Our Cat has Nine Lives
Update needed, as Caitlin would say. Three years ago today, on the 9-month anniversary of her lung transplant, during a walk around Walden Pond, I decided to start writing what I called “the Caitlin book.” I wasn’t even sure what kind of book it would be, or if I could manage to write it, but […]
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Over the course of writing my book these past two years, I asked the question that a lot of grieving people ask: “Does consciousness survive death?” It’s a question with no definitive answers, but what has really stood out to me is just how much research has been done by people of science. One book that […]
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When I was pregnant and my baby was due mid-summer, I wanted a July baby. July seemed to be a vibrant month: warm, lush, expectant! August seemed so enervating–I associated it with long, bored days of childhood, when all I seemed to do was lie about on stiff, dried-out grass, listening to the drone of […]
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1. The New York Times just published an article about experimental phage therapy and Mallory Smith’s SALT IN MY SOUL. It is bittersweet, indeed, to know that phage therapy, administered early enough, might have done so much to prevent Mallory and Caitlin and and others from even needing transplants, but other people are already benefiting from […]
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Today, Nick and I are on our way to………Pittsburgh. Yes. But first, yesterday. Yesterday, Jess, Nick and I had grandstand viewing passes at the Boston Marathon Finish Line. We cheered the finishers along with a mother and her two adult daughters–BAA volunteers–who fell in love with Jess. When Jess said she wanted to try to […]
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I haven’t seen the new movie, “Five Feet Apart,” about two teenagers with CF, but I hear that it “gets it right” and I’m excited about that. A while ago, I’d said I would start posting more of Caitlin’s own words here. I got too busy writing my book to focus on it, but with […]
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Update needed, as Caitlin used to say. ♥ Story 1, JESS: Nick and I are on St. John. The night before we left, we had dinner with the incredible Jess in Boston. She had been cleared by her oncology team to go to Kenya for two weeks. Once in Nanyuki, she was able to finally lay […]
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Well, this is a tough day, no question, but I have to mark it with a post. Last week, I finally made time to visit the medical museum run by Mass General Hospital. I wanted to get a close-up view of the first heart-lung machine, which I’d been seeing through the window whenever I passed […]
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That summer–2014–Caitlin was newly listed for transplant and had settled in to wait. She couldn’t leave Boston because she had only a four-hour window if “the call” came. Four hours to get herself to Pittsburgh. So there were no more trips to Andy’s place on the Maine coast. No more Vineyard. Sometimes we went home […]
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A few months ago, Nick ran across a call for artists for an annual juried outdoor art exhibition at a nature preserve in Southborough, MA. ART ON THE TRAILS opened last week. A Message from Nick These past months, I smiled outwardly whenever family and friends approached or contacted me–-I’m a lucky guy. Inwardly, […]
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