So, last time I updated the site I told you that I got promoted and that we would have to move. Well, since January I moved into an apartment in Pennsylvania, we sold our house in Orlando in just SIX DAYS, Joan (and Trixie and two birds) moved in with a friend's (Love ya Sara!) mom.
Joan's Last Day at T2 The Tables TURN!
THEN on weekdays I
would work and look at houses at night and every other week I would fly down to hang out with Joan in Florida. Ultimately we found and purchased a lovely home in PA (near the city of York) and we are settling in to our new lives among the farmers of Windsor Township. It is bucolic and in every way different than Florida.
But Joan has Cancer and all so we had to adjust also to a new Insurance Company and eventually find a new Doctor and schedule an appointment.
When we first told Joan's original Doctor, Stephanie Capone that we were moving to PA her face fairly lit up and she said almost immediately that her grand
est hope for Joan would be that she could get to go to John's Hopkins Oncology Center in Baltimore.
BALTIMORE?!
I have to assume that everyone reading this blog is familiar with Joan's nearly unhealthy passion for her Cleveland Browns Many of you are already aware of the fact that the city of Baltimore colluded with the Brown’s former owner, the currently dead Art Modell to steal the Browns from Cleveland. Modell wanted the people of Cleveland to buy him a new stadium at their expense even though they were already filling the 86,000 seat stadium every Sunday despite a poor team record in the final years. Watch Mike Ditka wrap up how the fans of the Browns were hosed in 1995.
Or watch it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFuN3-DbM9w
Of course most of you also know only a few short years after the Browns moved, and became the Baltimore Ravens they won a Super Bowl. All of this happened because the city of Baltimore and the finally dead Art Modell did not care how badly the Cleveland fans got screwed. They only cared about them selves.
Now we are hoping that the good doctors of Baltimore will accept Joan as a patient… Super…
When we moved to PA we knew that there would be many things that we would have to get used to. Joan now has two acres to mow instead of two passes with the mower. She had to relearn everything she knew about plants and planting them. It took us two months to get driver’s licenses and plates for Pennsylvania because of the AMAZINGLY complicated matrix of steps to get them. We also knew that we were close to the evil empires of the Recently fantastic Ravens and the Eternally fantastic Pittsburg Steelers.
Did I mention that my promotion was a really good one?
As you can see there were many adjustments for Joan to make. But clearly the mindset change required in creating a new relationship with a cancer doctor would be tough.
We were blessed to have Joan’s application to John’s Hopkins come back favorably, and we knew it. But there are so many new questions about a new doctor selected to advise treatment options on a disease with no cure. We had seen two other doctors
and they had WILDLY differing opinions. Where would the new guy fall?
Hopefully Joan and her doctor from Baltimore would have a better relationship than the Browns and the Ravens. Or the Browns fans and the Ravens fans for that matter. The Browns have been terrible against their most bitter rival, but the Ravens fans act like they hate Browns fans! After losing tons of games and quite literally our team to them, still Ravens fans are cruddy to Browns fans. Surely Joan’s doctor would not participate in this silly back and forth… We hoped.
The good news was that we got in and also that we were “assigned” to a doctor who is one of the most published specialists for the specific type of Joan’s Lymphoma! What a stroke of Luck! His name is Lode Swinnen, he is from Sweden and he is not only a Doctor of Oncology, but a Professor of Oncology at John’s Hopkins University and JH Continuing Medical Education, meaning he teaches people becoming Doctors and he teaches people who are already doctors! A Teacher and a Doctor and a Doctor Teacher! Sounded like we had scored!
So our first visit was good. It is difficult to report much more than that after only one visit. The doctor literally spent one hour and fifteen minutes just talking to us and looking at Joan’s file and mashing her various danger zones. He made us feel very good about her short term prognosis, but clouded the longer term for us. He was dead on with treatment recommendations with Joan’s first (and best) doctor Dr. Capone. He hates Chemo and does not recommend it until NOT doing it is dangerous. We like that.
So we made an appointment for new scans and an immediate follow up the same day as the scans (awesome new hospital!) for late July. Until then we wait and try and forget that Joan’s body has the potential to turn against her at any moment. Until then she busies herself with tons of yard work and other things around the house, taking side trips with me to places like Gettysburg near by (see below) and counting down the days until Football Season starts.
