THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES

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Care, competence, and confidence are certainly reflected in this group. I've never met such a bunch of good people in one place right from the git-go. When I first started and saw how cheerful everyone was, I thought that, maybe, the treatment affected the brain. However, as I got to know everybody and gained familiarity with the program, I realized that it was just the spirit of the place that permeated patients, caregivers, and supporting spouses alike.

I begun with some obvious trepidation with the cancer diagnosis, but not only did we meet great people and make some lasting friends, we also gained confidence in the treatment and look on this experience as a distraction rather than a fate. So onward and upward with a 50 mile trail run this coming weekend!

By the way, Marianne has promised to serve sandwiches every Wednesday night to ensure that the LLUMC experience remains fresh in our minds.!

MISSIONS AND MICROBREWERIES

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We went to San Diego/San Clemente and Oceanside for our last weekend here. Marianne wanted to get some photographs of Missions San Diego Alcala and San Luis Rey in her quest to photograph all 21 of the California missions while I thought we should balance it out by visiting Stone's and Oceanside Ale Works Microbreweries while in the vicinity.  Stone's brewery was without a doubt the prettiest I've ever had the pleasure of visiting with the latest in brewing technology and equipment,  beautiful stonework befitting its eponymous brand name, and a fantastically landscaped beer garden  looking out over a small lake. We couldn't believe our good fortune when , walking into  Oceanside Ale Works, a full blown celebration was in progress featuring a band and $2 pints!

We spent the night in Coronado directly across from the famous Hotel Del Coronado not wanting to pay the $300/night tariff there. Interestingly, it was the second building in the US to be electrified and has been visited by a number of presidents and other heads of state over the years. Coronado is also the home of the Navy Seals and I actually came upon four of them running in full combat dress! Our second night was spent in San Clemente with my daughter and son-in-law's house where we had a nice visit with them. 

The focus is now on celebrating my last treatment tomorrow (St. Patrick's Day), packing on Wednesday and wrapping up Marianne's dental work Thursday. We are planning to be home on Friday which happens to be the first day of spring. 

DST

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Daylight Saving Time always seems like a precursor of spring to us, so we started the weekend early at one of the local protoner's house who generously invited us over for drinks with the accompaniment of a guitarist friend of his succeeded by dinner affording a beautiful night view of the entire valley.

Saturday we were off to Big Bear to deliver Marianne's first official print sale to a blacksmith there. She had shot a photo of a the original blacksmith shop at Coloma where gold was discovered in California in 1849 which, incidentally, had taken a third place among 21,000 entries in Costco's International Photo Competition which netted her a $500 gift certificate. Pete, the blacksmith, and his lovely wife, Lana, were most hospitable in providing us lunch and a hike featuring an abandoned gold mine in back of their house. Fortuitously, we found the Big Bear Mountain Brewery on the way home which featured Red Ant Hill Ale and an 8.6% Little Beaver IPA. 

Sunday morning found us on the road, once again, heading towards downtown Los Angeles. On the way we stopped to visit the San Gabriel Mission and continued on surface streets which afforded us an opportunity to witness some neighborhoods ranging from the totally Asian neighborhood in Alhambra through the leafy estates of Pasadena to the barrio and industrial areas leading to the city center. Once there, we set out on foot to see the spectacular Walt Disney Concert Hall designed by Frank Gehry, the historic Union Station, and the Our Lady of the Angles Cathedral where a mass baptism was about to take place.

We also had a Mexican lunch on Olvera Street and checked out the oldest house in LA which was fun, actually walking five miles in the process which is quite unusual in LA. Back on the road, we tried to check out Dodger Stadium but the bumper to bumper traffic made this impractical. A full weekend in our book. 

Just six treatments left!!!

LAST QUARTILE

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This week I got down to my last 12 proton treatments which is another milestone. Speaking of milestones, on a run in the hills here I finally spotted the elusive Roadrunner, a bird made famous in a cartoon which they certainly do resemble in their scurrying.

Marianne had been wanting visit the mission at San Juan Capitstrano, famous for the return of the swallows on St. Joseph's Day on 3/19. (As a little known point of fact, the Mission is the conclusion of a 15,000 mile flight from Goya, Argentina. Incredible as this sounds, the swallows stay in long distance shape by flying 600 miles/day flying to and fro in search of food)! We combined the tour of the mission with a visit to my daughter, Gretchen and son-in-law, Russ, who live in San Clemente and also had a surprise visit by my eldest grandson, Zach, a freshman at Loyola Marymount. A great time was had by all featuring 84 degree weather. 

In keeping with our intent of maximizing our visit here, we're both bound for a four hour ordeal at the dental school tomorrow.

