Come Stitch With Me

Let’s hope the mask mandate for public transit is now gone for good. It should be a traveler’s choice whether they mask/glove-up for travel. Traveling by air with a mask on for 8 hours certainly isn’t fun. I LOVE to travel and curtailed all air travel except for one trip last summer to Kansas City.

Suitcase is ready…where to next?

Rocky Mountaineer – American Southwest (overdue anniversary trip with hubby)
Garden of Quilts @ Thanksgiving Point – Lehi, UT (my quilty grand adventure for 2022)

According to Wes Moss over at the Retire Sooner podcast, you should have at least 3 of them to be happy in retirement. Here’s my top 5:

(1) Therapy dog activities with Sadie

(2) Quilting, sewing and general craftiness

(3) Travel

(4) Reading

(5) Exploring local trails and hiking spots with hubs & Sadie

Today, I reached out to schedule reading related therapy dog visits with a school somewhat close to home. Visits wouldn’t start until after Labor Day and would happen biweekly. This is right up in my wheelhouse.

Earlier this week, I scheduled sew time in my studio with two of my coworkers. I can’t wait!!!

Last week, my SIL asked if I wanted to go to learn how to tear down a vintage sewing machine and put it back together. Yep! I think September will be the month we go.

Getting very, very excited about the next steps!

It’s time for hubs to make the trek to Houston for his routine monitoring. He had his bloodwork done yesterday. According to the test results, the pesky little cancer cells have apparently been having a calcitonin party over the past several months. The numbers had more or less remained stable at each of his previous check-ups. This time, they doubled…which may put him on an entirely different treatment path. It’ll be interesting to see if there are enough cells clustered in one spot to show up on his scans this time. If so, removal is the usual treatment option. There are some drug therapy options, as well.

Hubby certainly has a much better attitude toward all of this than I do. He takes it in stride whereas I automatically start assuming the worst case scenario. We’ll see what his visit with Dr. Hu reveals.

Post doctor update: No material changes showed on the scans to warrant the increase in calcitonin. Hubs is to return in six months for some additional testing and a biopsy, if necessary. MTC bloodwork monitoring primarily tracks two things: calcitonin and CEA. Both numbers should trend in the same direction. That’s not what happened here. So he goes back in six months (but not on our anniversary!) Time to get back to living!