The Curtis Clan - Fall 2022
Fall Equinox to Summer Solstice
Bethany began fall on our actual anniversary with a girls weekend with Lisa Liss and Laura Bontty. This is the transformed Women's Wellness Weekend (With Wine) and was the only weekend that worked for everyone. The location isn"t so important as just getting away and having relaxed time together without their families. This time they rented a vacation home in small town, central Illinois, Marisa. No drama, no adventure, no challenges. Exactly what they were looking for.
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Lisa and Bethany outside the Brick House
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Car ride to Walgreen's Pharmacy Drive Thru where they give dogs treats
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Fall Camping Trip
The first weekend in October is our annual fall camping trip. Bethany took a pass in going having progressing levels of disabling, swelling and pain in the morning, primarily in her hands beginning in June but as the summer progressed .the pain spread to other joints (elbows, knees, shoulders, ankles, toes). By September, she was prone to dropping things with using her "lobster hands" to hold on or pick anything up. It wouldn"t be formally diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis for a month, though we were strongly suspecting this by this point. Never a huge fan of sleeping on the ground in the cold, it would have been even more uncomfortable now.
On Thursday, October 6, Randy loaded up the Sebring convertible and drove to Columbia, MO to meet up with Anthony for their friend group"s annual grape picking of a couple hours in the afternoon, followed by d destemming them in the evening while enjoying Norton wines from past seasons. It was his third time at the event and he loves the fun harvest tradition (and glad he isn"t doing for more than an hour or two a year).
| Picking grapes in Columbia |
Processing the Nortons |
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We woke up at 5 am to hit the road out of Columbia in the dark and arrive at Pulltite before 9 am. The sunrise over Vichy, MO along highway was stunningly but the quickly snapped picture didn't do justice to the daily beauty. It was great to be with the gang of regulars at the float trip as Anthony and I shared a canoe from Akers Ferry to Pulltite. We followed Bill Azman"s lead and paid for a two-day rental of $82, far less than the daily rate as we went from Pulltite to Round Springs the next day. Way too much shrimp/onion/butter gumbo/jambalaya for dinner was a treat. Neighbor John Liss lost his cell phone when his kayak tipped over when was out of the dry bag on the Saturday, float from Pulltite to Big Springs. Fortunately his photos were backed up in The Cloud except the ones he just took.
| Friday Pulltite fire circle |
John and Charlie enjoy the Friday fire |
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| I owe it all to little choclate doughnuts |
An impromptu stop on the Current |
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| Current River Jumping Rock |
John, Anthony and Randy |
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After a jumpstart on Sunday morning, driving the Sebring with the top down, listening to a local Bluegrass show for 50 miles on the two-lane highways between Eminence and St. James was a huge treat. This is why we got the convertible.
| The Burks and Charlie enjoy the morning fire |
Goodbye till next year |
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Monday was Indigenous Peoples / Discover"s Day and Randy was off for the Federal Holiday. He convinced Bethany to take the afternoon off to visit a couple wineries on Hwy 94 to Augusta on such a lovely fall day. We lingered at Nobilis Winery for a while after a short visit to the better known Mount Pleasant; way to kitschy and overpriced, as evidenced by the Ten Buck Sparkling Wine that came out in the 1990s selling for $30 now.`
| Bethany at Nobilis winery |
The Nortons are ready for picking |
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3 Generations New England Road Trip
As before, Jane had a week break between A and B terms (quarters) in mid-October. This year Bethany planned on visiting and enjoying New England in the fall with her. Sharing the idea with the other women in her family and it became a 3 generations road trip of Lonsway, Sage and Curtis Women as her sister, mom and Aunt joined in renting a house on Cape Cod (Sandwich) for a few days. On Monday the 17th, the Sage Sisters, Bethany and Rosemary, left St. Louis in the Traverse heading east on I-70. Bethany introduced Rosemary to the joys of Skyline chili 5 way outside of Dayton at our favorite Interstate lunch stop. They reached Pittsburgh that night, picking up the Lonsway sisters: Katie, who lives there and Amy, who had flown up from Florida. From there, the next stop was Worcester, MA to pick up Jane and head to the Cape. Their rental wasn"t fancy but that really wasn"t the point. All had a great time though it would be hard to beat the mark of Amy and Katie staying up to 4 am the first night in their shared bedroom.