                                

VISITORS FROM HOME

(Click on any photo for a large view)A view to Loma Linda

After being down here for over two months, it was great to have Bill and Peg come down for the weekend from  San Francisco. We celebrated their arrival by eating at BJ's, a recently discovered micro pub, where we had some great fish tacos accompanied by a good IPA. The next day we ventured to Palm Springs which has become a winter favorite for us (and a few others!) where the ladies checked out the galleries on a long hike while Bill and I found a great running trail into the mountains starting just below Bob Hope's 50,000 sq ft mansion in which he never even slept one night! 

After Sunday brunch in Redlands just down the road from us, we checked out the local architecture which features many Victorian era homes along wide palm lined boulevards finally ending up in their classic 100 hundred year old library which is a real throw back to an era when people actually read books and newspapers. Do we know how to show visitors a high time? 

Sadly, they were off on Monday morning while I celebrated the 2/3 mark of my treatments with 15 to go but still hanging in there with good energy and spirits. It's amazing how fast the time has gone as we approach the home stretch but, as you have noted from this blog, we haven't been idle. 

Unfortunately, Marianne's dental work at the University Dental School may necessitate a few days' delay in our scheduled departure. 

PALM SPRINGS REVISITED

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After several weeks of 80+ degree weather, the temperature has now dropped 40 degrees with rain, hail and snow on the mountains around us! However, we need it and it IS February after all but it does threaten to dampen our Valentine's Day weekend in Palm Springs.

I am now just over half way in my treatment with 24 down and 21 to go. Interestingly enough, I'm meeting an average of 2 new guys per day with bad prostates so I figure, by the end, I will have made 90 new friends! Also, Marianne and I are both getting our teeth worked on at the dental school while we're here so one could say I'm getting fixed top to bottom.

We kicked off our stay in Palm Springs with a ride on its world famous tram that goes from the valley floor to 8,600 ft. With the forecasted rain holding off, we had a beautiful clear day in the snow at the top and some spectacular valley views.



In the afternoon we met our friend, Lorraine, as she finished a 100 mile bike ride around the area with 10,000 other pedalers. We were all in the need of a little hydration which a local IPA satisfied nicely.

Sunday AM found us rising at 4.30 to do the Palm Springs Half Marathon with our new neighbor, Peggy. After 13.1 miles of pavement pounding, I was surprised to find that I had finished 3rd in my age group. After all, I hadn't run a half marathon in years and had no idea how I'd do.

In the afternoon we had a great time checking out The Living Desert which features a spectacular array of plants, animals, birds etc. spread over many acres - much more realistic than any zoo we've ever visited. The impending storm did in fact curtail our planned visit to Joshua Tree National Park as we now look out at the downpour on Presidents'Day.

SEEING THE SIGHTS, INSIDE AND OUT

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With much needed rain finally arriving in SoCal, we were treated to a view of the snow capped San Bernardino mountains upon awakening. Since the weather didn't encourage freeway driving with the CHP reporting three times the normal number of accidents, we headed ten miles down the road to the city of Redlands to check out the sites as it is noted for its Victorian era homes.




As you can see, some were spectacular with many offering a full gamut of styles and sizes from 100 years ago. We also visited the Lincoln Shrine and museum which, fortunately for us, was celebrating the 200th anniversary of his birth with a number of Civil War buffs sporting Confederate and Union soldier uniforms.

After another wet run Sunday morning (one of the nice features of running here is the availability of ripe Naval oranges and grapefruit along the way) we were given a tour of the LLUMC Proton-delivering cyclotron and all the complex delivery systems backing it up. We certainly gained a new appreciation of the operation as we were lead through the inner workings of the beast. What an amazing piece of ingenious machinery! We are in total awe of the brains that thought this up. Loma Linda is the world leader in this type of treatment for 50 different types of cancer since it was introduced in 1990 with the majority of the treatments being for prostate cancer at the moment but new robot aided systems are in the works in the not too distant future. NASA is even using the system to learn how to deal with protons in space. Unfortunately, they weren't big on us taking photos probably fearing that we'd use the knowledge to build our own @ $200,000,000!

LOMA LINDA LOCALE

This is an interesting small city of about 22,000 inasmuch as it is built around and oriented towards the University and Medical Center and Seven Day Adventist Church with its "making man whole" concept. It certainly puts my situation into perspective when we see little kids in wheelchairs, bald heads, hooked up to IV's being trundled around the hospital with their parents in tow but with smiles on their faces. Also, LLUMC is the trauma center for Riverside and San Bernardino counties so ambulances and the medivac helicopter ("Mercy Air") are frequent sites and sounds. Another frequent sight and sound are the freight trains often more than 100+ cars in length and sometimes even double-decked with containers coming from the east and west it seems like every few minutes as this is the freight corridor between LA and the southeast.




Saturday we visited Palm Springs and the Indian Canyons just outside the city. The latter is actually the tribal land of the Agua Caliente Indians and boasts some unusual canyons among the arid cactus covered and rock strewn hillsides. At the bottom of these canyons are hundreds of fan palms where there's water and they look like an oasis from the top. I had a great run in 85 degrees heat and, as you can see, Marianne got some of her usual excellent photos depicting the scene.

