A small adventure

My disease has progressed quite a bit since 3 months ago. A lot of the circumstances has changed. But what hasn’t changed so much is my desire to go out and about while I’m still healthy. Just like what I wrote in Drop everything and travel. One thing that is most likely out of the question for me now is going on a faraway trip, like to Japan to eat sushi with Jiro. It is definitely a romantic idea. And someone said to me, ‘if the prognosis is so bleak, why not go have an epic end-of-life and burn out.’ For me, I’d like to hold on to a few percentage points of my treatment succeeding.

Since the discovery of my pneumonia and the outlook of my leukemia has become worse, the hospital has started to relax some of their hygiene restrictions and cater to some of the things I want to do. They understand that if the leukemia doesn’t improve, there’s a good chance that I will need to continue receiving my treatment indefinitely in the hospital. So the doctors allowed me to eat takeout food, go on a wheelchair around the hospital, and even take day trips outside of the hospital. Whatever that can make me feel not trapped within the four walls of my hospital room all day, and make feel however more alive.

So, today, I ventured out of the hospital and went to the Arnold Arboretum park. There was a lot of preparation in place: to get a foldable wheelchair that fits in Diane’s car, an oxygen tank, water, throw-up bags, etc. We couldn’t just drive there and take a stroll around the park, which would’ve been probably nicer, especially for the wheelchair-carrier (Diane), but also for the person sitting in the wheelchair (me), because it was rocky as hell. But it was surely nice to be out to breath in fresh air, see trees and hills that I haven’t seen in a while.

And as I have promised in Drop everything and travel, whatever we decide to do, we’ll post pictures. So here are some.