Not So Much

I like to think of myself as a bit of a maverick of sorts, someone who is capable of being a badass, a person who could pick up a car to rescue somebody in an extreme situation, a person who would go all out to help someone who needed help.  I wonder if most people think that about themselves or if that's just me.   

Yesterday I had two opportunities to do something to help another person, and I don't think I could have predicted either time what my reaction ended up being.  

The first situation happened just after I'd gotten to the dog park with two of my dogs.  There's a basketball court over to one side of the fenced in off-leash area where dogs are allowed to run free while their owners supervise.  Probably because it was chilly and overcast outside, nobody else was in the fenced area when I got there, and, as I stood there watching my dogs do their initial sniff-and-discovery routine, I noticed a group of about a dozen teenagers standing in a disorganized-looking circle on the court.  A few of them were yelling, but I couldn't hear them enough to tell what they were saying.  The only girl in the group had a little video camera and appeared to be filming some sort of action.  I was curious about what she was doing, and so I walked a few yards over in the fenced in area so that I could have a clearer view of what they were looking at.  

It was a boy, on the ground, being punched by another boy who was on top of him.  I started to be able to make out the words that were being shouted by the kids who were watching; it was the usual jeering and goading associated with a brawl.  Just a second after I recognized what was going on, the boy on the ground scrambled to his feet and took off running towards the entrance of the fenced area.  As he ran past on the other side of the fence from where I was, I said, "Are you ok?"  Without breaking his stride, he quickly glanced in my direction, brought his hand up to wipe the blood and tears from his face, and quietly said, "Yeah."  I watched him run past to the opposite side of dog park and into the little concrete block building where the restrooms were.  

And then I saw two of the other teenagers break away from the group on the court and start walking towards the bathroom.  One of them was clenching and unclenching his fists.  

I already had my cell phone in my hand; I sometimes take pictures of my dogs playing at the dog park so I usually have it at-the-ready when I'm there.  As the boys walked across the parking lot, I dialed 9-1-1 and told the operator what I'd seen and that I was afraid the boys were going to follow the kid that had been beaten up into the bathroom and corner him.  

I considered using my teacher-voice and telling the boys to leave him alone.  I considered following them.  I considered taking my dogs back to my car and driving over to right in front of the little building and sitting on the horn to create a distraction.  But I didn't do any of those things.  I just stood there trying to calculate all the possible outcomes from each of my possible reactions; I was telling myself that the police would get there any second and that it didn't make sense for me to get so involved that I would be putting myself in danger.  

Luckily, I live in a town with a generally quick-response law enforcement reaction time, and as I stood there watching the boys approach the bathroom, a police car pulled up in the parking lot.  The officer saw me standing at the fence and rolled down his window.  I told him where the kids were, and he quickly drove his car over to the concrete building, parked, and swung open the entrance door to the bathroom, which the two boys had walked right past when they'd seen the officer's car approaching.  A minute later, the officer came out with the injured boy, who'd evidently cleaned himself up and had blood-tinged toilet paper stuffed up both of his nostrils.  Neither of them looked in my direction as they walked towards one of the little houses that was just across the street from the park to what I guessed what the boy's house.  

A minute later, a woman with a dog parked her car and came into the fenced area with her dog.  I told her what had happened and we talked about how glad we were that it hadn't been worse as we watched our dogs sniff and then chase each other around.

I was feeling pretty cowardly later as I considered my lack of real reaction, though, after I'd left the park.  I'm not sure what I wished I'd done; I know that I was realistically limited in what I could have/should have done.  But it still feels like I'm letting myself off the hook too easily, and it still sucks to realize that not one iota of badassness came forth from within me when it was needed. 

The second thing happened at the grocery store, which is where my bruised ego and I went after we dropped the dogs off at my house.  I did my shopping, waited in line, and was getting checked out, when a bag boy (I feel like that term isn't P.C. especially when said "boy" is actually a man older than I am, but I'm at a loss as to what other wording to use here.) came over and started sacking my groceries. He turned to the older guy (bag boy?) who'd been sacking and said, "I'm supposed to take over for you since it's your turn to go on break."  The old guy said, "OK. Did they tell you I have to go on break now or just that I could if I needed to?"  Before the first guy could answer, the checker said, "He doesn't know; he wouldn't know" in what I thought was a very condescending tone of voice.  I should add to this that the slightly younger sacker, whom I've seen in the store many times over the years, appears to have some sort of developmental disability; I, of course, don't know his diagnosis, but it's apparent that he has some special needs.  That said, though, OF COURSE he didn't deserve to be treated as if he were incompetent or anything else, for that matter.

