the 101 course in
statistics graduate programs). I had the very strong sense from Professor S
that he did not believe I could do this; he fully expected me to fail by the
end of the semester. The first test did not go very well, but eventually I got
my stride, and a few days after the final exam he called me into his office and
was completely incredulous as he told me that I had achieved the highest score.
I got to thinking
about this when I woke up this morning. How in the world did I do all that? How
do so many other people manage to accomplish so much more? On the one hand, while
I know that being 60+ is not the same as being 30+, I do not feel very
different than that younger version of myself.
What undoubtedly
brought these thoughts to mind is that we have invited some friends over for Sabbath
lunch on Saturday. Over the years we have hosted countless numbers of friends
for Sabbath meals. For some years we provided home hospitality to visitors who were
in Riverdale over Sabbath; we even have a leather-bound “guest book” we started
keeping in which many wrote touching notes of appreciation. I look back and do
not recall this being a particular challenge. But now, I have to write down
every step and consult that list repeatedly. And I know everything is taking me
much more time to accomplish now than it did then, because there is simply no
way we could have hosted all that company with two full-time careers if I had
been this slow in the kitchen!
So here it is,
Wednesday morning. Barry is away at a meeting for a couple of days. Before he
left, he did all the grocery shopping so that I could start cooking today. That
should give me plenty of time to make one meal. We have had meals at the homes
of the two couples we have invited, and they are each a hard act to follow. If
all else fails, I figure they will cut me some slack, because, well…
This is adapted from
a piece I wrote for my memoir writing class.
Before heading off to college in the fall of 1970, I bought a
soft white felt hat with a large floppy brim, then in style. I can still
remember walking around campus in that hat, which was a terrific ice breaker and
helped me make many new friends.
I did not start wearing hats again until some years later
when I began attending a traditional synagogue, where married women wear some
kind of head covering. Most of the many hats I have owned over the years were a
variation on the same theme that seemed to work best for the shape of my face:
a simple hat with a moderately wide brim.
The chemotherapy I received after my cancer diagnosis caused
most of my hair to fall out. To minimize the mess, I had my hair cut very short.
It was early summer, and I bought a few cotton knit hats with modest brims that
I would throw on when leaving the house. By this summer my hair had returned
but I still wore those same hats to synagogue or as sun protection. Then the
fall arrived. I had a couple of well-worn hats that had been bought in more
recent years, and half a closet full of older hats. The older hats were large,
with rather wide brims, the type I had favored for many years. But the
significant weight loss that came along with the chemotherapy left me with a thinner
face and somewhat smaller head circumference, so the hats in my closet made me
look like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother’s old clothing.
So I set out to a hat store on the Upper West Side. We had
driven past the store many times, sometimes stopping at the traffic light just
outside the store, and the hats in the window looked nice. When we walked in, I
was drawn to a grey hat with an asymmetric brim, longer on the right side, and adorned
with a peacock feather and a navy blue velvet ribbon tied in a bow. It was not a
hat I would have ever expected to buy and cost quite a bit more than I would
have ever expected to spend. Yet somehow that hat was calling to me and fit
perfectly.
A difficult experience may change who we are and how we see ourselves.
I was moderately overweight throughout most of my adult life, and although I
lost the weight over a year ago, I still find my image in the mirror somewhat
surprising. Before last year, I spent years in black clothing. Now, having survived
through a dark storm, and being newly thin, I find myself drawn to bold colors
and new ideas. In the past, I never would have bought an asymmetric hat, let
alone one with a peacock feather. But the detour of this past year and a half
has taught me to find new meaning and even a sense of balance in alternative
routes.
It started as a simple trip to a hat store, but it became so
much more.
Although today was
relatively mild, it is fair to say that we have seen the last of the warm
weather for a while. I am not particularly fond of winter, but this year I find
myself thinking about a prayer traditionally said on holidays and milestone
occasions:
Blessed are You, Lord
our God, ruler of the universe, who has granted us life, sustained us, and
enabled us to reach this time.
I cannot say I am a
fan of snow, but this year I feel I will be especially grateful to be seeing it
fall once again.
In the writing class
I am taking, we have worked a couple of times on something called “Six Word
Memoirs.” This is a fun exercise, an effort to express the meaning of life in
six words.
Here are a few I have
penned:
Math
comes easily, writing less so
Love
to sing, consider yourself warned
Wash
clothes, wear clothes, wash clothes
Clean,
shop, schlep, cook, eat, clean
Friday
Times crossword far too difficult
Passover
Eve: kitchen ready, am I?
Hours
spent cooking, minutes spent eating
MRI:
big white blob, bad sign
Brain
MRI: do not open eyes
College,
babies, graduate school: good order?
Is
Chanukah early or Christmas late?