| Sklyine convert |
Cape Cod beach. |
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The first night, they got in and settled too late to enjoy eating out as the restaurants weren"t open late in the post-COVID off-season. Fortunately Jane had a bag of bagels for breakfast from her favorite bagelry but perhaps next time a strategic reserve of spaghetti and sauce in the car or similar would be a good idea.
| Lonsway Sisters |
Sage Sisters on the beach |
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| Vacation Rental Home |
Dinner Out |
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| Jane and Bethany say Essayons! |
Outside the rental |
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3 Generations Lonsway/Sage/Curtis Women
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Witchita Road Trip
While Bethany was on the Cape on the 3 Generations Lonsway/Sage/Curtis Women"s Weekend, Randy took off Friday to Road Trip to see Cate in Wichita and enjoy the beautiful warm fall weather in the convertible. As he drove southwest along I-44 past Stanton and St. Robert, Missouri it occurred to him "What If the Holy Land had the same ad agency as Meramec Caverns or Uranus?" You could see old barns and billboards urging you to: See Jesus"s Hide Out, Zip line the 12 Stations of the Cross., Jesus" Fudge Factory and Museum (Gun Range and Gun rentals; Tattoos). The true American spirit lives on along Historic Route 66.
Roughly following the old Frisco route to Wichita, at Carthage he left the speed of the Interstate for 2 lanes and moments of scenery. And it was truly moments of scenery as the landscape quickly opened up to the wide plains prairies that were no longer vibrant and verdant as they had been in June"s drive out. Outside Fredonia, he succumbed to sunburn and heat (it was nearly 90 degress outside) and put up the top.
| The worst tourist trap puns on Route 66 comes out of Uranus |
Paneer Tikka Masala (not at the Shocker Hall Cafeteria) |
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Once at Shocker Hall at Wichita State University, he picked up Cate, eating that at Passage to India, which did not fail to please us greatly again. By the time we got to the scenic Arkansas River there wasn"t much sunlight and exploring in unfamiliar urban environment, did not seem like a great idea. So we hung out in the hotel until Dad began fading, while the freshman had hours of energy left went back to the dorm. Reconnecting late Saturday morning, Dad transferred his life collection of posters on her gathered from the 1970s through the 1990s. We went through sorting the trash from the treasures from the maybe somebody else wants this. She was happy to get maybe 25% of them and Dad took a handful back home for the basement. We grabbed some lunch at a St. Louis BreadCo before heading down to the rivers. Wichita has nice park and museum center at the confluence of the Arkansas and Little Arkansas River to walk the river front trails and see the Chief of the Plains sculpture. We rented a scooter and were proud we didn"t hurt ourselves but neither of us was comfortable enough with it. We found a cool coffee shop afterwards, later pizza and ice cream sandwiches for dinner. As their circadian rhythms remained about 5 hours out of sync, Cate went back to the dorm around 10 and they didn't try to reconnect on Sunday for breakfast as Dad left before dawn driving the nearly empty I-35 in the Flint Hills of Kansas
| Witchita - Meeting of the Waters |
Heading home at dawn |
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On the Monday, after our October Road Trips, Bethany got the expected news she had "seropositive rheumatoid arthritis" (aka serve or crippling RA in the vernacular). This followed numerous doctor appointments and a multitude of testing: x-rays, ultrasounds, a lots of bloodwork and finally ultra sounds with STL Rheumatology in Webster. Not ideal but not the worst thing it could have been given her symptoms. RA is an autoimmune disease in which my immune system mistakenly interprets joint tissue as an invader and attacks it. The good news is that this was caught relatively early on, so there is minimal joint erosion. There is no cure for RA and she will be treating it for the rest of her life but there have been tremendous strides in medications in the last couple 2 decades. A week or two before the formal diagnosis, her doctor temporarily placed her on a low-dose steroid, prednisone, which reenabled her to function almost normally. Following the diagnosis, they prescribed the standard initial RA treatment of Methotrexate, with later plans to tinker with biologic treatments which will take some time to get the balance right for her.`
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Walgreens Pharmacy Drive Thru car ride
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Concurrently she was coordinating with the MO Bap Breast Healthcare Center and Metro Imaging for radiologists to review her ultrasound scans from before the road trips as they had observed "calcium deposits" on her annual mammogram, leading to scheduling a biopsy of the mass in her left breast on 3 November.