If you know me, or maybe even if you don't, you can probably see where I'm going with this.  For some reason - maybe he hadn't heard her, or maybe, like me, he just couldn't believe the way she's said that - the older guy said, "What?" and the checker repeated her rude, inappropriate statement as if the younger checker couldn't hear her.  Just like at the park an hour earlier, a few different scenarios played out in my head over the course of the next few seconds.  The checker continued to scan things, and the stuff was piling up at the far end of the conveyer belt as the two bag boys just stood there, apparently waiting for someone else to say something.  "That's not very nice," I finally said to the checker, who didn't look up from scanning as she casually said, "Huh?"  "That's not nice; it's very disrespectful and rude to assume that you know what someone else knows or would know," I said, louder this time, and when she looked up I could see that she knew then what I was referring to.  She looked from me to the younger sacker and said, "I'm sorry; I don't know why I said that."  "Oh, that's ok," the guy said, with as much genuineness as I'd ever heard in a voice before.

And with that, I was left wonder as I paid for the groceries and rolled the cart towards my car in the parking lot: Was the younger sacker offended by what the checker had said? Was she really sorry?  Did she realize that what she had said to him was wrong?  Was the older guy just going to stand there and do nothing?  I guess it didn't matter, but in any case I was glad this time that I'd stood up for somebody - far from a badass move, but better than nothing, I guess.

                                               Not so much, I guess ...

Cancer Sucks

Reports came out today about former TV star Valerie Harper having been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.  

Harper, 73,  played Rhoda on the Mary Tyler Moore Show from 1970 until 1974, after which she had her own spin-off show called "Rhoda" until 1978.  She wrote a tell-all book called "I, Rhoda" that came out in January this year.

She went through treatment for lung cancer in 2009; her diagnosis at this time is Leptomeningeal Carcinomatosis, or LC, which occurs when cancer cells, usually as a relapse from cancer originally in another part of the body, invade the subarachnoid space, enter the cerebrospinal fluid, and are transported throughout the central nervous system.  LC occurs in up to 8% of patients with cancer, most often in cases of lung cancers, breast cancers, GI tract cancers, and melanomas.  

I didn't know all of that about LC until recently.  I follow a blog - Family Bonding Time - about a husband and wife who were both diagnosed with cancer almost simultaneously, and the wife, who has breast cancer, was diagnosed in January with LC as well.  

In reading about it, I was shocked to learn that LC can come from the spread of GBM, the type of primary brain cancer that my dad had.  We had been told by the team of oncologists and neuro-oncologists that GBM almost never spreads and that we shouldn't be concerned about that for Dad.  (Looking back, I wonder if the reason they said that is because they suspected that he wouldn't last long enough for any spreading to occur.) Apparently in cases of LC, often nothing new shows up on scans because the cancer has spread into the spinal fluid rather than through an increase in the number or tumors or in tumor size.  Symptoms of LC, of course, are very similar to those of other types of brain cancer, including GBM, but a couple of the markers for LC listed in the information I read caught my eye: extreme lethargy and severe pain reported diffusely in the top of the head, both of which cannot be explained otherwise, as in they do not seem to be coming from other sources like a side-effect of medication or the location of a tumor.  Both of these things were true for my dad, especially during the last month of his life, when he was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open (but oddly and torturously for him he couldn't sleep because of the massive doses of steroids he was on - because he kept reporting severe pain on the top of his head!).

I guess it doesn't matter, does it?  I guess they could have done a spinal tap to check for the presence of cancer cells in the spinal fluid - and actually they did consider doing that to check for meningitis at one point, but then they decided just to treat him with antibiotics that would treat any type of infection instead.  If they had found LC, in theory they could possibly have treated it with chemo administered through a catheter into that part of his brain, but honestly I doubt he could have tolerated or withstood that treatment, and I guess I'm glad we didn't have to make the decision of whether or not to put him through such a drastic intervention when it was not very likely to buy him much more time, if any, in his condition.  I will never get over the fact, though, that no one on the team of specialists who were assigned to Dad's case towards the end, could even venture to guess why he was going downhill so rapidly, especially after he had been given transfusions and heavy doses of medications to restore his blood counts to within normal limits.  "On paper, he should be better," his oncologist said, but he wasn't, and I will never forget those words.  

