Hello! Greetings from Phalaborwa, South Africa. We are on the second leg of our family vacation/visit to relatives/service-mission trip. We had an excellent few days in and around London. Last night, we boarded a Virgin Atlantic flight for Johannesburg. My husband, John, was born in Johannesburg and grew up in Cape Town, and we are visiting relatives and old haunts, among other things.
What has this to do with having cancer? Not very much, I am happy to report! The travel-related cancer-related problems we feared for me have, so far, not materialized.
I did attract a little extra attention from the TSA when we first got on the plane in the United States. After I went through the first metal-detector machine, they sent me for further examination into the machine that gives you the invasive body scan. This was, I am sure, because I have an implant called a "tissue expander" on the right side, where I had my mastectomy. It has a metal valve in it, and I am sure that looks sketchy to any TSA agent reading an x-ray machine in an era when terrorists are threatening to implant explosive devices in themselves. But when they x-rayed me the second time they quickly figured out my story, and with no embarrassment or delay or hassle to me.
The other thing I was afraid of was my arm swelling up, which is called lymphedema. They took out so many lymph nodes under my right arm that I was told to be very careful on long flights from now own. The lack of pressure in the plane cabin can cause that arm to swell up, and it's hard to ever get it back down to normal size once that happens. To prevent that, you have to drink gallons of water, avoid alcohol and avoid salty food for a couple days before you fly, and walk around and stretch a lot while you are on the plane. I also let John carry my backpack, which is heavy. And I wore a compression sleeve and glove. The sleeve wasn't too bad, but the glove had a seam which pressed into my skin next to my thumb and was very unconfortable. It also made my fingers and thumb turn purple, after 11 hours or so. But my arm didn't swell up! And nobody reacted to it at all except the flight attendant, who seemed to know what it was and was very pleasant and brought me extra glasses of water. All in all, the trip went fine.
The trip from London to Johannesburg was about 11 hours long. I was trying not to drink, which may have been a mistake since I hate flying and found it very had to sleep. I probably should have just had a drink and that would have helped. Fortunately, the plane was nearly empty. This was good because Julia was quite sick with some sort of flu, including a fever and chills, and we were able to get her four adjacent seats so she could lie down and sleep. She was a good bit better today.
Today we rented a Volkswagen van and drove about five hours, from Johannesburg to Phalaborwa. This is a mining town just outside Kruger National Park. We are in a rental cottage in town, but even so, we were told to keep doors and windows closed or the vervet monkeys and baboons would come in and eat our cookies.
The cottage is inside Sefapane Lodge, which is a nice hotel with restaurant in an African-style compound. We ate dinner outside next to a big fire. I had a crocodile kebab. Really, I did. It tasted like some sort of very firm fish and was delicious. I probably was drinking the wrong wine; what pairs with crocodile? Not the cabernet I was drinking? Oh, well. There was also an outdoor bar that could have been quite romantic except for two things: 1) my three children; and 2) the UEFA Euro Cup 2012 soccer tournament, which attracted some old-school South African brandy-and-coke guys to the bar to watch soccer on the big-screen TV. Oh well, another time.
It is winter here, which, in this part of the country, means it gets dark around 6pm and is cold and clear. The low is supposed to be 3 or 4 degrees Celsius tonight, or about 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The stars tonight are crazy. I saw a shooting star. I showed the kids the Milky Way. In many ways, it feels like Montana.
Tomorrow, we are off to Kruger Park, where we plan to stay overnight in a bird blind. Wish us luck! Hope they have warm blankets!
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