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Fall outside ou window
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The end of October brought evenings around the fire pit with friends: the Lisses on Saturday the 29th and with Britt on a beautiful Halloween evening passing out candy to the Trick or Treaters and listening to their joke. It was nice to see the numbers return to pre-COVID levels.
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Worst Bowl of Trick or Treats Ever
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The Big C
On Monday, 7 November, the news came that Bethany had BREAST CANCER via the nurse navigator with the MO Bap Breast Cancer Center. Specifically the diagnosis was: Invasive Ductal Breast Cancer that was:
likely Stage 1;
Intermediate Grade;
Hormone (estrogen/progesterone)-Receptor positive; and
HER2 positive (later tests would show)
The GOOD NEWS is that the five-year survival rate for this is 99%, which allowed us to actually hear the rest of what the nurse explained about what this meant:
Intermediate, Invasive Ductal Breast Cancer: this is the most common form of breast cancer, where the cancer starts in the milk ducts but has popped out of the ducts and spread into surrounding breast tissue.
Stage 1: Based on the lower bound of the estimated size (1.8-3.0 cm) and quantity (1 mass), it is categorized as "Stage 1" (single mass under 2.0 cm);
Intermediate: refers to how "abnormal" the cancer cells look under a microscope (more abnormal than low-grade, but less abnormal than high-grade cancer cells).
Hormone(estrogen/progesterone) receptor-positive cancer: means that the little "fingers" on the ends of the cell like to eat these hormones, promoting growth. As there are hormone blocking medications that can be taken to reduce likelihood of reoccurrence, this isn"t considered a bad thing
HER2 positive: refers to a genetic mutation that affects ~15% of breast cancer patients that acts as an accelerator for cell growth and reproduction. This was not preferred and it triggered chemotherapy to reduce reoccurrence risk.
Within an hour of that first call, Bethany had 3 oncologist appointments with the MoBap Cancer Center team the next week (there was an ongoing cocooning embrace of care from the Cancer Center team every step of the way):
breast cancer surgeon Dr. Paul Yazdi, one of the top in St. Louis
medical oncologist (Dr. Jason Li)
radiation oncologist (Dr. Vincent Joe)
The "team" met before her first appointment to review and discuss her case and they were all in agreement as to the assessment and proposed course of treatment.
Step 1 Lumpectomy surgery and sentinel node removal (removing 1-3 of the closest lymph nodes to look for early cancer cells Tuesday, December 13 assuming the blood tests for a full panel of known genetic markers for breast cancer, going beyond BRCA1 + BRCA2 were negative. If anything indicated a likelihood of recurrence, Bethany was going to opt for full mastectomy (both of Bethany's grandmothers had breast cancer, so she remained vigilant about self-checks and annual mammograms, she had long ago come to terms she wouldn"t let her breasts kill her if she could help it. As it turns out, there were no identified genetic predisposition for breast cancer)
Step 2 Chemo Therapy (Taxol) beginning about 4 weeks after surgery and lasting for 12 weeks in combination with antibody meds (Herceptin) for the HER2 for one year
Step 3 Radiation a few weeks after chemo, the plan is 20 radiation treatments (once a day / 5 days a week / for 4 weeks),
We would wait a few weeks to tell anyone, as Bethany wanted to wait and tell her folks in person AFTER Thanksgiving, so that the news didn't hang over the family gathering like a dark cloud. We decided to wait until after the semester was over to tell the girls, as we didn't want to distract them from their studies, and it wasn"t like they would be able to do anything about it anyway, so best to wait we decided.
