A few apologies and thank you's are in order this week. Let's
start with apologies first - first to Jim, my volunteer enforcement ranger friend at Mt. Rainier National Park who pointed out that the sledding activity in the video clip in my last post appears to be taken in an area not designated for sledding. I don't intend to condone illegal behavior, so I won't publish any more incriminating video clips without running them past legal counsel. Do I really have to turn myself in along with a mug shot and fingerprints for your files? It seems a little excessive...
Second, a thank you and an apology. While listening to my favorite local jazz station last week, I heard an advertisement for a fundraising event at a local club. I got more information on line -the event was the second annual Make the Evening Matter fundraiser featuring vocalist Steve Tyrell to benefit the Entertainment Industry Foundation’s National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance and the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA is here in Seattle). It sounded like a fun evening at the Triple Door jazz club with great food from the Wild Ginger restaurant, fine wines, and auction items including a weekend in New York with a visit to CBS News to chat with Katie Couric, dinner at the 21 Club, and tickets to see the Late Night with David Letterman show. Sounds pretty good, eh? I emailed for more information, and got the cold slap of reality when I found out that it was a mere $250/person for the evening (it was a fundraiser, right?). Yikes - a bit rich for my budget, and also on Thursday night, which was treatment day. I emailed back and thanked them for the information, and indicated it was bit out of my budget, but as a current colorectal patient, I'd like to stay on their mailing list for future events. A few hours later, I got an amazing message back from them - they offered me a free ticket! Wow - I have to change my assertion that having cancer has damned few perks - this was an obvious perk. I regrettably declined their generous offer - treatment would run late on Thursday and the show would start just about the same time I was finishing. If I wasn't feeling well, I wouldn't enjoy the event - the Thai/Asian fusion food might be kind of pushing it on a possibly chancy tummy. I don't own anything that can be considered "cocktail attire" (the appropriate dress as specified in the evening's description), although it really would have been kind of cool to show up at the treatment center, dressed to the nines, and then zip off to the club for the show (gotta work on getting some "cocktail attire" for the next time this happens). And their offer was for one ticket and I simply couldn't ask them to extend their generosity for a second ticket. So I passed on the offer. And then it hit me - I had just done something that I hoped I would never do. I subtly played the cancer card without consciously intending to do so, and they offered me a ticket. Did I really need to mention that I was currently a patient? Why did I do it? Maybe it's that being a patient is so much a part of me that I don't realize how it creeps into everything, which bothers me a little. I didn't want the disease to define me, and I've let it happen. I offer a sincere thanks for the wonderful offer, as well as my apology to the folks at Make the Evening Matter for playing the cancer card - I will be more careful in the future. I hope the show went well and raised money for the cause.
And finally, a thank you to Kate Wakefield, who is the director of Security for Information Services (I hope I got the title right) at Swedish Hospital. My last two posts have ranted about Swedish blocking employee access at the hospital to this blog. I had a very nice conversation with Ms. Westfield on Friday and expressed my concern about blocking access to patient blogs. She has promised to contact the service that handles the screening of web addresses and restore access to this blog on Monday. If anyone at Swedish wishes to have access restored to other patient blogs that may be presently blocked, Ms. Westfield says to give her a call and she can remove the block. It was refreshing to be able to carry on a reasonable conversation and come to a mutually satisfying conclusion to the situation.
This week's treatment was pretty quiet. Our regular Thursday group is starting to thin out a bit so my usual friends weren't there. It was nice though to have Nina stop by for a short visit. Numbers are up again though, from 9.5 last time to 18 - up, down, up, down, up - OK, now it's time to go back down again and keep heading that way.
Pictures this week are signs of Spring starting to show in my backyard.
