In November, Susie had a cancer appointment at MD Anderson. The short synopsis is her tumor region is stable (no disease progression) and her pons brain stem stroke is resolving. She now moves to a 4 month interval for cancer follow-ups. With this good news, we bought airline tickets to travel out to California for Thanksgiving.
I coordinated with Susie’s brother around collecting our families together, at least the ones in California. We looked at a few places and settled on Pismo Beach in the Central Coast. Our son, Gabriel, is working on his masters degree (nearby at Cal Poly) and they have two sons in LA. In the end, we had ten people sleeping in a house two blocks from the beach. There were multiple guitars and lots of singing. Susie especially liked songs from Carol King and the Beatles.
After Thanksgiving, we traveled up to Santa Cruz and Sonoma to visit dear friends. We had a day of misty rain with fog that reminded me of Autumn in England. We stayed in a little French boutique hotel in Petaluma, called The Metro Hotel. They had great coffee and cute airstream trailers as rooms.
As we were leaving California the Administrative Law Judge, who presided over Susie’s disability claim, called with great news. She has ruled with a fully favorable decision. I felt like a boulder had been lifted from my shoulders. Special thanks go out to dear friends and family who helped me organize and present Susie’s case.
