FAMILY!

May we just say what a wonderful family we have? 

We so much appreciate the support you give us, and the support you give to each other.

You are our best friends.

And our cheerleaders!!!

We love you to bits!!!!

Monday

Well, Kim awakened this morning at 6 a.m. smelling smoke.  Wait...this is a smoke-free hotel.  Looking out the window, she saw cigarette smoke curling up from the balcony right in front of our door.  So she called the front desk, and who answered, but a lady with a smoker's voice.  Very condescendingly, Kim was told that people were allowed to smoke out on the balcony.  Smoker-voice offered to let us move to a new room for the last night.  Pack up everything, move to another room with unknown neighbors for our last night just so that some dude can have his smoke outside OUR door at 6 in the a.m.???  I don't think so.  Smoker-voice offered to ask the people to smoke somewhere else.  Okay.  Nice start to the day, huh?  But the rest was all good.

Since we didn't swim yesterday and the weather was beautiful and even warm enough, of course, today the weather was cold and cloudy---We know, we know...at least we didn't have snow.  So sorry that you did, though.  Hopefully it has melted by now.

Great clinic today. We're learning some good things and are feeling more empowered and knowledgeable to be able to feel better, and can see now how it will all work together. 

It's been interesting to see how 13 strangers can be so open with each other in just a few days.  One of the younger guys has been so nice.  He came up to us the first day and told us that he had lived in Midvale, UT for a few years. he asked us today if we're LDS and we said "Yes, we are!"  He'd had an LDS girlfriend that broke up with him because of this pelvic pain thing and he wondered if there was some religious taboo associated with something like this clinic or that type of pain, or something.  We assured him otherwise!  Kim asked about his family and found out they are far away in another state and he lives in San Diego.  We offered our place for him to hang out next time he comes to Salt Lake (he said that he really likes visiting SLC), and his face just lit up--he seemed really pleased by the offer! 

We had a good break for lunch and went to the downtown shop area and found a little pizza place and had a good lunch.  For dinner, we found a little hamburger dive along the road back to our hotel after finding most of the shops and even restaurants downtown were closed! 

So we went in, sat at the counter and ordered cheeseburgers and strawberry malts to-go.

While driving around, we found a delightful neighborhood, and saw just the house for Celeste:

This is our last night in Santa Rosa. We have one more day of the clinic, then we leave tomorrow night for Reno.  Not sure if we'll be able to post again before we get all the way home on Wednesday.  We did make reservations at another hotel--The Atlantis.  Hopefully there won't be any room from the Twilight Zone there waiting for us! 

Sunday, 6th day of being gone

Two days of sunshine here made a difference in the warmth of the day.  It was really nice today.  Lots of people here were enjoying the pool--we walked around during breaks and the sun felt really good.  This is an actual picture of the hotel pool area--but not from today.  The sky was bluer.

The focus at the clinic today was mostly physical therapy.  We all had private appointments as usual, but a man joined us that was a patient in the program about 6 years ago and came to tell his story and share his recovery journey.  He is now a part of the staff and comes from Tennessee every month to do this.  It was really helpful to everyone to hear about his experiences and to be able to ask questions and have a better idea of what to expect.  Then he demonstrated his own therapy regimen. 
The head physical therapist is Tim Sawyer, who is the world's foremost expert in this kind of therapy.  He has been so wonderful to work with and we feel so grateful to be able to have this opportunity to learn from the best.  His wife Sara is also a physical therapist and has worked with each of us on some things also.  Sara called Kim out privately after a group session and said that she'd learned that Kim had been dealing with neck problems, then proceeded to spend some time showing her some things to help with that and explained why the stretching exercises that she's been doing weren't enough to really help.  Tim and Sara are so kind, knowledgeable and compassionate.
One of our favorite things about being here has been getting to know the people who share such similar stories in trying to live life with this condition.  Eric has had to work a little at talking to people, but that has become something he really looks forward to.   We realize how blessed we've been that Eric has been mostly able to work and that he's doing as well as he is.   Everyone has been so amazed that we have 6 children.  They seem to have a hard time wrapping their heads around that number!  We just wish we could wrap our arms around you all. 

Day ???5??

Who would have thought that doing guided relaxation therapy would be so exhausting?  We had 4 sessions of that, plus another hour of physical therapy and more information, and more homework tonight.  Kim is learning that the relaxation therapy will help with her neck tension--if she can ever learn how to do it without losing focus and having her mind whirl through everything unrelated.  Eric is good at it--so good that he started snoring and Kim had to gently (sort-of) pinch him awake before Dr. Wise did. 

