Busy Day Ahead

Yesterday went very well. We did laundry and some little tidying up chores around the house in the morning. Then Mark headed out to do the grocery shopping. While he was gone, I got a call from my neighbors, Luanne and Ken. They had bought us some fresh strawberries, so I went over to their house to get them. I enjoyed sitting in their living room VERY MUCH having a chat about cruises and health issues. They have a beautifully decorated home. Mine is not beautifully decorated, but I still love it just as much!! I really love having great neighbors who invited me over for a little while. In Laurel we had GREAT neighbors on the one side, but we were younger and working and raising kids. No time for casual chatting in the living room mid-morning. Still, we had great talks out in the yard! I love having good neighbors.

Then we drove about half an hour north to the Osceola Cancer Center, across the street from the Osceola Hospital. Luanne told me the facility was very new, maybe only a year old. I had not known that, but it was evident when we got there. It is a beautiful building dedicated to chemo and radiation with several doctors in each department. I had an appointment that lasted over two hours with my new radiation oncologist, Dr. Halili. He was very thorough, explained everything in great detail, did a good physical, answered any and all questions patiently and completely. What more could we want? He is recommending only 33 treatments, whereas the St. Agnes doctor would have done 36. That's fine with me. He also said that waiting 7 weeks is a bit long between chemo and rads, but he understands what I'm doing. He said 4 is recommended but 6 is the average, so 7 is just a bit beyond. Like my doctors in Baltimore, though, he said not a day later! So they were very accommodating about setting up my next appointment for next Tuesday at 1:30 to get the angles set with CT scans and the marking and tattooing done. I will start the radiation on Monday, March 7. Once I start the actual radiation, I will meet with him for a checkup once a week also.

Mark and I were both very impressed by everyone there. The receptionist seemed extremely busy but was just so nice and cheerful. She handled everyone with a smile. Then we met a tech and a nurse, both wonderfully warm people. I am pleased with my new cancer center, so far, and tomorrow I will meet my new medical oncologist. I bet I like her just as much.

After the appointment, we had lunch at Subway, went to Mark's big new comic book store, Coliseum of Comics, finished grocery shopping, and took a 15 minute walk in the neighborhood. Mark made us a nice spaghetti dinner and we watched some TV to relax before bedtime. Great day!

Today we are going to try to file for our Homestead Exemption to lower our real estate taxes for next year. In Maryland you can do that online. Down here you have to show up in person, and they want the world from you down here to do it. They want car registration, driver's license, social security card, proof of ownership of the house, and voter registration card. That's the problem right now. We applied to vote; we were able to vote by absentee ballot; yet we never received cards. So now we have to find out where to go to get the voter card first before we can go apply for the exemption. We don't know where that is yet, but we have a choice of three cities to go to for the tax exemption, Lakeland, Bartow, or Winter Haven. The first two are an hour away from here, but Winter Haven is only about 40 to 45 minutes. I guess we'll go there today. Polk County is HUGE, and we are on the eastern edge of it.

In addition, it's Chinese New Year! To honor that we decided to go to Epcot for lunch at the Chinese pavilion. We made reservations for 1:30 at the Nine Dragons restaurant. We've eaten there twice before, but it's been a very long time ago. It will be fun to be "in China" for Chinese New Year. After that we are going to have dinner out at our local restaurant that gives free wine with dinner on Thursdays, followed by the Solivita Thursday night free movie in the Starlight Ballroom. Tonight's movie is Inception. Free wine dinner and free movie is going to be our usual Thursday night routine! We did it twice in August when we were down here, so I'm really looking forward to starting that up again.

BTW, the pictures at the top show the hog damage. We did not know there were wild hogs roaming the area when we bought. They came up out of the conservation area during the fall while we were in MD. Our neighbors called in the damage, and the landscaping company came and put down some straw. According to the neighbors, the hogs returned about two days before we got home and tore it up a bit more. I took a picture out of the screened lanai this morning. That's why it looks a little dark and grainy; that's the screen. Also the day is overcast and gray, but still, it shows how rumpled up the yard is. There is also some vegetation near the back of the yard that is gone. I don't know if that was the hogs or just normal from colder than usual winter temperatures. Many of the plants look a little sad or brown now. Hopefully, the hogs will all get trapped and removed soon!