Memory
loss....don’t know, I forgot
I had no idea that
this was a common tool until I stumbled upon a website called “Six Word War,”
which posts six word memoirs written by troops in Afghanistan. We don’t tend to
think of the young men and women who serve in the military as creative writers,
but there is some amazingly moving material there.
It has been cold the last couple of days so I have been primarily indoors. I do hope to venture out today to go to my class. Tomorrow, we are off to Sharon. We haven’t seen the children and grandchildren in two and a half weeks, so we’re really looking forward to it.
All too often these days we hear about bad or downright evil
things that are said or done in the name of religion. So it is refreshing to
catch the following on the news last night. This is definitely one to share
with our grandchildren!
We had a quiet Sabbath because we wanted to rest up for last
night: The Eagles at Madison Square Garden. We went to synagogue in the morning
and played two games of Rummikub in the afternoon and Barry won one of them!
Neither of us can quite remember when we were last at
Madison Square Garden, but sometime between then and now it has undergone a
fairly significant renovation and, like so many places in New York City in
recent years, it is actually quite a bit nicer than we remembered it. Our seats
were fair, but these days with the big screens you can actually “see” the band
quite well. We had stopped on the way in to pick up some earplugs, so we were
all set.
This show was part of the band’s “History of the Eagles”
tour, and that is exactly what it was. They basically went through all of their
most popular music, sprinkling in only a few less familiar tunes. The first
half was largely folk-inspired, beginning with just Glenn Frey and Don Henley
on acoustic guitars, then gradually adding others including Timothy Schmit and
Joe Walsh, who joined for such hits as “Peaceful Easy Feeling” and “Witchy
Woman.” The volume was cranked up for the second half of the show but it never
became painful and we never even used those earplugs!
The full house was quite enthusiastic, at least as much as
we aging baby boomers can be. I doubt there were more than a handful of people
under 50 there. There is a part of me that wonders how depressing that must be for
the band: despite having continued to create new music throughout their 40
years together, the crowd really just wants to hear the first few years of
their repertoire. It brings to mind a line I shared once before from a James
Taylor song,
Fortune
and fame’s such a curious game,
Perfect strangers can call you buy name.
Pay
good money to hear “Fire and Rain,”
Again
and again and again.
But, like they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! And the
music that brought the Eagles to fame back in the 1970s is still, to quote one
of their songs, “the best of their love.” We are left with that peaceful, easy
feeling.
In a complete change of gears, we are going this afternoon
to a concert at the 92nd Street Y that would have likely escaped my
notice if not for the music class I am taking there:
Exclusive New York engagement Hagen Quartet
Lukas Hagen, violin
Rainer Schmidt, violin
Veronika Hagen, viola
Clemens Hagen, cello
BEETHOVEN: String
Quartet in A minor, Op. 132 String
Quartet in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2
The Hagen Quartet will be playing all of Beethoven’s string
quartets in a series of a half dozen concerts, but this was the only date that
worked for us. Because I am enrolled in a music course there, we even got a
discount!
We had a very nice
Sabbath in Riverdale. We went to Hebrew Institute and were fortunate that Elli
Kranzler led both Kabbalat Shabbat (welcoming the Sabbath on Friday evening)
and Shabbat Mussaf (part of the morning service). He has a wonderful voice and
style, primarily using tunes of the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. It is always a
treat to hear him.
It was nice having
that extra hour on Saturday night. On Sunday, we planned to head up to Woodbury Commons, an outdoor outlet mall about an hour away from here, and I
spent some time mapping out our excursion; I printed a mall map off the web
site and annotated it with the stores I wanted to visit. It was a lovely ride
towards Upstate New York through the last of the fall colors. Unfortunately,
the shopping part of the trip was quite disappointing. The mall was extremely
crowded, with long lines in many of the stores. We noticed quite a few people
with large wheeled suitcases, apparently a new solution to the problem of
lugging their bounty. But I am not sure what all those folks were buying, because
I found very little to my liking. We have many fond memories of trips to that
mall, most of them with our then teen- and college-aged daughters, after which
we returned home to voice mail messages from the credit card company wanting to
confirm our purchases. Such calls are proof positive that you have spent too
much! Shopping for just me, the damage was not that serious. On the other side
of the highway from the outlet mall is the Eileen Fisher outlet store, and
although our last visit there a couple of years ago had been a complete waste
of time, this time I was able to buy two very nice skirts and sweaters, and
this redeemed the trek out there.
Having bought quite a
bit of new clothing over the past year, I realized that the moment has come to
start cleaning out my drawers and closets filled with larger-size clothing I no
longer wear. I spent a good part of Monday working on that, and have just one
more small closet to get through. For the moment I have put the clothes in large
bags that I have labeled (sweaters, summer shirts, etc.) and Barry is
schlepping them up to the cedar closet in the attic. I am just not ready to
state definitively that I will never need them again, although I hope not. At
least now I have plenty of room to easily store all the clothes I have bought
during the past year and a half. And of course I had a song going through my
head as I worked on this: an old David Roth song called “Digging Through My
Closet.” I do not have a video but am attaching a recording here.
