Me (left) and Diane after her birthday party at her house.
There is so much trouble in the world that I think sometimes we rank our problems against it and come out realizing we don't have it so badly. Yet that doesn't mean our problems are not real.
Sometimes people start telling me about a problem, often medical, and then they cut themselves short and say, "Well, I shouldn't be complaining to you." I always say that I don't lay claim to all the suffering, that everyone has a right to voice his or her own problem, and they should please tell me what's going on. Maybe I can offer some help.
I guess if you have a life-threatening disease, even though that doesn't shake the world, it's intense enough to talk about.
There. Now I feel better. So here's my little story:
My clinic visit was good Monday, so I got another pass and need only return in two weeks. Everything was about the same, with my platelets actually going up a little, to 68.
On the way home I wanted to see if I could find some "real" bagels and a Starbucks. So I called Diane. We both dismissed the chain, Finaigle a Bagel. Who gives a name like that to a store that has real Jewish bagels? "You want something that doesn't taste like it's been puffed up with air, right?" Diane asked. She said there was a store called Rosenfelds kind of tucked under some buildings in Newton Centre.
"Is this going to be another story called 'Ronni gets lost?'" I asked. "It doesn't have to be," Diane said. I don't know why but I have trouble in Newton. Last time I called her about going to that Starbucks I had ended up approaching it the wrong way, and we had no idea how I got so turned around.
My instructions were to park the car in Newton at Beacon and Centre and then get out, go into Starbucks, and ask someone to point me to the bagel shop. "You know what I'm saying," Diane said. Then she repeated it: park, Starbucks, bagel shop. I laughed at being told multiple times, like I wouldn't "get" it if I only heard it once. Sad thing is, that's true.
OK. Park, go into Starbucks, ask, see the bagel place diagonally across the street. Head out. In my black boots, carefully cross icy snowbank. Notice streak of white across the afternoon sky and notice that others carefully walking are doing the same balancing act that I am. Arms out, windmill style.
Arrive at Rosenfeld's. It's closed! A young woman peers inside the door. Closed Monday and Tuesday, she says, her face falling. I mumble shared disappointment. Back to Starbucks for coffee to go. (The coffee is excellent, by the way.) Share disappointment with "barista." He agrees it's not a good schedule.
Continue down Centre Street and get on the Mass Pike West with no trouble.
So?
It felt really normal. One minute I'm at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a patient, and the next I'm a pedestrian clambering over a snowbank and talking about bagels. (I bought bagels in Western Massachusetts, so it all worked out).
I saw a lot of the Pike Sunday and Monday. Diane had a birthday party Sunday afternoon in Newton, and I went to that. I know a lot of the people who were there and had a good time catching up with them. The food was good, and the company was good. More problematic was that I decided to drive back home at 7:30 p.m. (one-and-a-half hours) and then come back for my clinic appointment the next morning. People told me it was a bad plan. It probably was, but it seemed easiest. When I got back home around 9, envisioning a pleasant couple of hours, I was confronted by the same messy dining room table I had left behind, filled with financial aid documents that I needed to fill out, plus other problems.
Unrested, the next morning I headed back to the clinic. Oh well, at least I got a good report, had lunch with Margaret (combining something fun with a clinic visit is always a good idea), did NOT get lost and got a good cup of coffee, although, alas, no bagels.
