In my B.C. world, I was a road trip warrior. I have been known to log hundreds of driving miles in a day, down the eastern seaboard, across the Mississippi Delta, or through the Great Plains, the road stretching endlessly behind and beyond. I have joyfully traveled solo, quietly people watched in cafes, navigated some truly horrendous airports and had laughingly bad travel nightmares. While I’ve never been great at pulling all nighters “just because,” as a traveler, I have crossed multiple time zones, countries, continents, and zones of comfort in the name of a new adventure (or a beer in Amsterdam). Armed with a backpack and a good pair of shoes (or sometimes fashionable boots, because, you know...France), I have easily earned my 10,000 steps before lunchtime.
Today, it took me an easy drive to Concord, a bus, a taxi (what?! Never…), and a well placed IMAX movie to get me through a day in Boston with Sterling.
In the two years since my first surgery, life has looked decidedly different, especially when it comes to travel. It is not to say that I have been house-bound, but I have haven’t gone more than 90 minutes away from home on my own. In the beginning, I physically couldn’t drive, so much of that task fell to Jessie. Now, with fatigue a very real part of my world, driving wears me out. Flying, which I used to do so cavalierly, has become risky for me because there is a chance my body isn’t going to be able to handle pressure changes with all of the extra fluid my body holds on to thanks to lymphedema. I can wear a compression sleeve on my arm, but my back and chest, not so much.
The biggest change is my lack of travel autonomy. While I am capable to getting from point A to point B, there isn’t a lot of point of doing so if I’m too tired to function once I’m there. When we have gone anyplace with the kids, it has been a tag team approach, going so far as to take my parents with us to Florida last year because there was no way I would have been able to keep up (plus, they deserved it).
As I’ve been learning to navigate this new world, I have had to make some very real changes to the way I do life, and travel has certainly been one of those shifts. I have come to realize that my energy is unfortunately finite. I have to be very strategic about how I plan my time, how long it will take me to get somewhere and do something, if there will be a place for me to stop and rest if I get stuck in a fatigue cycle. I know if I push, it will take me a day or more to recover.
So as I was thinking of what I was going to do with Sterling on a rainy day in April during his school break, which happens to not be the same break week as Jessie, Willow, and AJ, I had to be incredibly methodical in my thinking. He wanted to go to a madhouse full of giant bouncy castles. It’s loud, smelly, 2 hours away one way, and without his siblings, I would be co-jumper #1. Thanks, kiddo, but no way in hell were we both surviving that adventure.
I thought of taking him to the little children’s museum he likes in North Conway, an hour away, but the bang for the drive just didn’t seem worth it. I knew I would come back exhausted and there was a strong likelihood that he wouldn’t take a nap.
And then it dawned on me: If I could handle 30 more minutes driving, I could get us to Concord. And if I could get us to Concord, the bus could get us to Boston. And Boston, well… once I got there, I was pretty sure I could find a place to sit down if I really needed.
My early riser was up at 6:00am yelling a detailed narrative of his morning ablutions from the bathroom while asking a full slate of questions about dragons and wondering if I would like to pretend to be characters from Moana with him.
Barely functional and wondering which non-human entity I had been assigned, I asked him, “Hey Bud, would you like to go to Boston today?”
“Yes!” (Did I note he LOVES Boston?)
“What would you like to do there?”
“Pat the sting rays!!!” So the Aquarium it was.
Today was not a day where I was able to meander the streets of Beantown showing him cool architecture or exploring the nooks and crannies of the city’s many culinary wonders. From South Station, I gave in to literally door to door taxi service. Not only was the weather dreary, but I couldn’t expend the energy walking the streets that I knew I would need to keep up with him in the exhibit halls. Scanning the schedule and knowing when my body typically decides to peter out, I enticed him with a mid-day IMAX movie. He has a thing for marine iguanas (“Can we have one of those for a pet?” “Not on your life, Buddy.”), so getting him to sit for 40 minutes through a 3D Galapagos Island adventure was a breeze, and also a great way for me to regain some functionality.
So Sterling had his first taxi rides today. He took three different trips to the ray and shark petting tanks, two trips to the northern tidal pool creatures, two treks to see the Pacific Octopi and anacondas, squeals and jumping at the poisonous frogs, sea dragons, jellyfish, and seahorses, a cursory cruise through the sea mammals (“Don’t you want to watch the seal show?” --hoping, hoping… “Meh…” Fish and Reptiles- 873, Mammals- 0). I let him eat a soft pretzel with mustard for lunch and he earned himself a new t-shirt by going clavicle deep into his ray-patting adventures. Those Dyson hand dryers only work so well. You can’t actually put the entire child in one.
Warm, fed, and dry, he was asleep in my lap before we got out of South Station. After a few pages of Harry Potter tonight, he told me, “That was the best day of my life!” The day was a success.
By my old travel standards, the day was barely a blink of time. I misstepped by forgetting that I’m not supposed to wear a backpack anymore thanks to my franken-armpit and uncooperative lymph fluid, and I’m paying for it tonight. I will likely have to take a couple of naps tomorrow.
If all goes well, and if I have enough energy to pick up the prescription, tomorrow I will start a trial of a medication that may help with cancer related fatigue. Maybe next April will find us venturing out to points more distant. Regardless, today truly was one of the best days of my life. I got to have a travel adventure with my boy, one that he may or may not remember 20 years from now, but I hopefully I will.
