I am Done! Radiation is Over! (and Family Catch Up!)

Yesterday I finished my 15th and last treatment at the radiology oncology center! I get to have freedom over meal timing again and when I go to the bathroom! Yay! Honestly, I was much more excited on Thursday to celebrate with another patient I have gotten to know relatively well over the last three weeks. He finished his 9 weeks on Thursday. He got a big bear hug from me. He not only did this treatment every day for 9 weeks but drove 80 miles one way each day to do it. It is amazing once the ice is broken, how we could talk about the nitty gritty of our treatments…. side effects of hormone removal therapy, and the struggle to be prepared every morning for the radiation treatments. It is like talking to another grieving mom or talking to a military person…. lots of top layers just fall away, and we can talk about the more serious stuff right from the get-go – maybe even stuff we can’t talk to our loved ones about. For just a few minutes each weekday, it was a true gift to get to know and chat with two of these men. I brought along Lily and Rich for my last treatment (Rich had driven me to a majority of my treatments over the last 3 weeks) and we went out to breakfast afterwards. I then came home and took a 2-hour nap on the couch. I was so exhausted physically and mentally from the past days especially. I was going to type this blog post last night but got called to a medical fire call instead. Special thanks to my military spouse lovelies: Kim, Wendy, and Mercedes, who sent me these beautiful flowers to brighten my last week of treatment!

Lots of fun to catch you up with! Tim was here all of last week. He had to leave early because he got called for an in-person interview at the University of California San Diego for the men’s basketball sports performance coach. Yes, he just left there 11 months ago from the women’s basketball team. And yes, he did get the job! We are super excited for him as this position will give him some real potential to grow and be there a few years. Do I envy him the move back to San Diego from NC? Oh no, I do not. He is on vacation this weekend with some close college buddies from U of Nebraska. He has one week left at Campbell before he starts his cross-country move. We are super proud of him and I know it will be nice to be back where he has access to all the high-tech stuff he had learned to use and didn’t have at Campbell. So time to move from orange and black back to blue and gold. Good bye Camels and hello Tritons. It was a good year for him in NC, but I am excited to see him moving to a more competitive conference. Before he left, we got a chance to drive up to Polebridge and then on to Bowman Lake. The last time I went there, the view was socked in. There was a storm brewing and it rained off and on this time as well, but the views were spectacular! I am a sucker for stands of aspen trees…so had to add a few of those we saw on the way to Bowman Lake.

Tim’s early exit from Montana meant that Lily only got about 22 hours overlap with Tim here when she arrived. We managed to have a good time for that short period of time. That is the hardest part of having adult children who live in different parts of the country and have different lives with different free times during the year – it is hard to get everyone together.

We took Lily into the park to see the waterfalls on the West side of Glacier National Park. With the snow and rain we have had recently, the waterfalls were really roaring. The spiral rock formation is a 2-foot hole where the water spins on a side area when the river is really full. The water here is crystal clear, and it was a neat formation to find.