Sandy Beardsley
Living with a Brain Tumor
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11/06/05
Day Eighteen
Filed under: General
Posted by: Dan @ 10:49 pm

Sunday, 7:30 pm…
We’re home. Home, love that word… Great to be back and see the snow on the mountains around the valley… the last of the golden leaves clinging to trees and blowing around the yard… and the greeting by the very happy dogs and cat… and the banners and signs and balloons outside welcoming us home… and the massive pile of firewood rounds I had not chopped yet turned into huge rows of chopped and stacked wood (THANK YOU woodchopping crew! Unbelievable!)… and the yardwork and plants put to bed… and the food in the refridgerator and bakery goodies on the counter… and the flowers and notes and poems in the kitchen… what a wonderful homecoming. Our angels on the homefront have been busy indeed… thank you all. You bless our lives beyond measure. We can only hope to repay you all somehow, someday.
On Friday afternoon we met with Sandy’s oncologist at the Stanford Cancer Center. No real surprises with his recommendations, basically what he had told us before the surgery. Though the surgery got the active area of tumor out, the fact that it is now a grade 4 tumor means she cannot delay in chemo treatment. They like to start with the least toxic medicine first to see how Sandy responds to it. So we brought home the first round of her treatment (just ordinary looking pills in ordinary medicine bottles) which she will begin this Friday. Sandy continues to feel better every day, fatigued easily and in some pain, but feeling strong.
Friday evening we drove to San Jose from Stanford to return the rental car, got a cab ride to the train station and waited for the train. We were a bit early, and the train was a little late, so after a two hour wait we got on the train for the trip home at about 9:30pm…. looking forward to a slow relaxing trip home…. little did we know how wonderfully slow it would turn out to be.
After a few delays at different locations for track repairs during the night, we awoke in our little roomette (if you haven’t ridden Amtrak, these are very small rooms with two facing chairs that fold down into one narrow bed, with a pull-down narrow bunk bed just above that, so they sleep two people if you’re really compatible… but for us it was delightfully cozy). Not surprisingly because of the delays, we were still in California at daylight. We rolled into Klamath Falls and it started snowing. More delays for track repairs (no problem with us, glad they’re fixing those tracks) As the train climbed toward Chemult the snow was falling hard and there was already a lot on the ground. Quite a contrast to the palm trees and 75-degrees of Palo Alto.
We climbed over Willamette Pass and it was a full-on winter storm up there… it was beautiful to watch through the big windows of the train. As we dropped down the west side of the pass, traversing along the steep side of a mountain, there was a sudden sharp thump thump and the train came to a screeching halt. After a long eerie silence, the train conductor’s voice came over the speakers… "Ummm, folks, it appears we have crashed into a rock slide… but nothing to worry about, the train is not derailed… but there are some very large rocks on the tracks… but what is more of a problem is the rocks wedged underneath the train…"
Anyway, to make a long story short, they had to get a track crew from toward Eugene to come up, move the rocks and actually jack up the engine cars to get the rocks out. Luckily no major train or track damage. But we were sitting there about 3-1/2 hours, during which time it got dark. But we actually enjoyed it, because it coincided with a free wine tasting in the lounge car… so the entire time they’re working on the rockslide, we’re drinking wine and meeting some fun people. [And there’s the advantage to train travel over plane — the train has an accident and we’re able to sit there and drink wine and laugh about it. If a plane has a major accident, well folks your seat cushion is a flotation device, here’s the oxygen masks, there’s the exit doors…]. So the rockslide actually cemented our love of train travel. We had a great time, saw some beautiful country and met some really interesting people. And even though we got to Tacoma at 2:30am instead of 7pm, we would do it again… such a nice slow transition for us after 2+ weeks of intensity.
We took a shuttle van to the airport, picked up our car, luckily it started, drove out of the eerily deserted airport to a motel, checked in at 3:30am, tried to sleep until 11am this morning and left to get breakfast before hittng the road. As we’re sitting there eating, I look up and in the booth behind Sandy I see the back of a man’s head… a big area shaved, and the u-shaped incision and stitches indicating he had just had some kind of brain surgery. After Sandy sees it, we look at each other… and laugh a little at the irony that we can’t escape it all even at a pancake house.
So here we are at home, happy and exhausted… the woodstove glowing with firewood chopped by friends and angels…
Good Night,
Dan

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