We didn’t have to go to Boston this week. That was a wonderful thing.

Let me clarify a little. When I say, we didn’t have to go to Boston, I really mean we didn’t have to “go to Boston.” Big difference at our house.

Sheri and I used to really like Boston. It was only three-plus hours away and more like San Francisco (our favorite) than any other city on the East Coast. OK. We haven’t visited every city on the East Coast. Let’s just say we’ve visited enough to consider it… But this isn’t a travel piece, so let me return to the point.

To us, though, going to Boston no longer means the science museum, the aquarium, Fenway Park, or even “Cheers.”

“Going to Boston” means an arduous three-plus hour trip at the end of which are difficult memories, often unpleasant news (though not lately), and very, very poor-tempered drivers. I mean poor-tempered. I once got honked at while sitting in traffic for leaving too much space between myself and the car in front of me. Since we hadn’t gone anywhere in at least five minutes, I was almost compelled to leave my car and go ask the driver behind us what the point was. “Don’t do that,” Sheri said. “He could have a gun.” I don’t think she was joking.

If you’re going to Boston this summer, or just to get true horror stories about driving in Boston, talk to Sheri. She did it a lot more than I did. I was sitting safe and secure in my hospital room most of the time.

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So, anyway, most of my cancer care is, and always have been, done at the Alfond Cancer Center in Augusta (technically the Harold Alfond Center for Cancer Care), about 25 minutes from home. As I have said repeatedly, the care is wonderful. But the head guy on my oncology team is based at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute which is in … Boston.

It would be a reach to say I like going to the Alfond Center. After all, you do have to have cancer, or be with someone who does, to go there on a regular basis. But, to insert a Boston-y “Cheers” sort of reference, everybody knows your name, at least in the areas we visit on a regular basis. Also, it rarely seems crowded. They even bring in care dogs once in a while to help everyone feel better.

Dana Farber is, likewise, a terrific facility, one of the best in the country, but it is sooooo big. For much of my life, I was a city mouse. I went to New York City every chance I got and would have lived there gladly. Slowly but surely, though, I have become a country mouse. And I like it. We have our little country house on a country lake in the country. The library is open 10 hours every week and the post office closes for lunch. It’s everything we need.

We get to the Farber Institute, and we have to fight traffic and people on foot just to get in. There are people everywhere, and a tremendous number of them are sick. I’m still not supposed to be around large numbers of people, especially if they are sick, because of the way my immune system was compromised by my stem cell transplant. Granted, most of the clients aren’t the type of ill that is liable to cause an infection, but sitting amongst about 80 people waiting for a blood draw puts this immune-compromised country mouse in the middle of an awful lot of uncovered-mouth coughing and not-a-tissue-in-sight sneezing.

As we move through the halls, the memories drop by to say howdy. The apheresis machine room, the surgical area where my Hickman line was put in, the walkway to the Brigham and Womens Hospital where my stem cell transplant was actually done and on and on and on. Again, it’s much worse for Sheri because she had to find her way through the halls a lot more than I did. There wasn’t much fun to be had for either of us, and nobody knew our name.

So I didn’t have to go this time because my cancer is behaving itself, and I already have an appointment locally in a couple of days for my monthly checkup. Will we have to make the trip to Dana Farber again? Almost certainly, but not now and, we hope, not for a while. We can put that one in the win column.

Who knows. Maybe we’ll even put going to Boston back on our list of fun things to do. Hey, it could happen.

Jim Arnold is a former copy editor for the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel. To read more about his journey through cancer, visit his blog, findingthepony.blogspot.com.


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