A Weekend in Palm Springs

What follows is a recap I wrote on my high school Listserv of a mini reunion some of us had in Palm Springs.  Around 30 of us came from various parts of the country - New York City, Florida, upstate NY, northern California - and it was truly glorious.

It started for the three of us on Thursday, April 26th.  Meri Henriques, Ed Sobel and I (or, the three GreatNeckteers as we like to call ourselves) set out from the Bay Area by car around 9:00 AM.  We had a stockpile of supplies to get us through the long voyage - sandwiches, bottled water, snacks and music on both my iPad and iPhone.  The time passed quickly - at least virtually quickly as we caught each other up on the various happenings in our lives - but not so quickly by the clock.  It was 5:30 by the time we wearily pulled up to David and Glenn's humble abode (NOT).  They had glasses of wine at the ready which I for one eagerly imbibed.  We spent a lovely evening with them, getting to know Glenn and Janice (the ExecutiveDirector of Sunnylands, the Walter Annenberg estate) and reconnecting with David, exchanging childhood horror stories and memories and lots of laughter.  We then repaired to our own humble abode (also NOT - a wonderful French Provincial 3 BR 3 ½ BA house complete with pool and jacuzzi that a friend of David's was letting us use) and got a good night's sleep.

Friday was spent lounging out by the pool and soaking in the wonderful rays of Palm Springs sunshine.  I'd been apprehensive about how the heat would affect me, but David proved to be right in that the dry heat was merely soothing and not at all harmful.

The Mini started officially with a cocktail party at David and Glenn's on Friday evening.  The most amazing thing is that we all came together as old friends - even with people we had not only not known in high school, but of whose existence we had not even been aware.   There is something about that bond of having grown up in the same town, gone to the same high school, known the same people.  We all spoke (speak) the same language, get each other's jokes, can almost finish each other's sentences.  There was very little reminiscing and a whole lot of just getting to know each other as adults and even more of just really liking each other.  As Jill Brookman said in a recent post, it was more like a family get together.  Only without the baggage.  David and Glenn set the tone by being not just gracious and generous hosts, but also by being relaxed and welcoming.  You would never have known that over 30 virtual strangers had just descended on them and invaded their amazing home.  It was with a certain reluctance that we left to go to Jake's Bistro for dinner.

There were multiple tables of 4 or 6 waiting for us at the restaurant.  My party got there late (as we did for every event - you'd think the fact that we were driving and not walking would have had the opposite result - oh well) so I don't know how people figured out who was sitting where, but it all worked out perfectly.  It was as if we had the restaurant to ourselves - there was a lot of table hopping and visiting.  And martini sampling - thanks again, Mark, it was a great kick off for me.  i have no idea whether we were a bother to the other patrons - as far as we were concerned, it was a private party just for us.

Saturday morning we all met at the Palm Springs Art Museum, in the Kaplan/Ostergaard Gallery no less.  Vinny was our docent and he had us laughing and asking questions and feeling very much a part of the gallery.  We had to cut our visit a bit short as we had to get to our next meal by a certain time - some of us went back to the museum on Sunday for a more in depth visit.  I would love to go back sometime myself - it's a jewel of a museum.  My major regret was not having gotten a photo of JOAN (a very realistic nude statue), but Rhoda graciously took a photo for me when she went back on Sunday afternoon and emailed it to me on time for the posting of my photos.  I bet some of you thought she was real!  We certainly did - it was hard not to avert our eyes out of embarrassment.  The artist's name is John deAndrea if any of you want to learn more about him and his body of work (pun intended).

Lunch was at Spencer's at the Racquet Club.  This time we did have our own room.  Again, people seemed to figure out where to sit and with whom.  I know that David and Glenn managed to sit with different classmates at every meal - they were the perfect hosts in every sense of the word.  After lunch we set off for Sunnylands.

Caren Knecht Blank was kind enough to post a Vanity Fair article on Sunnylands, so we all knew a bit about its background.  Unfortunately, we were not able to tour the house - there was a private elite group having a retreat there that weekend - but Janice arranged for us to see a film and then a slide show in the theatre before she took us on a tour of the grounds.  I took lots of photos of the marvelous Palo Verdes trees with their radiant umbrellas of sparkling yellow leaves and green trunks and I can send them to anyone who is interested.  It was magical.  We were also visited by a visiting tribe of hummingbirds, but try as I might, I was not able to get any photos of them.  Maybe someone else did and can post them.  We were also visited by a flock of Monarch butterflies, but I missed that too because I was so entranced by the hummingbirds.

We three repaired back to our house for more relaxing pool time before getting ready for dinner at LuLu's Bistro.  We didn't have a private room there, but again, it seemed like we did.  We were upstairs and had a whole area to ourselves.

