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You are welcome to apply any part of this article to your own personal use. Please do NOT publish any part of the article or apply any part of it to any non-personal use without the express written concent of the author.
Being based here at Shilshole Marina in Seattle we're pretty close to lots of family. Kit has four brothers here with their families, plus an aunt & uncle and some cousins. I have all my children with their families, plus some former in-laws. It has been especially nice to be able to connect with the grandtykes.
On one occasion about two months ago grandson Tyler (10 years old) asked about total eclipses of the sun. He was curious about them and knew that we had seen a few. He came over to the boat one evening to watch our video of the eclipse we saw in Thailand, and was very interested in seeing one himself. We checked and found that the next one was on April 8, which turned out to be the 25th anniversary of the day Kit & I met. Tyler went to the computer to search out the path of totality and found that it was only visible at sea in the South Pacific Ocean. Reading about one of the opportunities for viewing we found a medium-sized cruise ship (600 passengers only) that would pick up guests in Tahiti, visit Moorea and Pitcairn Island, then go to the eclipse site. Following the eclipse the ship would visit Easter Island (Rapa Nui) then go to Lima, Peru. An extension trip after leaving the ship would give us a visit to Cuzco (former capital of the Inca Empire) and Manchu Picchu (a world-famous site that's extremely well preserved, once billed as the last holdout of the Inca). Kit & I looked at each other as we read about this opportunity and couldn't resist. All those places were high on our lists of "must visit" and with the timing of our 25th anniversary it was too good to pass up.
And, as it turned out, the ship (MV Discovery) was none other than the vessel that was featured on the "Love Boat" television series. There's a different captain now, plus Julie and Gopher are no longer aboard. But that's okay. As it turned out our captain was the best, the activities director phenomenal and the purser truly outstanding.
We called the next morning and found that the trip had been full for months, but that there was a last-minute cancellation. We took it, looking at it as a warm-up (quite literally, given the typical Pacific Northwest weather) for our Alaska sojourn this summer as well as a special celebration.
We almost didn't go. Tyler's mom, Samantha, had been fighting a cancer of unknown primary for several years. In February, shortly after her 38th birthday she was told that she had run out of medical options and, statistically, could expect to survive between 9 months and a full year. But late in March she took a sudden dive. Her liver was failing. Wonderfully, just before we were scheduled to depart (April 2) she rallied, asking us to take lots of pictures to share with her when we got back. So we were able to go without any guilt.
The trip was wonderful. It's certainly different from our usual cruising style aboard Volant.
The food was fantastic and available for five meals a day: breakfast, lunch, English tea, dinner and late-night snacks. If you counted hors d'oeuvres in the bars each afternoon we could have a sixth meal. I gained 15 pounds (about 6 kg.) even while trying to keep my weight normal. If I weren't trying to stay even I don't know how much I would have gained.
We could take all our main meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) in the Seven Continents Restaurant (fixed seating), and have dinner once a week in the Yacht Club (great view) instead. For breakfast and lunch we usually ate in the alternative open-air buffet on the upper deck. Dinner in the Yacht Club was special, and only by reservation. So we scheduled our dinner there for the evening of our anniversary after the eclipse.
When we were at sea there were lots of activities organized by the cruise director. These ran the gamut from lectures by guest experts on a wide range of topics to shuffleboard, chess and backgammon tournaments. Lectures included astronomy subjects (college professors), skin care (dermatologist), geology of the places we'd be visiting (college professor), camera use (retired film company executive), Pitcairn Island culture (retired Pitcairn resident and great-great-great-great grandson of Fletcher Christian). There were many more than these, but you get the idea.
And if the card game of bridge was your choice every morning there was a class for beginning bridge players (including Kit) on how to play the game, plus advanced techniques for more experienced players (including me). Every afternoon there was a duplicate tournament.
The captain was a Norwegian with a very dry sense of humor. Every day he'd announce the day's position and usually ended with letting everyone know where that afternoon's ice cream was being served and what kind it was. On our first night aboard he let folks know that the ship was a different kind of place. When we get up in the night to go to the bathroom there's a step up. When we leave the bathroom to return to our beds the step is still there, but this time it's a step down. Anyway, you get the idea.
He is also an outstanding skipper. We watched as he maneuvered the six hundred-foot ship as it if was a private yacht of only a hundred feet in length.
We met lots of interesting folks. The oldest were a couple in their 90s who were on their 108th cruise and had 3 more planned for this year. They were out on the dance floor every evening. He still sailed and raced his boat, winning more often than not. Being on an eclipse cruise we found one fellow who had seen 25 total eclipses, spending a total of nearly a full hour in the shadow of the moon. One of our dinner table mates was a medical doctor and the other was an English weatherman whose face was very well known to British television viewers. We'll be in continuing contact with a number of the new friends made during the cruise.
Our visit to Tahiti was quite brief. We got off the flight, went through customs & immigration, then got directly aboard the ship. The ship departed within the hour.
Moorea was a bit longer. We had about six hours ashore. Rather than take the pre-planned tour of the island we just went ashore and negotiated with a local taxi to drive us and about half a dozen others around. We saw everything the pre-planned tourists saw, and it was less expensive. Our taxi driver was a native born Moorean of Swiss descent, with a Moorean husband. As such she knew a lot about the island and its history.
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Two days at sea followed, voyaging to Pitcairn Island. When we arrived the conditions were too rough for us to go ashore, almost too rough for the Pitcairners themselves. We were able to bring the Pitcairners aboard the MV Discovery to examine and purchase their wares and to have our passports stamped. So technically we did visit.
