Florida Trip

Last weekend, we traveled to Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island, Florida to attend Pat Killingsworth's Myeloma Survival School.  It was a beautiful setting and what a wonderful time it was!  About 140 people attended from various parts of the country for this weekend event.  It was an awesome tribute to Pat's life.  Pat's wife, Pattie, was amazing!  She was so outgoing, upbeat and cheerful, and she made everyone there feel comfortable.  I can see why she was such an wonderful caregiver for Pat.  Her optimism and enthusiasm must have helped him greatly during his hardest times, and I'm sure she gave him extra energy to deal with his nearly constant pain and suffering. Wow! 

We met a number of very interesting people.  All were knowledgeable and well-informed.  It was an intellectually and socially stimulating experience.  I learned a lot by talking with patients and attending some of the seminars.  For example, some of the recent advances in gene expression profiling were very interesting, which could lead to individualized targeted therapies in the near future.  The Saturday night dinner was a tribute to Pat's amazing life, and it was a very fitting closure for those of us who miss him so much.  I hope and expect that they will continue to hold this event in years to come.  If so, we'd like to attend.

On Sunday, we drove down to Cape Coral, near Fort Myers, to visit with my college roommate, Steve, and his wife, Sue.  They have a really nice winter home on a canal which connects to the Gulf of Mexico.  It's a beautiful place.  We had a wonderful visit.  The weather was great!  Since it was cold and snowing in Boston then, it was a really good time for us to be in Florida.

Scott and Gretchen

We took an excursion on one of their friend's boat to cruise out into the Gulf.  On the way, we stopped for lunch at the Boat House Tiki Bar and Grill. They had a really good singer entertaining that day.  Gretchen started a conversation with him (surprise) and he happened to have family in Massachusetts.  When he told us that he grew up in Burlington, Mass., Gretchen told him that she did also.  It turned out that he graduated a couple of years behind her.  As an amazing coincidence, when she asked him if he knew her younger brother, John, he gasped and said, "Are you Gretchen?"  His name is Scotty and his brother is one of our best friends, Jeff Williamson.  Scotty spent a lot of time in John and Gretchen's home when he was young.  He told us that John taught him to play the guitar.  There were lots of hugs after that.  It's really a small world sometimes!  That was too much.  It's hard for me to get my head around that.

My bone marrow biopsy results are back, but when I try to access them through the Patient Gateway, there are no specific results posted.  I guess I'll have to wait until my next Farber visit to get the full results.  If I was really anxious, I would call, but I think I can wait.  One number that they did publish was the percentage of plasma in my bone marrow.  Last year it was 6%, but this time it is 7%.  That may not be a big deal, but that's not going in the right direction.  I'm slightly anxious to get the full report.