Sunday was our last official event, and the weekend ended like it had begun - at David and Glenn's house, this time for brunch.  Again, it was on the back patio and there was a wonderful spread of bagels and lox (of course - that was de rigeur!), muffins, quiches, fruit, juices, etc.  We all stayed a long time, visiting again with each other, making sure to connect with any classmates we might have missed up until then.  Poor David and Glenn - they must have feared we would never leave.  We certainly didn't want to!

It was a perfect weekend mini, from start to finish.  I haven't talked about David and Glenn's amazing house and art collection - but you can see that for yourselves in the photos we all have been posting.  As we continue to have more of these minis around the country, we all become more and more comfortable with each other, and by the time we have the Big One, it really will be like a family get together.  But a family that really likes each other.  New friendships are being formed not only in the U.S., but abroad too - in Spain, and Tahiti (yes, that's you, Peter) and who knows where else - we still have a little over 100 of our classmates to find.  And at the rate that Ram is going, we will have found all of them in plenty of time for the 50th.

I am not the first to say this, and I will not be the last, but I encourage EVERYONE to attend at least one mini if you possibly can.  Abby Caine Rosenthal wants to organize one in Georgia; Meri Henriques, Howie Perlin and I are going to be organizing one in the Bay Area at Howie's house (NOT on a Jewish holiday weekend!); I'm sure there will be more in Southern California, Florida and NY.  I hope I have conveyed just a little bit of how wonderful this particular one was.  Hopefully more classmates who attended will be posting their photos.

And that is the way it was.

And The Journey Continues

This is the longest I've gone without blogging.  I'm not sure why.  Sometimes I'm waiting for news, i.e. the results of an MRI.  Sometimes I'm just not in the mood, or feeling that great and I want to wait for a better and happier day.  Sometimes I'm just busy.  I think it was a combination of all of those.  I do have lots of news - some good, some not so good.

The not so good first - I lost the bookkeeping job.  It just wasn't a good fit.  They wanted me to go to their office 35 miles south of here once a week at 8:15 AM and I did not want to do that.  They tried to accommodate me by giving me an extra monitor and letting me do the work remotely from home, but it resulted in it taking me longer to accomplish the tasks since it was fairly complex and thus hard to explain over the phone.  So that leaves me just with the techno tutoring as a source of income.

The other not so good news regards having stopped the Ampyra.  Stopping had a very negative effect on me.  My energy level plummeted and my right leg and foot became so weak that I could barely lift my foot and was constantly dragging my leg and stumbling.  I started declining social invitations right and left and spending a lot of time on my couch.  Finally, about a week ago, I emailed my MS doctor out of desperation and asked for his opinion regarding starting the pill again.  I wanted to make sure that I wasn't risking making everything even worse.  I should explain that Ampyra is not a disease modifying drug - it does not change the course of the disease.  It just is supposed to help with the symptoms, energy and walking ability.  It is a time release tablet that you take every 12 hours.  My doctor agreed I should try it again, but suggested I keep a detailed daily log of how I do.  So, I started it on Friday, May 11th.  Luckily I have a 2 month supply left from before.  I almost immediately saw an improvement - I even had some moments where I didn't need to use my cane.  But then I went back to exercise class on Tuesday (I hadn't been for a few months because of how I'd been feeling) and have been having problems with my leg again.  Not as bad as before however.  I think I'm going to have to do exercises on my own at home.  In any case, I'm remaining positive and hopeful.  I think this pill is like some antibiotics - you have to take rest periods.  In the meantime, I'm still waiting for the disease modifying drug Biogen BG-12 to be approved by the FDA.  They're saying it's the most exciting drug they've ever seen for MS.

I'm loving my Techno Tutoring job.  I have about 10 regular private clients at the Residence in addition to my 4 monthly Question and Answer sessions and basic computer classes where I'm paid by the Residence.  My clients are all becoming like family to me.  One of them, a former doctor, is always emailing me articles on developments in MS.  Their ages range from mid 80s to 92.  I also have about 5 regular clients outside the Residence. I'm getting ready to look for another similar type facility in this area.  And I've just added another income stream - remote computer teaching and troubleshooting.  One of my high school classmates lives in L.A. and I've been trying to help him via email.  I decided one day to use with him the remote software I'd been using in the bookkeeping job that allows me to see his desktop and move his cursor.  It worked perfectly!  He is now a regular client.  I will soon be sending out a new flyer announcing this new capability and asking for referrals anywhere in the country - or the world, for that matter.  Thank God for the internet!  I'm offering this to my regular clients, too, for whenever they have a specific problem as opposed to needing to learn how to do something.  I will charge them just for the amount of time we spend on the phone.

