College Station (not Alaska) Edition

June 3, 2018

     Brian here.

     Well, this isn't the blog posting we expected to be making at this time! Since we returned from our last trip, we have been planning an Alaska journey that was supposed to last from mid-May until October. Life gets in the way, though.

     Back in January, Brian started having a hoarse throat. We thought it was just allergies, because there was nothing else unusual, but it didn't go away. Come April, he decided to have it checked out by an ENT, and nasal antihistamines helped a great deal. The doctor wanted to check his throat with a scope, so that procedure was done. She saw a small nodule on one of his vocal cords, but said that it looked small and clear, but a biopsy would be a good thing. We figured that it would be a good thing to do, so early last month, the outpatient biopsy was performed.

      As many of you know, when you get a call from the doctor asking if you can come in early to discuss results, they are not often good. He had talked to the doctor about our plans, and she wanted to tell us that we needed to change them. The nodule is cancer, but luckily, it has a 90% cure rate with either surgery or radiation. The next thing we needed to do was discuss those options with doctors and decide which one would be best. Since the biopsy did not go as smoothly as planned, and since the ENT doctor was less than enthusiastic about the surgery, we chose radiation.

      Last Tuesday, he went in to have his 'mask' made in preparation for the radiation. They form a mesh material over your head that they attach to the radiation table so you can't move during the treatment – they want to aim at the same place every day. If you want Google "larynx cancer mask" to see a mask, and learn more about the procedure.  This Tuesday he starts treatments every weekday for 6 ½ weeks. A good thing is that he doesn't have to go downtown to do them, he can do it locally.

So, what does that have to do with our travels? We haven't gone anywhere special together since last Fall, and were anxious to go SOMEWHERE. Big Bend had been a nice trip with Mark's family, but it just fueled the travel fire.

     We decided to take a short trip close by. It is already approaching 100 degrees, so camping was out of the question. Since we have been talking about visiting the Bush Presidential Libraries, we chose to go the College Station to experience the G. H. W. Bush Library. We are glad we did. It is very well done, and we learned a lot.

Of course, we did some geocaching along the way, and got to explore some more back roads of Texas. We stopped for a quick visit with Kris's college roommate in Conroe, and are now home for a while.

On a back road near Bryan - only missing one 'L'

Neat tribute at Veteran's park in Bryan/College Station

One of my favorite observations at the Bush Library

In the Barbara Bush section of the Museum.  We could have spent a lot of time here.

A tiny cemetery near North Zulch - one grave!

      At this point in time, we are altering our plans, and hope to be able to go the the Pacific Northwest for about 6 weeks, after treatment, and before follow-up visits. We are lucky that we hadn't made any reservations for the planned Alaska adventure, so we avoided that hassle.

     Our spirits are high, though. We caught the cancer early, and it is very treatable. Brian is more upset about missing the trip at this time (and being stuck in Houston's summer heat) than he is about the treatments. We will just have to go with the flow and put the Alaska trip back on our “to do” list again. Some people say that planning and looking forward to trips is the most fun part of vacations. If that is the case, it will be an exceptional journey.