We found a little bagel shop for lunch that was about 1/2 mile walk away, so we got our walk in.  We were too tired for searching for a restaurant for dinner, so we ordered in.  Eric had a good butternut squash ravioli with asparagus, and Kim had pasta prima vera, then we shared some fruit.
We miss everyone so much.  We miss long talks with each of you and hugging the grandbabies. 
Tomorrow is Sunday, and we won't even have time to go to church---we hope everyone will enjoy it for us.

Day 4

So---The Clinic:  We had to check in between 11 and 11:30, so there was no time for going anywhere else this morning.  We wondered as we were driving here if we'd be sitting on chairs the whole time, or what...and if chairs, how would all of the people with sore bottoms "stand it?"  Well, they had futon mats and pillows for everyone to sit or lay or move around on as they'd like.  They invited the spouses or parents to join in several times---so the question of, if there'd be room for Mom was answered.  But they said that most of the times, spouses don't keep coming by about Sunday.  We'll see if Mom can break that tradition!
Dr. Wise, the psychologist who helped develop the protocol and had dealt with chronic pelvic pain for 25 years himself (and is now pain-free) explained some of what to expect while we're here and said that this is about the 83rd clinic they've done.  Let's see...1 a month, that's 12 per year...anyway...  Then he had everyone briefly tell their name, where they were from, where they were staying while here and what they had for breakfast (aren't those "get-to-know-you" things your favorites?)  Everyone is staying at this hotel, most everyone had a healthy breakfast and they are from all over!  There are 13 people here for the clinic and 6 of them brought wives, or parents in a couple of cases.  4 people are from California, 2 of us are from Utah (the other Utahn is from St. George), then Washington, Tennessee, New York, Florida, Ohio and North Carolina.
We found that we had such compassion for each of the others as we looked around at their faces and listened as they asked questions or shared information.  One man summed feelings up for everybody when he asked emphatically, "Why don't the doctors out there know about this stuff?"  All of the people there had been through wrong diagnoses, multiple doctors, surgeries, and much frustration like we have.  4 of the 13 are women, one of whom had thrown her back out and was in excruciating pain from that--she had both parents here with her.  We felt so bad for her.  One of the men is older than Dad, a few are close to his age, and the rest look like they are around the ages of our daughters.  (No, Mom isn't going to say or do any matchmaking or even anything like unto it!!)  Dad seems to have dealt with this for the longest time of all of those here.
Most of the time was spent learning relaxation techniques, then we had a 2-hour physical therapy appointment.  We all meet in a conference room in one of the hotel buildings and the 2 physical therapy people each use just one of the regular hotel rooms like ours. One has the bed removed so that the P.T. table fits.  They used to do these clinics at Stanford Medical Center, but they found that the atmosphere there wasn't conducive to relaxation, especially after all most of these people have already gone through.  So they feel that the hotel/resort atmosphere works better.  All of the clinic people are extremely nice and very caring.  We feel really good and hopeful about learning this treatment, but we know that it will take time to accomplish what we want.  Dad had lots of homework tonight--reading and listening to tapes.
We'd had breakfast around 10, but no lunch, so we were really hungry when we were done at 6:30.  Steak sounded great, so we went to Cattlemen's Steakhouse about 1/2 mile away and enjoyed steak and veggies en brouchette (teryaki shish-ka-bob), salad, crusty sour-dough bread, and brought a piece of chocolate cake to share back with us for dessert.  It was heavenly after 2 nights of stale IHOP food.  By-the-by...we canceled the Reno hotel from the Twilight Zone.  Any ideas for a replacement?
It's a good thing we didn't try to make too many other plans for while we were doing the clinic because we won't have time or energy for anything beyond just this.  They actually asked us at the start of the session to make this a recuperative, not a recreational visit. 
We are so grateful for wonderful family who are so supportive of all we do.  We pray for all of you and miss you all!!!

Day 3

A shot of Mom from the balcony of our hotel room.

And a shot inside our room!






Today, after a leisurely morning, we headed out to see some sights. We had thought we'd go to Muir Woods today, but couldn't find it on maps or anything, but we did find Armstrong Redwoods State Park not too far from here, so off we went.



