Gary and I returned from Houston yesterday where we were greeted by a few inches of new snow and very cold temperatures. Such a contrast from the 80s and humidity in Houston where walking a mile was an effort to do without sweating to death. When we were in an athletic shoe shop, I dreaded the time we needed to walk slowly back to where the hotel shuttle would pick us up. To our amazement the woman who waited on us said, “Oh I’ll take you to the shuttle step,” and then promptly drove us to that intersection. What hospitality! Every day we find hospitality and kindness tucked into the interactions we had with others.
Houston has to be one of the friendliest cities we have visited. Whether it's the oncology nurse or the driver of our ride to the airport, we were treated with respect and kindness. This reminds me that kindness is infused into the Sanford School of Medicine and Jerome Freeman’s influence for creating this curriculum. To experience kindness from strangers is to engage in an antidote in so much poisonous rhetoric and many relationships.
My sarcoma doctor, Dr. Maria Zarzour, was so pleased with my scans and labs. No growth and no spread of the tumors. In fact, I might be a candidate for an interventional radiology procedure in which radioactive particles (y90) are inserted into the larger tumors to kill them. We will hear from MD Anderson this week how soon we will need to go back again. The procedure takes a couple of days and I would need a couple days to recover. Normally, we will need to head to Houston every three to four months.
My cancer is fully integrated into everything I do from managing meds to the daily tasks we accomplish. At MD Anderson, we encountered and talked with so many people who have traveled long distances to have treatment, scans, and check ups. We talk to each other in the shuttle, in elevators, and at the hotel restaurant and bar. I get glimpses of people’s lives who have found themselves also going to Houston for what I hear is the best cancer center in the world. We are so lucky that they partner with my docs at Sanford.
The highlight of the trip was when we went to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts to see the exhibit of British landscape painters. The intricate notebooks and palettes of color brought the detailed preparation of the artists to light. When I’m in an art museum like the HMFA, I feel the depth of time, motion, color, and light come together in the various visual art practices. I find I’m in the stage of “flow” where boredom falls away and creativity comes to life. To create beauty in this world is to participate in a kind of revolutionary practice that affirms life.
You write so well Ann. And what a pleasure to know that your tumours haven't grown and that there is even the chance of a procedure that could shrink them. We hope you don't have long to wait before you can get started. Fingers crossed. And yes I know you shouldn't start a sentence with and!!!
If you are ever down there for a waiting period of time, head over to San Antonio. I can give you a few days at my time share on the River Walk. It is beyond awesome