Part 36 - ICU 2.0

Continued from Part 35

After a day of ups and downs, the oncologist made his final rounds before the three-day holiday weekend late in the afternoon.  He delivered a pep talk to Dad, who as usual “faked” how he was feeling in front of the doctor (“Doing great, Doc!”), and then the doctor asked us to step out into the hall with him.  I tagged along, and my sister stayed in the room with Dad. 

“I’ve heard from the nurses that he’s mentioned dying a few times,” the oncologist said, “and I just want to be sure before I leave for the weekend that you want the chart to reflect that you want ‘heroic measures’ to be taken should anything drastic happen.”  

Wow, I thought, as I looked at my mom in shock.  OF COURSE we want HEROIC MEASURES, I thought; we want a MIRACLE - we want him to be healthy again!  We want someone to be a hero the way Dad is to us, and if that takes ‘heroic measures,’ then so be it!

“What do YOU think?” Mom asked the doctor.

“At this point, I think he is still recovering from the infection, and I expect him to respond to the treatment for that, after which we can press on with the treatment for the cancer,” he said.  “So I would say we do not want a DNR [Do Not Resuscitate order] in place at this point, but I want to be sure you agree.”

“Yes, we agree,” Mom told him.  “We need more time.”  

Exactly, I thought, and we said goodbye to the oncologist and went back into Dad’s room.  

That evening, the night nurse (unfortunately not Meredith, who had the night off) administered two units of whole blood to Dad; as per the protocol, she gave him IV Benedryl beforehand, and as a result Dad slept soundly for the first part of the transfusion.  After that, though, he was very restless and talkative, although most of what he said was “mumbly,“ as we noted in the Notebook.  He had just gotten back to sleep at 3:45 a.m. when a phlebotomist (whom I referred to in the Notebook at “The Blood Bitch”) burst into the room, abruptly flipped on the ceiling light, and announced loudly that she needed to take blood.  As Dad stirred in the bed, I jumped up, turned the lights back off, and told B.B. that, unless the order had been specifically written for blood to be drawn at that exact time, she needed to come back later.  She retreated and returned again at 7 a.m.

The rest of that day, which was Christmas Eve Day, was a whirlwind of activity, disappointment, and stress for us.  We had quite a string of visitors that morning, and Dad seemed to get more disoriented and more distressed with each person who entered the room.  Shortly after the nurses’ change of shift, the stand-in-oncologist Dr. M came in to introduce himself.  He said that Dad would be getting a transfusion of platelets that day and that he was increasing the insulin dosage due to the increasing blood sugar numbers that had been noted over the past 24 hours.  

Next was a visit from the Physical Therapist, who tried to help Dad turn onto his side in the bed.  It seemed like every movement was not only exhausting but also excruciatingly painful for him, and, after a couple of minutes of listening to and watching Dad groan and grimace in pain, she said, “I want to get him sitting up at the edge of the bed again, but I’m concerned that doing so will agitate him for several hours.”  Looking at the anguish on Dad’s face, Mom asked the P.T. to come back later, and the P.T. agreed to check back that afternoon.

Next through our revolving door was a volunteer with a therapy dog.  Like the rest of my family, Dad loved animals, but he seemed totally disinterested in interacting with this dog, even turning his head away when the volunteer asked if he wanted to pet the dog.  “Thank you anyway, but I really just want to see my own dogs and my cat,” he told her.  

Things continued to spiral downward, with Dad becoming more miserable and with his condition becoming more perilous as the day progressed.  When the nurse started to give Dad a sponge bath, he yelled, “I know you don’t mean to, but you’re really hurting me!  Can’t I please just skip this?”  A little while later, in preparation for the platelet transfusion, she brought in the Benedryl, and two minutes later Dad was snoozing, even sleeping through a shot of 15 units of insulin, which, due to the alarmingly high blood sugar reading, was much larger than the 6 units he had been getting.

Not long after the platelets had been administered, Dad’s blood pressure and blood sugar levels started climbing so rapidly that the decision was made by the stand-in oncologist to transfer him to the ICU.  “There’s just way too much going on with him,” the nurse commented, and, terrified, we agreed.  As the arrangements were being made for the transfer, Dad started hallucinating; he seemed less in pain and more confused and in his own world, which frightened us even more.