The little town just next to Santa Rosa on the highway was Sebastopol (for reals). It was hippyish, artsy and quaint. We found ourselves on a street called Florence Avenue. All of the houses have at least one sculpture made by a local artist. They're made up entirely of trash--it was crazy! It was another place we found entirely by serendipity. Here's a picture:

In the next town we found a Christmas tree farm tucked in among vineyards. We traveled along the scenic highway 116 and were again awed by the over-arching trees and forests that met the road (sorry for the through-the-windshield shot):




After about a 45 minute drive from our hotel, we arrived at Armstrong Redwoods. There we talked to the forest ranger and told her we had intended to go to Muir Woods, but since we couldn't find it, decided to try out this park-- and she said "Oh, you don't want to go there...It's so crowded. Besides, we have bigger trees and no crowds." It was very beautiful and peaceful. We walked about a mile and a half or even 2 miles along spongy trails, beautiful ferns, few bugs or people and cathedral-like giant trees. We met some nice people from Pennsylvania and talked to them. That's one of the fun things about traveling...meeting people from all over and sharing conversation with them. It seems like there are really nice people everywhere we go.




From the Redwoods, we went on another 12 miles over more windy roads to the coast. It was such a transformation from secluded forest to wind-swept hills to the white-capped water that stretched out to fade and become one with the sky (except the polarizer filter on the lens cut through the haze, so the photos actually show the horizon here):



There were quaint little coastal towns, (quaint seems to be the word of the day, but it is so apt) all along the highway. Some of the houses seemed like they were hanging on to the cliffs for dear life--we saw one that must have let go, because all there was left in the spot was a cement slab and some fencing. Mom did pretty well with the roads along the cliffs, didn't have to shut her eyes once, and Dad drove nice and calmly, so she didn't have to tell him to slow down! Of course, two things really helped. The cliffs weren't too high, or too close to the road--we could still see land beyond each turn in the road and not just empty sky. And, Dad wanted to drive slowly enough to be able to view the scenery and also to stop at turn-outs to take pictures.

It was kind of awesome to be driving along on Highway 1...the place where they start numbering the roads for the whole United States!

Then, back to Santa Rosa to find some dinner...too tired, too hungry...the town's bigger than we thought, so, back to boring, not-so-great IHOP. BUT!!! We did get some good suggestions for restaurants from the waitress and from the girl at the hotel front desk. We'll definitely try them out over the next days.


Thanks for your comments and your interest...feigned or real! We love you!

Our Trip So Far--Day 2

We had a nice drive through the Sierra-Nevadas from Reno to Sonoma, California. Guess what? Mom drove through the mountains! (very well, she might add) Then Dad took over for the last 2 hours. Just outside of Sacramento we turned and drove towards Napa. The road eventually wound through hills covered with vineyards with quaint houses, and larger houses--like in the movie "The Parent Trap". Some of the vineyards were bordered with roses. You know how the farther into California we get the more we're always amazed at the profusion of flowers and greenery?



Dad's Dr. appointment was in Sonoma and we got there about 1 1/2 hours before his scheduled time, so we found a cute little bakery/cafe (Boulangerie) in the main square of the town and had lunch. You girls would have loved it! Not Daniel's kind of food, though. Dad & I thought it was the greatest! Dad had a sandwich on baguette with apricot-walnut chicken salad and I had tomato-basil soup with a crusty bun of squaw bread, yum. Then oatmeal cookie and apple turnover for desert, respectively. We ate outside at little cafe tables and watched tourists go by.

Then we walked around the square and watched artists painting and looked in some of the shops. Sharon, you could totally come here and paint to your heart's content as a prelude to Italy! It was kind of amazing that we stumbled upon the square the way we did. Had the Dr's. office been along the main highway we traveled into and out of the town by, we would have missed this charming little place! As it was, the office was tucked down a side road and voila! The town square, literally, just a short ways away.

The Dr. appointment went well--a long wait, but the Dr. spent quite a bit of time with us and was very kind. Dad passed the screening and got the necessary paperwork to start the clinic.

Our hotel here in Santa Rosa is different. It has a large pool area in the middle outside, then the rooms run in buildings radiating out from the pool like spokes without the outer wheel. The room is nice and comfortable. It's funny because when we walked in, we couldn't find the fridge. I had planned on there being one so we wouldn't have to go find breakfast every day. We finally found it, tucked away in the wall of the closet! So we have to push the clothes aside to open the fridge--crazy. The bed is much more comfortable than the one in Reno...

Dinner was at IHOP next door, then a walk to the grocery store for milk and such. The bubble bath beads Mom brought have been great to make a relaxing evening for her!

Thanks for all of your support, love, encouragement and good job taking care of each other. We love you all!