Catch up

 I’ve needed to catch this up for a while. I think where I was going to start was a month ago, when my tumor marker jumped so high. Every time I have chemo, they do labs - the tumor marker is just one thing they check. Last time (meaning a month ago) the tumor marker had gone from 220 to 360. When I had chemo this week, the tumor marker was 355, not nearly enough to instill confidence that this drug is working! I have scans later in July, then we can see what is really going on in there. I'm having major scan-xiety. Things have always gone relatively well for me - I'm having a hard time feeling that confidence now.

After we dropped McK off at her camp, we drove to northern Idaho to visit my sister and her husband. It was so great to see them, and have time to really talk about everything. We only stayed 2 nights because we knew how far it was to Banff, and needed to hit the road.

Banff looks a lot like Glacier NP in many ways. Except the town is established in the middle of the park. Lots of shops, restaurants, homes, etc built at the base of the majestic mountains! I don’t know of a NP in America like that, so that was different. Also, I wasn’t expecting lows around 30 at night, and highs around 40-45 during the day. We have a furnace in our trailer, that was a life saver! I didn’t come prepared for the cold, so I basically wore the same layers every night. It rained and rained the whole time we were there - 3 days straight! Mat had one more activity planned for day 4. I “begged” him to just move on to our next place, the cold wetness was getting to me! The next place was to go and do a session at the Cardston temple. Cardston is the first temple built in Canada in the 19teens. It’s very old and has a King Solomon temple feel to it (whatever that looks like!) Never been to another temple like it! The funny thing was when we checked into to RV park in Cardston, the lady at the desk told Mat the sessions were at 9:45 and 10:30 the next day. Are we that obvious?!

We went through 4 other NP that run together south of Banff. The last one is Waterton, right on the border w/ USA. There you’ll find the International Peace Garden to commemorate that our "two" countries take care of each other. The disturbing thing for me is this. The Blackfoot Indian tribe was also very involved with the development of those national parks in Canada, but have pushed out of any recognition about what needed to happen in that area, 3 nations worked on that agreement to create a peaceful collaboration but are represented nowhere! Makes me sick learning about how white man trampled on there rights. (When we were at Glacier National Park last year, I read a "side of the road sign" that mentions the name of the Blackfoot chief that helped with all of that too - not a word in Canada. At least in Glacier, they have renamed a handful of areas from the "christian-ized, white man-ized" names back to Blackfoot names.

We stayed in Rexburg so we could get back on time to pick her up, then we always stop at the huckleberry shake shop on the way out of town. I could totally live there, not many residents, beautiful place on the back side of the Tetons. But my life dictates another path than the one I want! We picked up McK from her camp in Victor, Idaho. She had a marvelous time! I was so, so happy to hear it!

We got home Sunday, I had chemo on Tuesday, we went to Les Miz on Thursday. I’m going out on a limb and saying that this production at the Eccles was the best I’ve seen, and we’ve seen Les Miz all over snippets of the world!

Today, Annie (therapist) fit me in and had a wonderful cathartic talk with her! She always does me a great deal of good! Wish Annie Acupuncture was still here!!!