On the day of her cancer diagnosis, her rheumatologist took her off the Methotrexate (MXT) so that it was out of her system before the breast surgery. Remember the RA? It became the sprinkles on the bad news cupcake of the fall.
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Umm...shes in my spot
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NovemberWMW 2022 - Viva Las Vegas
So what did Randy do after Bethany"s Breast Cancer Diagnosis? He left for a long weekend in Vegas with his buddies. That sounds horribly crass but the fraternity brothers reunion trip (a.k.a., Wild Man Weekend) to Vegas over Veteran"s Day had been planned multiple times and canceled because of COVID. This time much of it was already paid for and the trip occurred between the initial phone call and the meeting with the oncologists. So Bethany took Randy and Anthony to the airport for their 10 pm flight on Frontier, where the round trip seats were ~$100 but taking a bag cost that much too.
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Leaving for Vegas
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So what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas? Not really, where nobody in your group gambled, a third weren"t drinking and there was no nakedness beyond overweight belly flashing by middle age men (no names). What did they do? The usual Vegas stuff (nerd boy edition): Pinball Hall of Fame; National Atomic Testing Museum; Valley of Fire State Park with the Instagram famous Fire Wave and a ridiculous number of petroglyphs in the canyon; Comedy Cellar at the Rio, Death Valley National Park and the $40 dinner buffet at the Palms. Job related Security Clearances have a throttling affect on the Wild, although arguably those with the highest Security Clearances were the most WILD (they drank alcohol).
| Pinball Wizards |
Randy and his pal Davey Crockett (because the World needed an Infantry delivered nuclear option) |
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| National Atomic Testing Musuem How many Fatmen do you see? |
Vegas Comedy Celler at the Rio |
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| Waving from the Fire Wave |
Valley of Fire Petroglyphs |
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| Death Valley badlands |
An all time low...even for Randy... |
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In mid-November, we celebrated Lucy Shaw"s 7th Birthday Bethany and Randy were the sole Sage family representatives with the Shaw clan. Afterwards, we went for a WGPL program with retired local newscaster and storyteller Julius Hunter pitching his latest book on St. Louis factoids winning a free copy as the door prize which he autographed afterwards (along with a doodle from the artist.
| Aunt B and Lucy sharing secrets |
Julius Hunter Book Signing |
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Pepper strikes a pose
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Thanksgiving 2022
Cate came home Tuesday evening and Jane on Wednesday. The family enjoyed the wood oven Mod Pizza which has quickly became a family favorite replacing the similar Blaze with closed all their outlets in St. Louis during COVID. On Thursday, the Curti had an Air Fryer Fest for Thanksgiving Dinner - toasted raviolis; cheese curds and tatter tots (not the Charlie Brown menu but still focusing on low effort preparation).
| Welcome home Paneer Tikka Masala |
Welcome home BreadCo |
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Saying hi to the Rugers
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On Friday, Jane and Randy got up at 4:15 to go Black Friday shopping so she could get the bargain priced Apple watch she coveted at Best Buy when it opened. We were second in line and when the doors opened, it was less crowded than a normal weekend day in December. Ho-hum. We grabbed some Dunks and idled for 45 minutes before Wal-Mart opened where we got one Black Friday item just because, along with some essentials like toothpaste. Lowes and Menards followed but were similarly less crowded than a normal day. Picking up Cate at 8, we hit Kohl"s, Old Navy and Sam"s but there was little joy and no real bargains. Black Friday isn"t a thing anymore and it"s a little sad.
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Black Friday Craziness...?
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Sagegiving was at the Shaw"s again this year. It was a good time with the Townie Sage contingent. Randy LOVES Thanksgiving foods even if the female portion of the Curti do not. The girls fly back to school on Sunday, but leaving enough detritus (clothes, dirty dishes and just plan stuff) in their wake to remind us they were here and that we didn't need to be overly sad at their departure. Given the number of memes and posting on social media we are hardly unique in this feeling.
| Sagegiving at the Shaws |
And Randy in the traditional pose of gluttenous indulgences |
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On Monday, after Thanksgiving we had dinner with Bethany"s parents before they went back to Florida. She had prepared a lengthy, multiple page informational cancer email to share the news with all her family and closest friends afterwards. Many kind words and offers of support followed but perhaps the motivationally stirring came from her cousin Erin with the rally cry of "FUCK Cancer!".