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On the very next morning we were cruising along at six knots directly in the path of totality. There was an on-board meteorologist from Canada who specializes in eclipse weather. He recommended to the captain that the ship be moved about 100 miles north of the originally planned location due to cloud cover, which was done.
And it was a fabulous viewing. Kit and I sat in a Jacuzzi (hot tub) on one of the upper aft decks for the viewing. And nobody was watching us at the moment of totality (wink, wink, wink). For a page of links of interest to eclipse fanatics, click here.
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And this is what we saw:
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Diamond Ring Effect April 8, 2005 |
A couple of more days at sea and we arrived at Easter Island (Isla de Pescua in Spanish, as it's owned by Chile), called Rapa Nui by the locals (the majority of whom still speak their local Polynesian language at home). We had two days there and would go back in a heartbeat. It was fascinating. We took two tours, one to see the major sites on the island, including the place where the moai (famous stone statues) were carved. The second day was to some additional sites. To go into the details here would take dozens of pages, and which are available elsewhere on the Internet so I'll forego repeating that here.
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Her transition occurred while her husband, Todd, was holding her. The last thing she said to him was, "Love."
Our new friends aboard were very, very understanding. And for this we will always remember them. At the suggestion of one of them, we held our own gathering on our last evening aboard, sort of a memorial to Sam but also a memorial to people special to the others in the gathering.
We did get home, of course, and in time to provide needed support to son Todd and their two children (Tyler, 10, and Kayleigh, 7).
Samantha did not want a memorial gathering, rather she wanted a party to celebrate her life. So tomorrow afternoon, May 1 (traditional spring celebration day for her Pagan inclinations), Todd hosted a Celebration of Life party in her honor - a wonderful gathering.
In the middle of all this, starting about the time of the eclipse I began to develop a headache that wouldn't go away. When we returned home I contacted my oncologist and got in on April 26. Unfortunately it turned out that I had two separate lesions in my brain. The one I was feeling is in the frontal portion on the left side, a region associated with cognitive skills, multitasking skills and short-term memory. The other is in the cerebellum at the base of the skull, also on the left side. That region, with many redundancies, is associated with fine motor skills and balance.
To quote the virtually universal reaction to this medical news within a few days of hearing of Samantha's transition, "This is royally f**ked!"
That very same day we met with a radiation oncologist and a neurosurgeon and planned a protocol. Several options were explored, including wait-and-see. Wait-and-see didn't seem to be a practical option. The expectation is that in maybe as early as two months I'd have bleeding in the brain caused by the pressure from the lesions, causing multiple strokes or even worse. Surgery by itself would leave me with an 80% chance that the lesions would return in the same place within a year. Surgery with targeted radiation would reduce that to about a 20% chance of recurrence within a year. Not good, but considerably better than wait-and-see.
So here's our treatment plan. Surgery on May 10 will remove the lesion in the cerebellum, a 3-4 hour procedure. Then on May 16 the other mass will be removed, a 1-2 hour procedure. Both are relatively simple procedures from the surgeon's point of view (very little actual brain tissue will wind up being disturbed as both lesions are very close to the surface). Finally, in about 3-6 weeks after the last surgery I'll have one day with a Gamma Knife - that's a special radiation system that will focus the radiation beams in the area of the removed lesions to kill off any remaining cells. To learn more about the Gamma Knife, click here.
And if all this is not enough, we noticed some more skin anomalies in the scars from last year's chest surgery. The dermatologist checked them out and agreed that they looked suspicious. She performed a biopsy on one, sending the sample to the pathology laboratory.
And then I started feeling a pain in my left hip. What's this? Another lesion, but this time on my hip bone?
A friend described all this as sort of trying to put an octopus to bed. As soon as one leg gets tucked in another two keep popping out.
But then we got some good news for a change. The pathology report came back negative. NO CANCER! The tissue turned out to be cheloid, a particular kind of scar tissue that raises up above the skin. For all the scars I have on my body, not a single one is cheloidal. That's what made it suspicious. So now I have four of them. Interesting...
So even with the good news, I'm still saying to myself, "F**k this s**t! I'm going sailing!" I have no idea how long I'll be able to do this, so I'm going to do as much of it as I can, while I can.
Our plan fight now is to get the surgeries done, then head up northward on our Alaska adventure. Departure date is set for May 25, plus or minus depending on weather and how I'm recovering. We've invited a couple, cruising sailor friends who are familiar with Alaska (they spent last winter aboard in Juneau) to help us to go north lickity-split. They've tentatively accepted. Lickity-split in this case means going non-stop until we're in Alaska. We will have to stop to clear in and out of Canada, and may have to stop at various points to await weather for safety's sake, but other than that we can go day and night all the way to Ketchikan. Once in Alaska I'll take about 3 days to return for the Gamma Knife treatment: that's one day to get back, one day for the treatment, and then one day to return to the boat. From there we'll be cruising along our original outline.
Anyway, that's the plan. We shall see how it will unfold.
For what it's worth, LMS (leiomyosarcoma) metastasis to the brain is extremely rare. It's so rare the oncologists almost never even think to check for it. Hmmm... First I win the lottery of getting LMS, less than one percent of one percent of all the possible cancers. Then I win the lottery of the one chance in four that it would spread. Then I win the lottery of it spreading to the skin as well as the lungs. And now I've won the lottery of a very, very rare metastasis to the brain on a very, very rare cancer. Hmmm... with my luck running so hot, maybe I should start buying lottery tickets...?
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