Suzanne is over the hump and halfway through her clinical trial. Things continue to be pretty routine when it comes to her treatment; blood work, wait two hours, treatment, and head for home. Of course, this week had to be different. As I shared before, Suzanne’s thyroid is not doing well through all this. The original radiation & chemotherapy did a number on it, and now, the trial drug Keytruda (that we aren’t supposed to know she is getting) seems…
M – I – C . . . . K – E – Y . . . . MOUSE. How many times in your life have you sang those letters. Every time you do, thoughts of a fun place and time come to mind. Watching Wonderful World of Disney on the television; Disney cartoons in the movie theater before the show; and maybe a visit to the Magic Kingdom itself, the Walt Disney Company is known worldwide but I didn’t…
Many of you have asked why my blog is called ‘Tasty Travels and Other Stories’? For a number of years, I wrote about our travels, the places we saw and the restaurants we ate. Most recently, the ‘Other’ and only Story has been Suzanne’s Cancer and her courageous efforts to survive. That changed this past week because we actually got to travel for the first time in over a year and a half. Our last vacation was visiting our son…
I couldn’t decide how to open this post so there are two for you to choose from. OPENING #1 – Travel Tip: Don’t drive to or from the downtown Chicago area on a Friday that is the start of a long holiday weekend. Our trip was twenty minutes plus both going and coming from Chicago yesterday. Suzanne commented that it was the first time in all our visits that we arrived late. By my watch, three minutes, LOL. OPENING #2…
Have you ever woke up one morning to find your feeding tube completely out and laying next to you? Probably not, LOL! Well, that’s what happened to Suzanne the day after her last trip to Rush. Let me rewind the last 8 months to bring you up to speed. Suzanne originally had a feeding tube placed last December because her radiation treatments had made it too difficult to swallow. At that point, it was considered to be temporary. Over the…
In sporting events we are always looking for an old record to be beaten; fastest time in an Olympic event, most majors for a PGA golfer, individual career runs or goals, (and for Suzanne) highest score for a bull rider. We all have our own individual records we keep mentally or on paper; the fastest time in a marathon, the best round of golf, the time it took to mow the yard, (and for John) number of beers sampled. Monday,…
We all love a good celebration. Birthdays, Holidays, and especially anniversaries. We celebrate anniversaries for all kinds of things, Historic events like the founding of the country, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11; Cultural events like the moon landing and Woodstock; Organizational events like business openings or product introductions like the Ford Mustang; and then there are Life Marker events like birthdays, weddings and the death of a loved one. Of all these, the wedding anniversary is probably the most celebrated. Suzanne…
Wednesday was our sixth visit to Rush for Suzanne’s PATHway clinical trial. As usual, many Doctors are always anxious to see her while she is there. Her oncologist now only visits with her every other infusion, and this was the one. Very happy with all that he is seeing and always comments that her blood work comes back perfect. This is important to him because the trial drug Ketruda does cause many body organs to malfunction including the liver and…
Wouldn’t it be nice if everything we put on our schedule happened just as we planned it to? Take for example our trip to see The Beach Boys the other evening at the Champaign County Fair. Re-wind eighteen months ago when we purchased the tickets for a July 2020 concert. Well, COVID canceled that concert which was rescheduled for 2021. Now imagine telling your 4 or 7-year old that you’re going to Disneyland next year, that’s what it was like…
I remember when I was a child and stayed in Chicago with my (favorite) Aunt Esther. We would ride the elevated train to downtown just for the fun of it. She also took me to the Science and Industry Museum, an adventure that was always fun. The best part of the Museum was all the buttons, knobs & levers. Watching things happen because of the action you took was so exciting. What’s more fun than pushing buttons. As I got…