DECEMBER
Thursday December first, Bethany had her first colonoscopy and it seemed to go fairly well. They removed two small polyps and a larger one, apparently pre-cancerous but "nothing to worry about it as it was probably nothing. They send them all off to pathology as abundance of caution." or words to that effect. Besides, would God/ Fate shit on her again?
That Sunday, we went to the Harry Connick concert at the Kiel Opera House finding some great street parking a few blocks away. His introduction of his 7 man band with many local STL talent was great but neglecting to say anything about the six person string section made up entirely of women was tone deaf. They may have all been local gig violinists but blatant, casual sexism of the introductions was supper dated and this in front of an audience roughly 2/3 women.
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Harry Connick Concert at the Kiel Opera House
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On Monday, Bethany got the news of completing a Trifecta of Serious Medical Diagnosis in Fall 2022. The large polyp was cancerous indicating she had rectal cancer. On a positive note, surgical removal had already occurred which would have been the first step. However, the terrifying question of doom would hang over us for the next week: Had the original cancer metastasized throughout her body or was it simply two separate cancers that occurred at the same time? On Friday we got the best news from the genetic tests that the breast and rectal cancers were NOT the same. Ergo it wasn"t metastasizing throughout her body, it was merely the "T&A Cancer Combo". There"s been lots of humor boarding on the crass here to prevent the diagnoses attacking our spirt. FUCK Cancer!
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Flowers from Laura Bontty
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The second week in December Randy had a few day research trip at the regional branch of the National Archives in San Francisco. He left a day early to so that he could drive down to Monterey to visit his dad. It also allowed him to visit his college roommate Jake and his family at night. Jake and he visited the trendy ugly food restaurant Suggies enjoying the best fired pickles ever, oyster pizza and a Spicy Sticky fish head because nobody normally wants to eat fish heads.
| Fish heads - Eat Them Up, YUM! |
Reading to Milo and Charlie |
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We Need a Little Christmas...
The second Saturday in December, we went out to the dinner with friends Greg and Kent followed by drinks at Narwhals near SLU because we"re not too old enjoy large, fun, fruity slushies with booze.
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At Narwhals with Kent and Greg
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Bethany"s lumpectomy and sentinel node removal) on Tuesday, December 13 went off very well. Pathology showed that the total mass size was 1.7 cm x 1.2 cm, and the margins and lymph nodes removed were clean, so clearly Stage 1. Cate flew in the next evening and we couldn"t really hide something was up so she got the big news before Jane. Her initial reaction was to laugh uncomfortably. It seemed inappropriate until she explained that she just had a conversation with a few friends where one of them spoke of a loved one"s recent hospitalization and Cate quipped that she was certain that if anything like that happened in her family, she wouldn"t find out until she got home. Well she nailed that one (and we earned her lack of confidence since that was how she heard about the RA at Thanksgiving). Telling Jane went well as it helped that Bethany had practice in telling the story and knew how to stay upbeat and positive, despite having some frightening news about a parent. Thus began 21 days of Christmas break for the entire family (17 Dec thru 2 Jan). A lot of it quietly sitting together with the fake fire on the TV with Sirius Christmas music on the sound bar.
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Tree trimming with a warm fire going
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| Tree trimming |
Topping out the tree |
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Jane and the dogs on a McDonalds run in the Sebring
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So Fall 2022 closed out with a Dark Cloud of Doom over the Curti? No! We have a positive realistic sense that things are going to turn out fine because of early detection and action preventing any of these conditions being allowed to linger and become unbeatable. While bad, all of them were identified early enough when we could take proactive action with all the advantages of modern medicine and treatments. A Zone of Positivity. The outpouring of love and well wishes from everyone made a huge difference to know if we needed anything we could rely on our family and friends to help get through it.
