Still Miles to Go

The past few days have been action-packed for the Hertzog-Merrill household. As I had mentioned before, we spent Saturday at the first “Monthly Dose of Hope” with other mito families. This is incredibly important to us – and our emotional health – as we spend the entire afternoon celebrating life with people who truly understand our life. While our family and friends have been incredibly supportive and understanding, but it’s a different support from those that are living our life, dealing with the hospitals and doctors and the terminal nature of the disease. These families provide a form of support that no one else can replicate. At the party, we got to meet so many wonderful families and individuals and got to visit with some of our friends – including the newest addition to our “family,” Sophie! It was a peaceful day where we didn’t once have to explain anything, everyone just knew.

Saturday afternoon, however, totally wiped me out. In order to fully recover, I slept over 15 hours on Sunday. This isn’t too out of the blue for me, but it doesn’t happen everyday, either. Socializing takes work and energy for me; sleep is really the only way to replenish my energy. We ended up staying over at the Bush/Dalton house Sunday and Monday nights so we could watch the kids early the following mornings. It turns out that I’m only good for a few hours of babysitting when I’ve had a big weekend so I headed off to snooze each afternoon while Keith (aka “the most amazing husband in the world”) took up the post of #1 sitter. He rocks. Seriously. The kids got to swim, go to the park, play Wii, and get some homework done while I took my naps.

Wednesday, I was scheduled for a round of back-to-back GI testing at Tufts Floating Children’s Hospital (you learn to accept that you’ll be seeing mostly peds docs with mito). GI (digestive tract) testing is never pleasant, but we were happy to be able to get two annoying tests out of the way at once. Unfortunately, after we finished the first round, we headed to radiology for the second round and were told promptly that we’d have to reschedule because the first round interfered with their ability to read the second. However, if we had done the tests in the opposite order, we would have been just fine. We took the opportunity to go out for a nice lunch, though, since I was NPO (fasting) for about 18 hours at that point. Keith took me for a nice leisurely meal at Myers + Chang. We still think that it’s a perfect place for my beloved little bro to work at (*hint, hint*), especially because we want free food. 😉

Wednesday got even better that evening because we set out with Stef, Ralph, Elena, Katie, and the kiddos for fireworks down at Hampton Beach. It was amazingly fun and beautiful despite minor glitches involving car keys in a locked car, meltdowns from the kids, and overheating in the arcade post-fireworks. Hopefully, we’ll get the chance to see the fireworks once more before the summer comes to an end.

Thursday was – once again – spent recovering from the previous day. This time, it was especially important because we had a “special surprise” that night from Bill and Linda to celebrate Ralph and Stefani’s 9-year anniversary. We had instructions to be at their house at 5pm (it was “time-sensitive”) and be dressed “nicely, but not too nice.” Keith and I had ideas, but we soon discovered we were so far off. We thought “Chunky’s” or “Canoby Lake Park”, but once we set the GPS for Boston, we were clueless. When the GPS said we arrived, our eyes got huge. CIRQUE DU SOLEIL!!!!! I had been telling Stef that we had never been and we always wanted to just days before. It was absolutely AMAZING! Almost as amazing as the show itself was watching the excitement on the faces of 7-year-old Will and 5-year-old Sasha. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for taking us along! It was an incredibly memorable experience. And if you’ve never been, it is so worth it.

I’ve spent the majority of the day (Friday) recovering from such an awesome week. Stay tuned for the awesomeness of next week!