What a Friday! You see, it all actually started on Thursday. We took the truck in to get some long overdue maintenance done. This morning, we started with this routine in mind: 1) Chemo from 7 to 10am, 2) Take Bryan to work, 3) While Bryan's working...Toni was going to do some light shopping if she felt ok, and then 4) pick Bryan up around 12:30pm - ish.
That is not the way it went. We started impeccably on time at around 6:25 leaving the house. At this time in the morning, Seattle is about 20 to 25 minute ride, based on our driveway to a parking spot at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. All was good, until the car died 1 block from the house. Mind you, we have had a "hard to pin down" electrical problem for a year. But usually, the car restarts immediately (and it is usually only when in 1st or 2nd gear and going slow). This time -- no restart. We tried for 30 minutes. We found ourselves to be officially late.
Finally, after I had a nervous breakdown (how we were going to get Toni to chemo?), I was seriously thinking of raiding Toni's drug cabinet for anything to put me out of my misery. She calmly walked me back to the house, where I relieved my anxiety somewhat by calling USAA to tow the car to Bellevue. Fun part was... we now had no other car. And every local rental place was out o' cars. Luckily Enterprise thought they would have something around 3:30pm or so. Worse case, I was going to beg Kirkland Ford to come get me once the truck was done, or I was riding my bike about 3 miles across 4 lanes of traffic to go get the truck. AND... Toni still had to get her chemo in either today or tomorrow. Deb (her oncology nurse) rescheduled Toni for 6:30pm (which brought on other stress I was not really looking forward to either; I'll explain later).
So Toni and I worked on things around the house. And waited until 3:30pm. Finally, Enterprise was able to come get us and we had a rental car. And less than 1 hr later, the Ford guy called and the truck was ready. So things were looking up. Toni and I grabbed a light dinner, paid for the truck, arranged with the dealer to allow us to park it until we could retrieve it later in the evening. And we were off to Seattle.
Ok, I will now explain my other stress above. See we have four ways to get to Seattle. Two of them are way out of the way and involve lengthy sitting in traffic. The most popular methods of going to Seattle from the east side is over either the I-90 or 520 bridge. The 520 is a 2 lane each way floating bridge. And during peak traffic is about a 30 minute commute just to clear the bridge. I-90 is a multilane bridge with an Express lane as well. Well, with my luck and timing, the I-90 has been closed down to a trickle for repairs, so most everyone is diverting to the 520. We left Kirkland at around 5:20, and hit the bridge at a solid back up. Somehow, although it looked like a 2hr commute, we arrived with 10 minutes to spare.
Toni's chemo went mostly without a hitch. We were in an out in a little over 1.5 hours (I think that is record). Of course almost no one was there that late. We were informed that Toni is now running a bit anemic according to her red blood count, etc. Her white count is holding its own. The the anemic thing is probably why she is so fatigued now. For being that wiped out, she sure is an inspiration for getting up and moving on. Her "lymphodema" in her right arm is puzzling, and we are hoping she can get into the physical therapist real soon to try to get some relief. It is starting to bother her quite a bit. I was so relieved to get her chemo done, despite the car issues. Thankfully, our ride home turned out to be smooth and easy...
So, we celebrated our freaky Friday with a trip to Baskin-Robbins. Toni had a single scoop of Snickers something or other, and I had the patented mint-chocolate chip. Ah comfort food. By the way (it was over 90 here today... and that is steamy hot for Seattle). Thus, we enjoyed our cones and finally felt cool enough to call it a night just a little while ago. Ok, that's it, I am done. Later y'all.
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