Loose Strife

It was an unexpectedly full day today. I took the girls to a music class this morning and stopped for a snack at Elmer’s, a schizophrenic little store in Ashfield. When we got home, Laura was on the couch with ice on her leg. She had fallen again, but this time she hurt her leg. […]

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Laura and I got up at 4:30 this morning to be in Boston to meet her “2nd opinion” oncologist. He seems like a good man. Pragmatic, bow-tie sort of guy who plays a good detective. He’ll rapid fire a number of seemingly unrelated questions, skip over other questions we’ve heard from others, and quickly size […]

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When I think of my family, I always pause to think about how often they were willing to do “the robot”. Or, anything else silly for that matter. That’s what I love about my family. I also love that we’re very close, and that we’ve never really given up on each other. Growing up as […]

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I wasn’t really sleeping last night, so when I started to see sunlight, I got up to take a walk. It was cold out and snowing lightly. The flakes looked light and large. The dusting on the sunken packed snow had a pretty, rough texture that caught the dim light in the dawn. Walking into […]

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I think that if Laura were a superhero, her name would be “Super Awesome Creative Girl”. It seems like she has always been in the process of creating stuff. And always managing to “capture the moment in pictures”. I remember that she had the coolest scrapbooks/photo albums, even in grade school. I loved to go […]

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We met with Laura’s primary oncologist this morning for the bad news talk that no doctor or patient ever wants to be part of. We stewed all week, knowing only what the neurologist told us on the phone on Monday — that tumor cells were found in her spinal fluid, not wanting to be too […]

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Laura had been feeling relatively good since her spinal tap on Friday. She was walking with confidence and feeling very optimistic when I took her out for an appointment on Monday morning. All weekend we enjoyed the company of an old friend, Megan, from college and her daughter who visited from Manhattan. At breakfast on […]

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Laura’s lumbar puncture went fine. The neurologist showed us that the fluid was clear like water and so unlikely to contain tumor cells. We’ll know for sure next week. Meanwhile, when the neurologist heard the news that Laura’s heart function had weakened due to chemo, he suggested that the headaches and unsteadiness might be due […]

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