Today I'll have my 15th treatment and, since Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, I'll have six more weeks of treatment! Happy Groundhog Day.

In case you want to see more photos you can check here

SETTLED IN

A view of Lake Perris

After getting adjusted the first week we're now ticking along with the daily haps. (When we went to the grocery store we met four people that we knew which is surprising after only two weeks here). My treatments have all occurred between noon and three to date and I realize my luck because some guys get scheduled at God awful hours like 5AM or 11PM so, hopefully, this will continue. It's great to have spring like weather down here in January with 10 straight days with 80+ temps affording t-shirt running weather which certainly pleases this sun loving guy.

However, during one of the rare rainy days, I managed to run 62 laps on a .1 mile indoor oval in the gym for an indoor 10K! Last Saturday we visited Lake Perris, a huge state park just south of us which is the last reservoir on the California State Water Project which actually gets it's water from Oroville up north. Also, over the weekend, my daughter, Gretchen and son-in-law, Russ came up from San Clemente to check us out and we had a fun dinner in Redlands.

By the way, with all the warm weather, all my tomato seeds have sprouted on the deck. Since I'm a guy who likes to quantify things I figure, with 45 sessions, I get 2.2% better each weekday thus being 100% at the end. However Marianne, having contrarian in her Danish DNA, pointed out that I will continue to improve post-therapeutically for a while so I figure I'll finish better than 100% with a prostate the size of an olive! How's that for glass-half-full thinking? Tomorrow, I'll finish the first quartile so I'm well on my way and the time is going by rapidly and I'm feeling good.




PB in his pod

WEEKEND

With another beautiful sunny day we headed up to Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino Mountains which look down upon us. After breakfast in Blue Jay Village a few miles away we enjoyed this beautiful lake at 5,000 ft.. There was quite a bit of snow with a drop in temperature of about 30 degrees but very pretty in the crisp air! It was an interesting contrast when we returned to the 80 degree valley.


On Sunday we checked out the San Bernardino Asistencia an outpost of Mission San Gabriel. This afforded an opportunity for a run/hike/photo shoot up the Timoteo Wash, a natural drainage canal. I had an interesting experience on that run: Seeing quite a few other runners in this rural area, I thought maybe there was a race in progress and, when I came to an ambulance and a police car with some people milling around in the distance, it looked like an aid station and I thought I'd check it out to see what was going on. However, I was abruptly stopped by one of the police: "where do you think you're going?" To which I replied: "isn't that an aid station for a run?" To which he said "it's a crime scene, so keep moving". You never know what you'll run into these days!

Obviously, we made it home for an afternoon of football.

OUR RADIATION VACATION

With our little tutu-mobile loaded to the gills, we made it down here fine despite two big-rig mishaps on the freeways. After an immediate visit to Costco to get stocked up, we got settled into our home away from home, a condo in an adult community in Loma Linda, California, with a nice view of the adjacent San Bernardino Mountains where Lake Arrowhead, Mt. Baldy and Big Bear are located. This area is known as the Inland Empire as it is only 40 miles from Palm Springs and the desert to the east. 

Loma Linda is basically a small town surrounding the University hospital which is run by the Seven Day Adventist Church with Redlands next door. Our place backs up to the Loma Linda Hills which afford some great running trails. Loma Linda Springs, where we're staying, has a couple of pools, a work-out room, and a club house with beautifully landscaped grounds. 

The proton radiation treatment is five days a week for 9 weeks with the actual zapping taking less than a minute, but I'm usually in the pod for about 15 min. with setup. Actually, there are approximately 160 patients from all over the US and Canada going through treatment between 5 AM and 11PM Monday-Friday. The main attributes of this kind of radiation therapy is that it is very specific in targeting the actual cancer in the prostate with the protons dumping their load in the cancer cells and not upon entry into the body so the surrounding tissue is not harmed which results in fewer post-therapeutic side effects. This has certainly been confirmed by the testimonials of former patients and the ones we've talked to here. One of the things that is really impressive is the support given to you here in the way of social interaction, as we're all in the same boat. I have never met such a friendly group of people with bad prostates. They even have a "prostate potluck" here at Loma Linda Springs every Tuesday with a huge turnout and an informal Wednesday night get-together with a featured speaker. 

We're already into a routine here, up at 6 with an AM run in the hills followed by a gym workout as they have an excellent facility here. Loma Linda belives in "making man whole" which involves both body and spirit. However, at the present, my spirit is in better shape than my body, so I'm focusing on the latter! Incidentally, we have been blessed with spring like weather with temperatures in the mid 80's during the first week so I have been able to fit in some pool time, as well. I even got my tomato seeds planted in pots for transplanting when we get back to Belmont towards the end of March. 

They gave us a lot of info on the area and we're looking forward to seeing some of the sights starting this weekend as it's hard to get away during the week days with the treatment, keeping in mind that's why we're here.