Because of the skeletal holiday staffing, the Neuro-ICU was closed, and Dad was assigned to the Cardiac-ICU, or the “CCU.”  When we got the word that we were moving, we hurriedly gathered up our belongings, and Mom pushed a cart with our stuff on it as I speed-walked alongside Dad in the bed, which was rolled down several long hallways by the nurse and a transport aide.  I was worried that the movement of the bed would hurt Dad, but instead he called out “Whee!” each time the bed was rolled across a bump on the floor along the way.  

As soon as we got to the little glassed-in room on the unit, Dad was taken back out for another CT scan ordered by the oncologist due of his worsening condition.  As per the results of the scan a few days before, again no signs of bleeding or inflammation in the brain were seen, which seemed like good news but - with the improvement of his blood count - instead left everyone wondering as to what was going on and what should be done next.  

Up next … Part 37 – The Fight 

Part 25 - Round 2

Continued from Part 24

As indicated on the Dry Erase Board, I arrived at my parents’ house in time to accompany them to get Dad’s second round of chemo/Avastin.  I had called the oncologist’s office a few days before to request a consultation with a registered dietician with experience with cancer patients since Dad’s appetite had diminished to almost nothing, and so that was the first order of business on the day of Chemo: Round 2.  The nutritionist met us in the waiting room of the oncologist’s office, which I guess was nice because it was productive use of our time as we waited to see the doctor, but I kept hearing the sound of screeching tires in my head as every rule of confidentiality ever established in the field of medicine was broken by this open-air approach.  Dad didn’t care/didn’t notice, but Mom and I did, and we were torn between being grateful for the complimentary consultation and horrified at the dietician's lack of awareness of and regard to Dad’s right to privacy.

At one point in the conversation, she asked Dad if he was “regular.”  Unclear about her role even after an introduction and despite her name tag, Dad misinterpreted what she meant and said, “Sure!  I’m just a regular guy, nobody special.”  Mom and I exchanged a look and waited for Ms. Dietician to figure a way out of that one.  Perhaps thinking that he was kidding, she laughed and then said, “But really, how often are you able to go to the bathroom?”  Again, Dad missed the mark, and he said, “Oh I don’t know, they let me go whenever I need to, probably ten times a day or so, depending on how much Diet Coke and beer they let me drink.”  Ms. D started to tune in to the program at that point, I think, and finally she got more specific:  “How often do you have a bowel movement?”  Without missing a beat, Dad said, “Not nearly enough!  When I was running, I always went once a day, but that’s just one of those things that doesn’t come easy to me anymore.”  He didn’t realize the opaqueness of his statement, but luckily Ms. D picked up what he was putting down, and the conversation could (finally) move on.  

So, with that as the conversation opener, we got to discuss pooping right there in the waiting room.  Mom and I recapped the scene later when Dad wasn’t listening and agreed that – pun definitely intended here because sometimes you’ve just got to laugh – Dad didn’t give a shit that we were talking in a very crowded room about something that most people would consider very personal.  Ms. D proceeded to discuss the importance of getting plenty of fiber and “healthy fluids” (“I don’t guess that includes Diet Coke and beer,” Dad grumbled).  The specifics of the type of intake was much less concerning to me at that point than the amount, or lack thereof, was.  I had counted calories for Dad and let Ms. D know that he was consuming less than 500 per day.  

With that, she ushered us into the inner office, where more patients were waiting, lining the walls in chairs and wheelchairs, waiting to be seen in the lab, and instructed Dad to get up on the scale.  Unlike the scale at Duke, this one had grab bars on either side of it, but it still required stepping up on a platform, which Dad needed help with.  He was able to balance for a split second without holding onto the rails or to me, though (Microscopic Improvement??, I wondered), and Ms. D reported that he'd had a weight-loss of seven pounds since leaving rehab, fairly dramatic in an already-thin (Dad preferred to be described as “in shape” rather than thin) person.

With no treatment room open, she loaded us up right there in the hallway with free samples of calorie boosters - Ensure Plus and Boost Plus, which she said tasted like a milkshake, and Benecalorie, a flavorless caloric-dense supplement that could be added in to any soft food.  She also recommended that he switch to whole milk and whole milk products (yogurt, cheeses, etc.), to which Dad gave Mom and me a not-so-subtle eye roll.  (All my life I remember him saying that cheese makes people fat, and evidently he had not forgotten about and did not plan to change his stance on that.)  We heard Dad’s name being called to get him into the lab, and so we thanked Ms. D (“She was so nice!” Dad commented loudly as we pushed his wheelchair down the hallway) and forged ahead.  

