Our flights up and back to Reagan National Airport went smoothly. Once we arrived and checked into our motel, we headed out to a great Mexican restaurant to meet up with our friends John and Bev. We have not seen them since we left Maryland over a year ago. We had a heck of a hard time finding the restaurant because we were unfamiliar with the area, but once we found it, we had a blast. The food and company were both fantastic. Then, as an added bonus, our friends Sean and Ngoc and son Kevin called to say that if we just waited another fifteen minutes, they could join us, too. Well, that was a no-brainer! Of course, we waited.
We had seen Kevin as an infant and now he's a two year old! Wow! Sadly, Ngoc's father had passed away Monday night. They were out that night attending a private family mass for him and preparing for viewings and a funeral in the next few days. At least we were able to visit with them for an hour and convey our personal condolences.
Enjoy these pictures of our visit with them.
Thursday we attended the funeral, and it was an honor to be there. Mark and I were not too familiar with Arlington National Cemetery, so we also had a bit of trouble finding the Old Post Chapel. We still made it in time. Mark was able to visit with some of his other Goddard co-workers who also came to honor Sharon and Gordon. I had never attended a military funeral, so just seeing all the ceremony attached to it, including handing Sharon the flag, was awe-inspiring. It was a fitting ceremony for a great man.
Afterwards, Mark and I went to the Visitors Center because he needed a men's room. He had not been feeling well all morning because he ate too much dairy (Mexican for lunch and dinner!) the day before. He also felt just generally tired and worn out. It wasn't until later that evening that he realized he had not taken his heart medication. OY! No wonder he felt like he couldn't move.
While we were at the Visitor Center, I wanted to walk up to the Kennedy grave sites. I vaguely remembered being there once, probably on a school trip, but I hardly remembered them. I had forgotten that Jackie Kennedy is now buried there next to John. We also saw Robert and Edward Kennedy's graves. If I had known that Mark had forgotten his heart meds, I would not have insisted that we walk up those hills to get to those graves. That was way too much for him without the pills, but at the time we just thought it was the gastric distress from his lactose intolerance. I made sure to stop at a CVS later that day to buy some Lactaid pills for the next time he feels like pigging out on cheese enchiladas with sour cream and guacamole! LOL!!
He took his heart meds later while we were at the airport, shortly after he remembered that he never took them. Within two hours he was feeling himself again, at least in the chest. It took a few more hours for the tummy troubles to finally subside.
We were both very glad we went to DC for the visit with our friends and for the funeral, but Mark would have enjoyed himself more on Thursday if he had taken Lactaid the day before and his heart med in the morning. He had forgotten that heart medication once or twice before, so we should recognize the symptoms by now. Sadly, we did not this time because we were so focused on the lactose intolerance symptoms instead. I'm really going to try to be more sensitive to this in the future.
One thing I did today was buy new pill boxes. He has all of his pills in one container, but since he takes pills four times a day and some of them are the same ones more than once a day and many look alike, he sometimes take some pills but not others. I bought him a case today that has four containers: morning, noon, evening, bedtime. Now he can sort them in advance and take everything in that particular case all at once. Maybe this will help. We'll see.
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