Good Mother's Day and a walk down memory lane

Family selfie with Ben, Katie and Joe

On Sunday, Katie and I took out our bikes for my first ride of the season, going for just about an hour on the bike trail from Hadley to Amherst.

We wanted to get back on time for Ben and Joe to come for a Mother's Day cookout.

As is the case when discussing running distances, "just" can be a relative word.

As in, one person saying she had just run eight miles, meaning not a lot for that person, when you had run five and it was enough.

Brigham and Women's Hospital, 2003

I was thinking about how "just" an hour is relatively a lot considering what I could do on a Mother's Day fifteen years ago. That's when I had gotten out of the hospital for Mother's Day after my induction chemotherapy. I would have thought that even a few minutes on a beautiful bike path would have been a big accomplishment. Those days are coming vividly into focus as I revisit them and dig out photos to go with my posts on Health-Union.com.

My post about how I developed skin cancer is on the skin cancer site, but my leukemia posts are still in the queue; blood.cancer.com  is a new addition to the platforms of content on various illnesses and conditions.

The photos are in a mess of papers, pictures and newspaper clips in a box next to my bed. Some of it is in chapter form from my so-called memoir, which I shelved, or rather boxed, after getting polite rejections from editors. They liked my writing but said I would have had to be famous for them to want another cancer book.

Without getting out of bed, yesterday I rolled over, leaned down, and started digging around.

It was kind of strange but not too bad to pull out a photo of me riding a bike in my hospital room after my first round of chemo in April, 2003. It's going to illustrate a post about hospital exercising. My mother took the photo. She got a kick out of seeing me up on the bike with my IV pole. Much better to be untethered.

The tennis bear will illustrate a post about hospital room decorating, about how important it was to make my room a homey place. It revolved around Diane's brilliant idea of getting a lamp. It ended up going everywhere with me, including trips to the emergency room when I suspected I would be hospitalized.

My guy friends from our mixed doubles team sent me the Ronni bear that occupies a place of honor in my bedroom. In the photo in my hospital room, she sits on a handmade quilt  with blank squares where co-workers wrote me notes. I remember how touched I was when I pulled that bear out of the box. I particularly liked the little tennis racquet. It made me smile.

But back to the present, it was a great Mother's Day. Having all three together was a special gift. Ben brought the food. Katie set the table. Joe cooked.

When they were getting ready to leave and we took a few photos in the driveway, I said, "I can't believe you all use to live in this house."

Now that Katie is closer, it should be easier to get everyone together.

Thoughts of both parents around Mother's Day

With two other volunteers in Whately 

I usually walk Maddie into the woods at the end of my driveway to briefly do her business. The other day when she stopped and wouldn't go, I realized it was because I had forgotten to put her collar on.

"Oh, we forgot your collar, let's go back in," I said, and she turned around and obliged.

I usually take it off to "undress" her for the night.

It reminded me of the time my father was walking our dog Sam across the street from our apartment at night and a threatening man emerged from the park. My father jerked on the leash to get Sam to come. His collar slipped off and he froze. So Dad scooped him up and got back to the apartment safely.

Sam was a poodle mix before it was trendy. An affenpinscher-poodle, or affen-poo, or something like that. My mother's friend needed to find a home for him and my parents agreed to take him.

One summer at the beach they said my father was coming back with a Big Surprise.

We thought it might be a boat.

But my father brought home a black dog so small that he could fit in the palm of my father's large hand. Sam ran and hid under the car in our driveway at 77 Coronado St., Atlantic Beach. He of course came out and became a legendary part of the family.

As Mother's Day approached last week, if a person who thinks about their mother all the time could do it even more, I did just that. I took out my mother's handmade cookbook and made Aunt Anna's Company Chicken. I served it to a friend with parsley for garnish and candlelight or mood. (Marinate boneless breasts in dehydrated onion soup mix, whole cranberries and the dark kind of French dressing and cook at 325 for about an hour and a quarter. Before done put pitted black Bing cherries on top.)

