Date Night

Yesterday I had blood drawn and 2 tests that will ensure my body is prepared for chemo. I had a chest X-ray and a MUGA scan (which takes pictures of my heart). Chemo can damage the heart, and they want to make sure my heart is in good shape before they go killing all of my fast-growing cells ;-) The MUGA was very similar to the bone scan - very still for what seems like very long. It really only lasted about 30-45 mins.

After the test, Rusty and I went for a run in the park down the street from our house. I'm training for a 10k in October, and I really want to keep up with it as much as possible. It was an absolutely gorgeous day outside - about 80 degrees at around 4:30 (which actually slowed me down a little, but I never run for time :-)

After burning all those calories we decided it would be a good idea to ingest some more, so we planned to go out to dinner at a place where we could eat outside (that's a very rare thing to do in mid-April in Massachusetts). We had an awesome dinner at Tribeca on Shrewsbury street that left us very satisfied but not overly-stuffed. We were really craving some gelato for dessert, but they didn't have any :-( We decided to buy some at a store and eat it while we watched some old episodes of LOST.

Now, this next part of the story could make you feel a little uncomfortable if I am your daughter, your niece, or your granddaughter. You have been warned. I know you'll keep reading, but now it's not my fault if you're offended ;-)

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The first day I met my surgeon, he informed me that I would have to stop taking birth control pills, because it was possible my tumor may be estrogen-fed (and birth control pills contain estrogen). It turns out it is. But he strongly warned me that I must not get pregnant. Being pregnant would complicate my treatment, interfere with testing, and could result in harm to the fetus. No problem - there was a reason I was taking birth control pills and it was because I didn't want to get pregnant anyway.

So, we decided to go to Walgreen's where we could get ice cream and, well, you know. So, we're walking through the store, trying to find the darn "Family Planning" section, and it was elusive. There's no way in hell we're going to ask for help, and eventually we found it. In highly ironic fashion, they put the pregnancy tests near the pregnancy prevention section. This can make for some really strange interactions. We saw a couple standing in front of the pregnancy tests and the woman was kind of crying (oops). Meanwhile, we're staring at a rather complex and varied array of condoms. It was uncomfortable enough just being there, and now I have to decide between various materials, textures, liquids... It was pretty awkward. We were pretty confused, but ultimately made our selection and went on to ice cream.

Over in the ice cream section, I went for some mango sorbet. It was all-natural and relatively low in calories. Rusty bought the new Ben & Jerry's flavor, "Americone Dream" (which is a tribute to Stephen Colbert, the comedian on the Comedy Central network who has his own show called "The Colbert Report").

When we went to the cash register, the bill rang up around $32. I had a very funny thought, but I held in my laughter because I wanted to act mature :-) (I couldn't look at Rusty or the cashier - I would have completely lost it).

As soon as we got outside I burst out laughing and turned to Rusty and joked, "Damn, that ice cream was expensive!" Then, Rusty shared his funny thought with me:

"I bet that couple next to us was wishing they were standing where we were a few weeks ago!" I just couldn't stop laughing after that and decided the story had to go in my blog. Yes, I'm sure it was a sad situation for the crying couple, but hey - it could be worse. One of them could have cancer! ;-)