Good Weekend

08 Aug Good Weekend

The long, but good, weekend, started too early for my taste on Friday morning when the alarm went off at 5:00 am. Colleen, Jonathan and I headed out at 6:30 for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

I went through my first test with them in this gastrointestinal journey I’ve been on for the last 7 months. The Gastric Emptying Study started at 9:00 am with a very bland and literally radioactive scrambled egg white sandwich.

From there, I laid on a table for an hour while the nuclear scanner sat above my stomach taking continual images of the passage of the sandwich. Then, I had a one hour break and had to come back for a one minute image. Then I had a two hour break and had to return for a final one minute image.

I spent the breaks sitting at the Beverly center Mall across from the Medical Center, reading a good novel. While I was doing my thing there, Colleen and Jonathan had breakfast at Patrick’s Roadhouse in Santa Monica and hung out at the Santa Monica Pier and 3rd Street Promenade.

I have an appointment with the Cedars doctor on Thursday, August 19 at 11:30 am to hear the results of the test and some blood work they drew a couple weeks ago.

When I was done at around 2:00 pm, they picked me up and we made our way to Temecula. Spent the night with friends, who traveled with us to Camp Pendleton for Josh’s graduation from the Marines Devil Pups Boot Camp. It really is quite an honor for young people ages 14-17 to complete the rigorous 10 day program, and they join a pretty prestigious list of leaders who have done so in its 50+ years of history.

Here are some pics from the event:

I was really glad to be able to have my Mom & Dad attend, along with my sister, April and her husband, Tom. Mom & Dad are leaving for home on Wednesday after their 7 week visit.

After the ceremony, the boys and I headed back to Temecula with our friends and Colleen headed home with April to help a friend at her daughter’s wedding that evening.

On the way back to Temecula, Josh wanted to stop at In & Out. We obliged, though I am still not eating anything fast food these days.

We went back to Temecula mostly because Josh has badly wanted to go airsofting at a field called Jericho. They used to have a field in Simi Valley, but it closed several months ago. They opened one in Lake Elsinore, just north of Temecula. So we thought this would be the perfect time to get him there.

However, when we got up to get ready to leave early this morning to get him and one of his friends from here over to Jericho, he announced they weren’t going!! Apparently, he was missing a critical (at least to him) piece of equipment. The lack of it was going to make it too much of a bummer of an airsofting day! He didn’t seem too disappointed, making me wonder if he was really just too exhausted from Boot Camp to go airsofting for the day.

Stomach-wise, the weekend hasn’t been too bad. Nausea was pretty prominent on Friday and slightly less on Saturday. Today was the best day of the weekend. Nausea was lower and cramping slightly higher. I wish there was a way to forecast this, kinda like the weather, ya know?

We’ll head back home tomorrow (Monday) around mid-day, and plan on spending the next couple evenings with my parents before they head home on Wednesday.

Hope your weekend was restful!