We are quite relieved
that today is election day – we had grown tired of the incessant ads weeks ago.
For the last couple
of days I have practically torn the house apart. It started with a search for a
particular sweater I wanted to wear now that the weather has grown colder. But
suddenly yesterday I remembered that there were three other sweaters that had
gone AWOL. Now I started to become suspicious. So, although we no longer have
the receipt for the winter clothes we took to the local dry cleaners last
spring and picked up shortly thereafter, we stopped in in to ask if by any chance
they had come across four sweaters. The very nice lady, who knows Barry quite
well from his regular visits, insisted that they had none of our clothing sitting unclaimed. We came home and I was
pretty much ready to just call it quits on those sweaters when the phone rang –
the lady from the dry cleaner found my sweaters! Barry went right up there and
it turns out they also had a pair of his pants. Note to self: keep a list of
the items we take to the cleaners!
Yesterday in the
memoir writing course we had a few in-class assignments. So Janet, the instructor,
said to our all-female class, “this next assignment is one I have wanted to use
for a class sometime, but the last couple of years every class has had some
males. So now is my chance!” The assignment was to write something about
monthly periods or menopause. Most shared stories of their first time. A number
of their mothers had not had “the talk” with them and those made for
interesting stories. I do not have any dramatic story to tell, but I started
writing about how girls are developing at much younger ages than they used to,
and with a granddaughter who is 8 years old it may not be long before the next
generation comes of age. And then I wrote:
“Note
to self: a new idea for an American Girl doll accessory: little pads!”
I don’t think anything I have written in class
has ever received a bigger laugh.
We have seen a couple
of movies. The first was a documentary called “Casting by…,” about Marion
Doherty, who for many years was a widely acclaimed casting director for films.
There were wonderfully fascinating interviews with a wide variety of actors and
directors who had worked with her over the years, as well as some other
well-known casting directors, such as Juliet Taylor, a name that Woody Allen
fans will recognize. We had never really thought about this, but there is no
Oscar award category for casting. Late in Ms. Doherty’s life, there was a significant
effort to change this involving an enormous number of signatures from quite influential
actors and directors. But in the end, The Motion Picture Academy refused to add
this award. Ms. Doherty died a couple of years ago, and in many ways we felt
that this movie was the tribute she should have been able to hold in her hands
before she died. It was a well done and moving documentary.
The other movie we
saw was “All is Lost.” There is just one actor in this movie, Robert Redford,
and other than a brief monologue at the beginning, there is no speaking. He
plays a rugged 70-something who takes off solo in a magnificent yacht on a long
trip in the crystal blue waters of the Indian Ocean between Indonesia and
Madagascar. One night the boat runs into the remains of a large shipping
container filled with sneakers that had fallen from a cargo ship. After he
pushes away from the container, he sees that his yacht is left with a large
hole in its side. With great calm and ingenuity he manages to patch the hole,
but can no longer use any of his water-logged navigational or communications
equipment. He calmly pulls out maps and charts a course. But the worst is yet
to come when he sails into a severe storm. By the end of this harrowing event,
he is left on a small inflatable raft with a small emergency kit and little
food and water in the middle of a huge ocean. There are a couple of instances
where he can see boats in the distance but they do not see the emergency flares
he sends into the air.
Truth be told, I did
not really see the entire movie. I found it so excruciatingly painful that
there were periods I simply could not watch. Not wanting to disrupt Barry or
the other movie-goers, which would have happened had I tried to leave the
theater, I simply put my head down and covered my eyes for those segments. I know
many of you are thinking, “it’s only a movie, don’t take it so seriously.” But
perhaps what I can say is my reaction is testimony to how really excellent the
story and acting were. I am not going to tell you how the story ends, because I
do not want to ruin anything for those of you who may have a chance to see it.
I went home wondering
why I had subjected myself to this particular torture, but by the next day,
with a little distance from the excruciating agony, I was able to start
recognizing just how amazing this film was. The film can be seen on many
levels, but is perhaps first and foremost a testimony to how much we humans
inevitably, at some point in our lives, need help navigating our way. For most
of is, it may not be as dramatic as being abandoned at sea. But whether due to illness
or accident or loss, we were not meant to go it completely alone. I have been
unbelievably fortunate to have Barry, my daughters, my sons-in-law, my
grandchildren, my doctors, and a large circle of friends to help me navigate
this new course I was forced to travel. With all of that help, I have continued
on my journey, ever hopeful that I will stay on course and arrive at whatever
destination I desire.
