Well, technically we moved to Kensington, in a rental house a block and a half from the Berkeley city limit, which is just on the other side of EBMUD Summit Reservoir at the corner of Grizzly Peak and Spruce. Kensington, we’ve discovered, is like our old area of Larkfield/Wikiup; it isn’t actually a real thing, just an unincorporated part of Contra Costa County, served by what the French would call a millefeuille of different public entities, each with their different boards and areas of responsibilities: the Kensington Police Protection and Community Services District, which provides police, parks and recreation, and (under contract) waste management services; the Kensington Fire Protection District, which provides fire protection; the East Bay Municipal Utility District, which provides water services (and, way down the line, sewer treatment services); the Stege Sanitation District, which runs the sewer collection system (before eventually handing off the nasty stuff to EBMUD); the Contra Costa County Library system, which operates the little library in Kensington; and, because that’s not enough, there’s also a Kensington Muncipal Advisory Council, appointed by Contra Costa Board of Supervisors members, whose job, I think, is to help out with land use decisions in the Kensington area. Not a model of efficiency; seems like being a city might have been cheaper but I suspect that’s water under the bridge at this point.
But I doubt most of you are reading this to gain knowledge of Kensington’s political status. What you want to know is … what’s the house like?!? When did you move?!? How do you like it so far?!? What does this mean for your future lives in Santa Rosa?!? And why the hell has it been almost two months since your last blog post?!?
The two-month delay was the result of yet another setback I had during the recovery from the Bone Marrow/Stem Cell transplant. Before Thanksgiving, I was progressing well. I took a trip back to Iowa and came back feeling good enough to start doing some more serious gym workouts again, which I did for a couple of weeks before … wham! Within a few days I started feeling like crap — fatigued, with a low-grade fever, chills, no energy, just blah-blah-blah. Which was a pisser coming right on the heals of having been feeling so good. At first I passed it off to some kind of winter bug (I’d often get those same symptoms if I caught something even before my cancer), but the symptoms never did go away, and finally one evening the fever spiked, and I was forced to go on a Sunday night to the Kaiser ER for fluids and multiple blood tests and antibiotics and flu nose swab-checking, all of which turned out negative and all of which did nothing to help me feel any better. All through Christmas was a rotten time — I never felt warm, I didn’t have any energy, and I was big time discouraged at the lack of explanation of why this was happening to me.
At the same time our living situation had us feeling displaced all over again. We were doing work on the condo in Santa Rosa that required us to be out of it for 5 weeks, which meant living in the basement of Suzie’s Dad’s house in Berkeley (Suzie’s old girlhood bedroom), which might have been OK if I’d been feeling better. When we eventually moved back to SR, there was a succession of follow-up work, people in and out all day, that made us feel unsettled and unrooted in the place. Plus the condo is just so small compared with what we were used to, we (and least I) feel crammed in there. And being so tired and unenergetic around the other condo owners (all over 55 years old by condo rules, most a long way over that) made me feel like I was coming to the end of my days prematurely. Ugh … not … happy.
But finally I was able to touch base again with my doctor at Stanford and the wonderful nurse who was in charge of my post-BMT recovery — more on that below. At about the same time, we started looking for places to rent in Berkeley in the area near Suzie’s Dad, Paul. We found a house on Grizzly Peak Boulevard (in Kensington, yes) that just felt absolutely right for us. Something about the layout, the space, the decor, the floors, was evocative of our old place on Wikiup Drive, while being different at the same time. We fell in love with it and rented it within a week. It’s in an odd area that is flat but beautifully wooded and near the entrance to Tilden and Wildcat Canyon Regional Parks, and not having the killer view you’d expect perhaps made the rent more reasonable (as these things go), rent that is in any event being paid for by our friends at State Farm until at least October. It is also a half-block from a trail where all the neighbors walk their dogs off leash, giving us ample opportunity to get our dog fix (we’re still in major dog withdrawal since Elsie died last year).
We just moved in last Friday, and I already I feel completely and utterly in place here. It’s like finally having a home again after more than a year of being nomads. It’s wonderful. Suzie says we still plan to spend time in the Santa Rosa condo, and I’m sure that’s true for her. I’ll no doubt get up there sometimes for work, and to keep in touch with my friends (and because I don’t want to be away from Suzie), but the feeling I have in this new place is like sinking into a warm, soft, cozy cushion. Wanna get in the car, endure 1.5 hours of stop-and-go traffic and then stuff yourself into a tiny little condo? Nein Danke.
Right before the move, Dr. Lowsky at Stanford came up with an idea for what might have been making me so tired and cold and low-grade-feverish. He says that in some cases there can be a late-stage toxic reaction to one of the heavy-duty chemo drugs used in the BMT (called BCNU) that usually manifests as a type of chest impairment (trouble breathing). But Dr. Lowsky recognized that it sometimes manifests as just what I’d been having … fatigue, low-grade fever, chills … without any lung involvement. He prescribed prednisone for the condition about 7 days ago, and I immediately started feeling remarkably better. Yesterday I even went out for a short 13-mile bike ride along the Bay Trail in Albany and Richmond, and seem to have no ill effects today.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this improvement continues, because right now I’m about as happy as I’ve been in a long, long time. We have a beautiful new house we’re settling into, we have a whole new city and area to explore, I’m feeling energetic again, and, in a slow but steady development, the nerve pain in my left leg caused by the original tumor that tipped off this whole course of events about a year ago is getting better and better by the day. I dare say I can see the time when the nerve might heal up and the pain is gone for good.
We can’t wait to invite you all to see us. One huge advantage of our new house is that it’s sized and situated for having a big party, inside and out. So keep your calendars open. And for our friends outside the Bay Area, it has not one but two separate suites that would be perfect for guests to stay in, where they would have their own private bedroom and bathroom. Iowans and Arizonans, you know of whom I speak!
Categories: Blogging