Blog

MGH Beacon House is no Liberty Hotel…but it does get internet service, it has over 100 channels on TV, the air conditioning works, it has a fridge with a freezer in wich I can keep my most needed cold paks (for my post-radiating headaches), the shower head is high and strong, and it has an elevator. It also has twin hospital beds complete with plasticized mattresses and pillows…in case one is to have an accident. There are “I’ve fallen but can’t get up” buttons near both the bed and the toilet. The towels are more to the exfoliating side than the luxuriating side…as are the sheets. The curtains and bedspreads are the kind that shouldn’t get too close to an open flame (no danger of this though…the stove is quite far away). The building is an elderly apartment building, (an old building with old people). MGH owns 16 of the units for outpatients and/or their people, to use at a defrayed cost. The building is at the top of perhaps the steepest hill in Boston…so walking after radiation is not an option…have to take a cab. I can walk down though. What is most agreeable about this most recent housing is that it is cheap, and it is relatively odorless…and for the next four days it will be fine. Jamie, however, is glad to be staying only two days. Friday will be her last day. Jon will be with me all next week, the first two of which we will spend at this Motel 6 with a twist, the next two and final days we will stay at the Liberty Hotel.

On Wednesday, the first night we spent at Beacon House, Jamie swears she didn’t sleep more than a few hours…I don’t think I did either…the squeaking of the plastic mattress and pillows was distracting.

My sister-in-law Rona drove up on Thursday, she arrived about 6P. We decided to eat dinner at Faneuil Hall, eating a bit of this and a bit of that…you can do this at Faneuil Hall; there are lots of food vendors from which to choose. This is actually a preferred way of eating for me at the moment. I can eat whatever suits me at the time, whatever my stomach thinks it may be accepting of, and I can eat as much or as little of it as I want. It was a nice night, and it seemed like the perfect thing for us all to be doing. Rona stayed in the apartment that night and was happy to do so.

Jamie and I went back to MGH Beacon House. We might have slept well on Thursday night but there was a fire drill in the middle of the night…that’s something that you wouldn’t have at the Liberty (unless of course there was a real fire). At first we didn’t know what it was…actually we still can’t figure out what it was. A bell rang at 5A, it sounded like a fire drill bell. I got up, looked through the peephole, checked the door to see if it was hot, waited to hear if there was any commotion or instructions, and then decided that we would wait for another sign…perhaps a knock at our door or a fire truck. Nothing. We later thought that maybe what we heard was the sound of the alarm being pulled after one of the elderly tenants had fallen off the toilet seat. Exciting times at Beacon House.

Jamie and I got up early on Friday morning after our “fire drill”,…actually I don’t think that either of us was really able to go back to sleep. My Proton appointment was at 8:30A, they took me surprisingly right on time…love when this happens. We took a taxi up to the top of the hill to get back to our “hotel”. Rona was ready to hit the road at 11A, we got home at 3:30P…early enough for me to be able to greet Rachel getting off her camp bus after having her first sleep-away camp experience…so glad to have not missed that, it was a big event in her life…she’s been talking about going for years. I feel like I’ve missed a lot of the summer, I was so glad not to have missed this moment.

Friday was my 29th treatment, 6 more to go, only two of which will be Proton; the last four will be Photon…no mask at Photon…no more mask. I’m getting there.