Lab Tech took blood from Dad’s left arm, which he didn’t feel at all due to the continued sensation problems.  I thought she had thought the process through and figured it was kinder to stick the numb arm, especially since it took her a few tries to get the needle into his tricky steroid-abused vessel, but then I saw her hand the glass vile of blood to Dad in his left hand for him to hold while she turned to fill out his paperwork.  Dad could move his left arm and leg; he just couldn’t feel them, plus his attention span was, well, not great, and so within 30 seconds he started to relax his hand and I had to dive to catch the vile before it hit the ground.  “Uh-oh!  That was close!” Lab Tech said when she realized what had happened.  Hopefully she won’t make that mistake again.  

Next Dad had to give a urine sample, which was a challenge for the above mentioned reasons as well as the fact that he almost never remembered to lock the brakes on the wheels of his wheelchair, and so he needed verbal prompts through the bathroom door for safety so that he didn’t fall.  I got lots of odd looks from those in the area as I shouted through the closed bathroom door in the hallway, but Dad got the job done and delivered the goods with his right hand.  We moved into the exam room, where luckily we didn’t wait long before the oncologist’s handy-dandy nurse practitioner came in.  The oncologist himself was out of town at a conference that day (hopefully, I thought, learning all about treating GBM!).  

“The blood work looks good, weight is down but I understand you’ve meet with the dietician so let’s don’t worry about that for now,” NP said quickly.  “Any questions?”  Ummm, have we met?  

I had TONS of questions, starting with WHY THE HELL IS THIS HAPPENING and more recently WHY HAVEN’T WE SEEN ANY OF THAT MAGIC WE WERE PROMISED YET?  But I stayed focused on the list in the Notebook, the things that were most urgent and the quickest fixes, like again requesting an appointment with a neuropsychologist (“The only one we have is out through mid-January, but I’ll have the receptionist set you up for something then!”) and reminding her about the need for all lab reports to be faxed to Duke per the instructions of the protocol.  (“Will do!”)  I asked for refills on a couple of prescriptions and then worked my way to the steroid issue:  when could we start to decrease the steroids like the neuro-oncologists at Duke had recommended?  (“Because he’s still having those headaches, let me consult with our on-site oncologist and let you know while he’s getting the chemo.”)  Well, ok, then, let’s get the show on the road!

Onward to the chemo room.  Since Dad had gotten his first round of chemo/Avastin at Duke, it was our first time in this Chemo Suite, as it was ineptly called.  As soon as we walked in, I could tell the vibe was totally different here than at Duke.  The room was very crowded; in fact, Mom, Dad, and I had to stand huddled in a corner for about ten minutes just waiting on a chair to open up for him.  It was really noisy, which Dad hated, and there were no curtains or other dividers between the mauve chemo chairs at all, which I hated right away and knew that Dad would hate after a short while in that frenetic room.  In this not-so-sweet “suite,” the unsightly chairs were set up around a disorganized-looking circular-shaped nurses’ station in the center, like chairs around a campfire except nobody was singing or roasting marshmallows here.  In fact, everybody looked pretty miserable.

We took Dad over to his assigned chair and got him settled in.  There was a tiny “support person” chair to one side, so Mom sat there while I stood behind Dad’s recliner.  Thirty minutes later, we were still waiting, and so I got the attention of one of the rapidly-moving nurses and asked what the deal was.  “We’re still waiting on the doctor to order the meds for him,” she said.  Um, WHAT?  “He can’t order anything until after he’s seen the patient first.”  Well, assuming the Nurse Practitioner was the stand-in for the oncologist, Dad had already been seen, I told her.  We volleyed back and forth on this issue and she was very nice, but she had to make several phone calls and then type everything into her computer at the nurses’ station before the IV bags could be brought over, which took another 45 minutes, during which time Dad was getting restless.  Finally, the IV drip was started and Round 2 was on.  

