2006 - longest weekend

I can't remember the exact details of that Friday afternoon. I know I got off the phone and headed home. I walked out of the office without talking to anyone.

Sometime that evening we contacted Julia and Yani. We would have discussions with them on and off all weekend. As the weekend progressed I got the distinct impression that they were working 24x7 to find out where we needed to go next. We would go through a cycle of choices. These two not only had contacts in the oncology community around the country, but they also wrote e-mails to physicians who had authored the few journal articles which existed - and they got responses back - all weekend long. At one point we'd decided Sloane-Kettering, then we changed to a medical center in Philadelphia. Late Sunday the final choice came across - Beth Israel in New York. Yani had posted a query to a cancer bulletin board and a fellow had phoned to tell about the excellent care his wife had received for the same disease.

In between the calls that weekend Robin and I just spent time together.

She wasn't fully briefed yet on the disease. Saturday (as Yani and Julia toiled away on research) Robin and I were doing gardening. We cleared out a flower bed, laid down some plastic sheet, covered the area with wood chips, and planted four sunflowers that were about two feet tall.

At about 4pm Robin and I went to the grocery store. After we'd picked up a few items Robin paused to ask me about the diagnosis. She said "it's not good is it". I said no, SNUC was a bad one to have. I gave a few details and then suggested we go over the rest of the information at home.

The sunflowers we planted that day never survived. A week later they drooped and never really came back. Though I never mentioned it, I took that as a bad omen.