Almost two months after seeking relief for Diane’s amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in Boston, we will travel to San Francisco tomorrow on a similar, equally hopeful, mission.
We are traveling by car, retracing a beloved 101 route we long ago memorized when family lived in Santa Cruz and we visited every six weeks.
This trip will bear echoes of Auld Lang Syne, when we joked about the trajectory of the freeway, the shimmering beauty of the northerly landscapes, the gaping spaces where you could drive 90 if only the CHP would relax.
This mindless musing merely avoids the main event, her health.
Just as optimistic as one of us was back on April 8, I believe as full-throatedly in a favorable outcome even though paralysis and caregiving monopolize her thinking.
Our San Francisco outing feels more like a home game. In Boston, we were strictly visitors from a faraway place.
Bravely, four months after her diagnosis and almost two years, she calculates, after ALS randomly struck her as its next victim, she continues her nurse practitioner duties, though she has scaled them back.
One of us stubbornly maintains that the outcome has not yet been dictated.
As a raw, amateur caregiver, I enjoy performing short errands to the kitchen, upstairs, downstairs, or to a store.
This requires precise sensitivity by the clumsy caregiver. “I want to do this as long as I can,” she will say.
By now, she chooses from three travel modes – cane, walker, wheelchair. Never did I realize that shlepping a wheelchair north on the Third Street Promenade is like climbing Everest with one hand atop your head.
