Another skippable day

To the left, Florence and David, now in Lenox, MA, here shown sitting under our deck umbrella in those days long forgotten when you could sit outside at all. To the right. a photo I call "Silly Me," because I look so goofy. It has a pretty good view of a corner of my study. Both of these photos are from June. Merwin has been joyfully capturing old slides and sending a few of them to me. I will start exhibiting them here soon.

Dear friends and family,

Yesterday was another one of those lost days; the whole day from early morning to night was spent a) getting ready to go to Mt. Sinai to see Dr. M because of my toes swelling, b) traveling in by train and subway to our apartment to rest and have lunch, c) taking the Madison Avenue bus to 101st St. and getting at Mt. Sinai early for our appointment, d) waiting for Dr. M: we knew it would be a long wait because we had been double-booked—and the wait for him was an hour or more, and finally e) getting on the 5th Avenue bus right to Penn Station, arriving too late for the last rush-hour train and having to take a 7:44, and entering our house close to 9 p.m. Nothing to do by then but prepare some phone numbers for the follow up visits Dr. M. prescribed: a scan of the left leg and a neurology report on my legs. The best news is that the platelets are in the normal range, but the WBC are over 100 again. I got the leg scan this morning early and the technician told me there were no clots. Hooray for that. And tomorrow I have an appointment with the neurologist.

Dr. M is disappointed with my progress on CEP-701 because other people on the trial are doing better, but I got a new supply of pills for the next two weeks. I suspect that after all the reports are in, he'll drop me. Perhaps he'll have something else for me, or I just go from here: recover from the pelvis break and go back to "normal." Not so bad.

The best thing all day was hearing from Sylvia and having a chat with her while I was in bed. Merwin is, of course, a brick, going through all this doctoring without a murmur of complaint. I can tell this is stressing him, however.

Better news tomorrow, I am sure! The main pleasure at home is working on Shakespeare. It's amazing how much I can learn just by going over a text closely, line by line. The fun is deciding how to convey something that is inherently rich and wonderful to students—without being pedantic.

I'd love to hear from you all!
Love,
Bernice