It's cold outside

I can’t kid myself any longer – winter is here to stay. It’s beyond cold and today we awoke to several more inches of the fluffy white stuff. After 7 years of living in New England I guess I should expect this and be used to it, but I keep thinking someday it will change. At least I still have my tan and my pictures of Curacao to keep me warm. You can see our pictures here.

Saw my surgeon last week to discuss my continued weight loss and inability to keep food in my system for longer than an hour.

I am afraid that I am not getting any nutrients from what I manage to eat, not to mention the discomfort and embarrassment from having to go so often. I suggest anyone who can, buy stock in Charmin. Since I’ve had 4 surgeries, Dr. Nauta isn’t too concerned yet – he thinks my body is taking its time to slow down. We changed medications though; he took me off of DTO (diluted tincture of opium) and put me on codeine. Now I can’t have fun with people and say, “pass me my opium please”. It may take the codeine a week or so to kick in, so I am patiently waiting for things to slow down. The codeine does make me drowsy and itchy, but I am hoping to work through these side effects.

In the other part of my life, I’ve started back to work. I’m working part time for now and really glad to be getting out of the house and become a contributing member of society once again. Fortunately, my desk was not buried under mounds of paper and my email box was not overflowing so I was able to just dive back in. My colleagues have all been wonderful, keeping on top of everything for me, and I am thrilled to be back into a daily routine.

Pat also has some exciting news. He left Houghton Mifflin at the end of December and started a new job after our vacation. He is now working for Smart Destinations, providers of the GO card in Boston and San Francisco soon to add Seattle. He is Director of Operations at their Boston office and is enjoying being back in a start-up environment. It means long days, but he has his hands in lots of different projects which keep him challenged. He’s hoping to get to travel to some of the cities as the company expands across the US. No more free books for us, but we have run out of bookshelf space anyway.

We’re both settling back into a sense of normalcy and keeping busy. I’ll post again after I meet with my oncologist later this week.