For Mother's Day brunch, I put out the flower-rimmed placemats that she used for brunch in the apartment. Everything was beautiful; an artist on paper and in life. Doilies under plates, flowers on the table.

I didn't have enough little bowls of one kind for fruit, so I used a couple of different types and thought of her saying that everything doesn't need to match. Eclectic is more interesting. No milk containers or anything in packages should go on the table. We made an exception for the bottle of syrup.

I was kind of beat. I had gotten up at 4:45 a.m. to drive to Whately for the start of my 6 a.m. volunteer shift (handing out T-shirts) for the Cancer Connection's Mother's Day Half Marathon.

It was cold and rainy. For my last volunteer stint (Bridge of Flowers 10-K) we handed out T-shirts inside a school. I hadn't thought to ask what this would be like. It turns out we were under a tent, only partially protected. I didn't have on enough clothing to be comfortable handing out T-shirts. Luckily I had some gloves in the car but was still cold on this raw day. It took me half a day at least to get warm.

The volunteer coordinator said some volunteers had dropped out (many of them recently treated cancer survivors and patients). Understandably, they didn't want to get sick. I told her that I didn't have an excuse because it's been eight years.

Three of us handing out T-shirts sang and jumped up and down to keep warm. I was never so happy to see a Dunkin Donuts as when I headed out at around 8:30 to get a hot chocolate. All in all I was glad I did it.

With my 45th high school reunion fast approaching, I dreamt that I told someone that I wished it was my 15th and not my 45th. The person said it didn't really matter what year it was because we're all in the same boat by only being sure of this one day.

Mother's Day musings on good things, bad endings

I had a great Mother's Day with Ben and Joe here and Katie who Facetimed just as we were finishing our walk with Maddie around the lake when the sun finally came out.

I had told them about my encounter with that horrible George the goose the other day and wanted to show them but he was for a change placidly hanging out on the lower lake. I haven't mapped my run in a long time because I haven't been running enough but just out of curiosity I did it and saw that I went 2.86 miles without any pain in my toe.

I did it Saturday because I had been sitting almost the whole day in the second day of the professional development course I took on the art of teaching adults. I am on the substitute lists of several organizations and would like to have background on what I'm doing when I'm called, which has only been a few times because these teachers hardly ever take time off.

I thought back to what I would have done in the past after sitting for a while and it was always go for a run. Since the training was in Holyoke I thought of going straight to the Y to go for a swim but it is my least favorite thing to do. So I put on my new Hoka Ones and was happy with the outcome. Though yesterday I felt pretty stiff.

My Mother's Day came to a sad end with the "Good Wife" finale. It is only a TV series of course but when you have watched something for seven years the characters do seem real, as fans can attest when we grieved over Will's death. Thanks to Joe teaching me I discovered how to follow an event on Twitter and discussed it in real time with people who were getting as upset as I was. That and texting with "real life" friends who were watching it. Then as I tend to do I stayed up late and read the postmortems. We were all glad to see Josh Charles come back but we wanted a better ending. Someone tweeted couldn't it have been a little more like the "Downton Abbey" finale and someone else asked which was worse, the ending to "The Sopranos" or this. The creators, Michelle and Robert King, said the ending was in keeping with the series: ambiguous. Boo.

A beautiful photo that Katie shared yesterday of the two of us in the apartment where I grew up made me smile but also made me miss my parents and that place so much.

I had an instructive dream about it, though.

I was at a rally where the speaker was a young woman who held up a smiley face. She held it upside down to show a frown. Then she held it the other way to show a smile and said all you have to do is change your frown to a smile and you'll feel better.

Then I was in a therapy session and told the therapist that I was so sad that I couldn't go back in time and have my parents. He said to just change the frown into a smile and you'll feel better. So I did.

Sick again

This post was supposed to be about going to California today for my cousin Nancy's 60th birthday party, but, alas, it is about planning to go and then getting sick.