Because we were so delayed in getting the chemo started, though, we were unsure if Mom would make it on time to a late afternoon appointment that she had.  I looked at Dad, who looked pretty relaxed by that time, and the single chair in the small space beside him, and I told Mom that I thought she should call my aunt for a ride home to get her car so that she could go to her appointment while Dad and I finished up.  Not only did there not seem to be a reason for both of us to stay while we waited for the drip to finish, but the logistics in the cramped Chemo Suite made it almost impossible for a patient to have more than one person waiting with him.

After Mom left, I got out my new iPad so I could show it to Dad for entertainment/distraction while we waited.  He had a hard time paying attention due to the high level of activity that was going on in the room - the alarms on the IV’s, the talking, the TV’s, the overhead announcements, and to top it off the Christmas muzak that was playing in the background.  I put the iPad away and tried to talk to him in a soothing voice about visualization of cancer cells being destroyed.  He wasn’t much buying that either.  A short while later, he announced that he had to go to the bathroom, and so I hustled him into his wheelchair, and a nurse pushed his IV pole along behind us to the private-stall restroom around the corner.  I got the wheels on the wheelchair locked and the IV pole situated so that it was out of his way and then stepped out of the bathroom to give him some privacy.  The nurse and I stood outside the door waiting.  Dad kept yelling to us that he was ok (“and don’t come it!” he said over and over), until finally I heard the clank of metal against metal and knew it was time to check things out.  He was perched awkwardly in the wheelchair and was trying to adjust the footrests but had the IV line completely wrapped around both of his legs.  By the time we got him untangled, Dad was frustrated, embarrassed, and very distressed.  Another patient was waiting to use the bathroom, and so the nurse and I got Dad out of there and started moving him and the IV pole back towards the Chemo Suite.  Right when we got him back into the mauve chair, he fell apart.  “This is taking too long!” he said.  “I was supposed to be out of here hours ago!  I am one of the ones in charge of a company, and I’ve got to get back this afternoon in time to do some work!”

All of that was true, except for the part about his needing to get back to work; that of course had not been on the schedule for the day.  He started reaching towards the tape that was securing the IV in his arm like he was going to rip out the line.  I didn’t know what to do, but I did know that we had to somehow get him calmed down so we could finish up and get the hell out of there.  The nurse was trying her best to help us; at one point she suggested that he try to watch TV, but when she used the remote control by his chair to change the channel, the TV went to a Spanish-speaking station, which made Dad even angrier and more upset.  He was just completely overwhelmed.   With the help of some warm blankets, the nurse and I finally got him calmed down, and thankfully a short time later the infusion was finished.  

We made it out to the car and loaded up for the ride home.  We had gotten there in the morning and hadn’t expected to be there for more than a few hours, and so Dad had not eaten since breakfast that day except for some snack foods they had in the Chemo Suite.   I wanted to get him home and then try to figure out supper, but, as I drove down the interstate in the dark towards my parents’ house, he insisted that we stop and pick up Chinese food on the way home.  “I know just the place!” he said, and I was so glad that he seemed to be getting past the day’s troubles.  

He told me which exit of the interstate to take and directed me through several turns, throwing out comments like “You’re going to love this place!” and “Your mom and I go here pretty often!” along the way.  After this went on for awhile, I realized that not only did I not know where we were going or exactly where we were, but neither did he.  He gradually started to realize the same thing, but he wasn’t one to throw in the towel that easily, and so he gave me more directives and kept saying “It’s probably just right around the corner” until we’d been around and around in circles for more than half an hour.  The biggest obstacle was that he couldn’t remember the name of the place, and yet he could not be dissuaded from wanting to go to this particular place.  “They know me there!” he insisted.  I didn’t want to tell him the jig was up; I didn’t want to underscore anymore than our day already had how different Dad’s life had become, and I knew he was hungry and tired and just wanted to end a shitty day on a good note.  I tried calling my mom and both of my aunts but didn’t get an answer from any of them; actually I’m not sure what anyone except possibly my mom could have done because Dad didn’t know the name of where we were trying to go.

Finally, feeling like I was completely letting him down, I told Dad we should just turn around and go back to the interstate.  I pulled into the parking lot of a shopping center AND THERE IT WAS!  Dad was so excited that he literally almost jumped out of the car.  “I told you!” he said when we saw the bright lights of the restaurant, and I left it at that.  We got the food to go and headed home to meet Mom and eat our well-deserved dinner.

Coming Soon ... Part 26 - Oh, $*#^&!