Happy Belated Thanksgiving!!

This also marks the one year anniversary of this blog (or at least of my writing of it). I let the one year anniversary of my surgery pass by quietly earlier this month. As most of you know, every recurrence I have had occurred between 12 and 18 months after a surgery. My last CT scan was clean and I don’t have another scheduled until January, so now starts my nervous period. I feel fine and we all (me, Pat and Dr. Lange) agree that the Erbitux is doing something so we are hopeful the next 6 months will pass by without a hint of trouble. July 2006 will be celebration month for me, but I’m getting ahead of myself so I’m going to change topics. I have so much to catch you all up on!

Apologies for the lack of an entry last week, but I have a good excuse – I had no internet access, no telephone service, television, and very little electricity. No, you didn’t miss the anything in the news about a insert catastrophe here (hurricane/earthquake/tornado/etc.) in Boston. Pat and I were on vacation and for security purposes did not mention this in previous blog entries. However if you happen to be one of my lucky friends you did get to hear me chant “I’m going to Costa Rica…I’m going to Costa Rica” for the week before the trip. Sorry about that. But now I can shout it out here – we went to COSTA RICA for Thanksgiving, specifically the Osa Peninsula region of Costa Rica to an eco-tourism lodge called Bosque del Cabo. It was amazing. We went with two other couples (thanks to Steph & Tom for allowing us and Mark & Yvonne to crash their vacation). It was incredible. The lodge is located at the edge of the rainforest; so much of the property is actually rainforest. Our “cabana” sat on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean and we awoke each morning at 5:30 AM to the sunrise and the howler monkeys and macaws outside our doors. We actually slept with all doors open, mosquito netting down, and had no problem arising at this hour (though in Boston its hard for me to get out of bed at 8AM).

Our days were filled with hiking, kayaking, eating (not one bad meal the entire time), watching the wildlife we saw all 4 types of native monkeys – howlers, squirrel, spider, and cappuccino (ok, so they are actually called capuchin, but they are just so cute you want to drink them up like a good cup of cappuccino…) toucans flew over our heads and feasted in the trees next to our hammock (where I spent a total of an hour relaxing the whole trip) 5 books and only 1 got read, but I’m not complaining. It was awesome (did I already mention this?) It rained some too apparently a hurricane was hitting Honduras at one point and we got 2 days of rain from it, but that didn’t stop us from hiking and when we got too wet and tired we sat at the bar and learned Spanish from Marvin our bartender and new best buddy. He made us yummy banana drinks and mango drinks and coconut drinks (we let him use our allotment of electricity to run the blender that day…)

Pat has a great story about his sighting of a rare Harpy eagle that we’ll share if you want to hear. And I have a story about how my camera lost its battle with some huge waves in the Pacific Ocean, but I saved Pat’s $30 Teva sandals… However everyone else took lots of pictures that I will share when I have a chance and we bought some disposable cameras so we have pics too (we hope – they got wet too, but I think they are less temperamental than a digital camera, but we’ll soon find out).

Physically I held up just fine. Had to take some breaks now and then, but for the most part I kept up with everyone and didn’t have to miss out on any of the fun. My rash cleared up then re-appeared mid week on my eyes again, but this is nothing new. Even though I had a 3 week break from treatment the drugs are still in my system and so I still feel their effects at times. I had my usual diarrhea issues, but was able to keep it somewhat under control though we did manage to get the cabana whose septic tank was clogged with tree roots, so there was a tense day of no toilet, but fortunately we had friends in the next 2 cabanas so I was able to use their facilities rather than the surrounding trees. I was careful with what I ate but didn’t have to pass on anything – except the bean half of the rice and beans we saw at almost every meal. All in all I was pleased with how I felt health wise and how my body and stamina handled this trip.

Being in the rainforest and having it rain every day- most days it was a brief shower or it rained at night (we did have a cabana that tended to flood when it rained too much, but we didn’t even notice it since we were wet most of the time anyway…) meant that everything we brought with us was slightly moist at its driest time – even clothes that never left the suitcase. Our bathing suits and shorts took on a lovely moldy smell, but so did everyone else’s so it wasn’t that noticeable. Those other 4 books I didn’t get around to reading, well the pages are stuck together so they didn’t come back to Boston with me. We spent our first day home doing lots and lots of laundry, and soaking everything in bleach to kill the mold, but it was worth it. We went to COSTA RICA and we had a GREAT TIME!!!!