I got no further than Boston. I was supposed to leave from Logan early in the morning; I felt a little under the weather Tuesday but went ahead anyway, hoping that it might pass. This morning my temperature was 101.1, so I canceled everything and went to see Melissa instead.

I have been coughing a lot, but my chest X-ray was clear. Melissa said I didn't look too bad, so I could go back to Diane and David's. Otherwise, they would have admitted me. I now have an antibiotic that is different than the one I had last week.

What is it about me and California? I went a couple of times years ago, but in recent memory, I had planned to go in 2007 and got sick...very sick. For something different, I was going to go to California with my children. Everything was purchased and booked. Then I relapsed. The airline said we could use our tickets within the year, but nobody went, so I lost all the money.

I was planning a trip with the kids and my mother to Cape May in 2003, but couldn't go because I got leukemia. Joe said no planning any summer vacations except to the Cape Cod.

Katie is going to load the car tomorrow with her stuff from college, and then she's going to pick me up and take me back home. We'll have Mother's Day all together. I was going to miss it from being in California, so there is a silver lining in getting to be with my children.

I can't cancel my hotel reservation, but I can change it to another time. I can use the flight within a year, plus a $150 dollar change fee. They get you at every turn. I can't get a refund for the $25 I paid for checking one bag. I didn't want to carry it on because of all the restrictions on liquids. I guess I should have just carried it on. Think of how many cups of coffee I could have bought with $25. Melissa wrote me a doctor's note for the airline, but I'm sure they don't care.

At least I made it to the important things: Ben and Meghan's wedding and my trip to Spain and France with Katie.

Home for Mother's Day

I'm standing in between Katie and Joe, who is next to

 Ben in this photo taken in our yard on Mother's Day.

I got tanked up with blood and platelets Friday and then Joe picked me up and drove me to South Hadley. It was a beautiful day, with the grass and trees and rolling hills showing off that light green of early spring. Katie was at a show with a friend, so it was just Joe and me. We sat on the couch together as Joe, the master of the clicker, went back and forth between the Red Sox, the Bruins and the Celtics games. Normally I would get annoyed, but I was happy to be at home, Joe switching channels on one side of me and the dog curled up asleep on my other side.

I had a trickle of visitors on Saturday, took a short walk and spent a lot of time on the couch. It was of course great to be home, but I wasn't (and still am not) feeling great. I am having trouble eating, and when I do eat, I often throw it up. When you're tired and not feeling well, it's harder to stay on the sunny side of the street. Patience does not come easy. And as good as it felt to get home, it was also a little surreal. After all, I haven't been there since late December, and I felt like I was plopped from one world into another, and then dropped back into the Boston world again. At least it's not the hospital, and as I've said before, they're treating me well here.

Yesterday, Mother's Day, was wonderful. Ben drove home, and the three of them presented me with very touching cards and great presents: a Red Sox hat, a pack of tennis balls and two books, "Strokes of Genius, Federer, Nadal and the Greatest Match Ever Played," and "We are our Mothers' Daughters," by Cokie Roberts.

I loved being with the three of them and watching them together. Feeling their love for me and mine for them lifted my spirits.

I was supposed to come back to Diane's around 4, but I lollygagged until about 6:30, when Ben drove me back to Boston. I hope to get home next weekend too.

I was expecting a chimerism result today, showing the percentage of donor to me. The last time they did the test, I think in early April, I was 100 percent donor. There's no reason to expect any change, but I am skittish due to the graft rejection I had with my previous donor. So I started to get stuck in my head: What if my symptoms really signal something terrible going on, even though Melissa says the nausea is probably due to what my body went through combined with the large number of pills I take every day. And what if my pokey platelets are  a sign that something is really wrong (although everyone says this is temporary).

Anyway, I practiced my breathing and other distractions, and when it got time to meet with Melissa today she said the chimerism isn't even in. My platelets were 12 today so I needed a bag. My hematocrit was 33, which is great, and my white blood count was 6.7, which is also a good sign. I still need to go to the clinic Wednesday and Friday this week.