One of my high school classmates lives in Palm Springs, CA and he and I put together a wonderful mini reunion there the last weekend in April.  I will post a separate blog I wrote for our classmates about that along with a link to the photos I took.  He and his partner collect glass works of art - their pieces are on loan to museums all over the world.  They have 200 pieces in their home and their own wing in the Palm Springs museum.  I was a little apprehensive as to how I would do in the heat, but even though it got to 105 degrees, I did fine.  My friend had told me that dry heat is different and luckily he was right.  Meanwhile we are all working in earnest on planning our big 50th reunion next June.  I'm in charge of keeping a master database and welcoming in all the "new" classmates as we find them.  I remember two years ago when my school friend Lyn Lederman found me on Facebook - little did we know what that would lead to.  Since then we've found over 250 of our classmates and I've become very close friends with a lot of them.  Some of them I didn't even know in Great Neck.  It's been wonderful.

Another piece of good news - I had a new set of MRIs done last month and there is no new activity, no new lesions.  That is very good news indeed.  I will be seeing my doctor on June 5th.  The next day I leave for Seattle.  My two grandsons, Cameron and Devon, will be graduating - one from high school and the other from middle school.  I'm really looking forward to spending some time with my family up there.

And speaking of family, my sister Trish and her boyfriend Stan each reached a milestone this year - Trish turned 70 (in August) and Stan turned 80.  They had a joint milestone birthday party and I was thrilled to see photos of our parents going back to their wedding day and of us as youngsters.  I hadn't seen those photos in a very long time.

Carla and I have decided not to go to France this Fall.  She because of financial considerations and myself because of finances and my health.  Unless things really improve, I just do not see how I could do a trip like that.  I'm very disappointed, but the older I get, the more I realize you just cannot do everything.  I'm hoping maybe I could go the following year - maybe with Brenda (hey Brenda, come to France with me!).

That pretty much sums up what I have been doing the past 4 months.  I'm trying to figure out the best way to manage my health, I'm building up a new business, I'm working on my high school reunion.  The nutrition program that I started in December has turned out to be very beneficial as well.  I feel much stronger and I can tell that my body is more toned and functions better.  Trish and Stan have decided to try it too, not for nutrition alone like I am doing, but also for weight loss, and after just a month they have each lost over 6 lbs and several inches.

I will try to post more regularly.  One of the benefits of a blog, in addition to being able to update friends and loved ones around the world, is to then hear their news.  I look forward to hearing from a lot of you.  In the meantime, thanks for caring and always being there for me.  It's been quite a journey and it's not over yet!

It's A Wonderful Life

What a month I have had.  I'll start with a health update.  I stopped the Ampyra on December 13.  Unfortunately, I did not have the results I had hoped for.  Not only has my walking NOT returned to how it was before I started taking the pill, it immediately worsened.  I've had to use my cane daily ever since and there were some days when I could barely move.  I even slept on the couch a few nights so I could be closer to the bathroom.  However, lately I have had some good days, and that encourages me.  I'm doing a three pronged attack on this disease: 1) rest - I'm trying very hard to get to bed by 10:30 PM (failing miserably tonight however) 2) nutrition - I'm religiously sticking to the Isagenix regime of one shake a day plus 1 oz of minerals in the morning - I can feel the difference in my energy level plus my body is feeling more toned and in balance and 3) exercise, which I will get to below.  I have an appointment with the MS doctor on Wednesday, but I am feeling very optimistic that I will once again be able to put the cane away.

As I've written before, I joined the local YMCA 3 years ago and had been using their weight machines.  Well, I've barely been there because of the above reasons.  Then in December a friend who also has MS told me about an adaptive physical education at the local Senior Center starting on January 3rd.  I went and immediately signed up and have put my membership at the Y on hold for 5 months.  The class takes place twice a week and consists of an hour of stretching, weights, using the band, isometrics, leg exercises, lunges, sitting and standing with weights etc.  It is very similar to the class I used to take at the local college, except without the ball.  There are about 10 of us in this particular class (some in wheelchairs) and 4 instructors, so there is a lot of individual attention.  I like having the discipline of a class.  The pace is perfect for me - some of the exercises are particularly difficult because I can't move my right leg or lift that foot, but I try and it's getting easier.  The best part however is that after the hour, one of the instructors then spends 15 minutes with me doing exercises and using machines specifically for MS and that pesky right leg.

Now on to my two new businesses.  The professional bookkeeper I used to work with at my job at the nonprofit in Milpitas has hired me to help her through the tax season, at 20-25 hours a week.  I can do it mostly from home remotely.  I'll mainly be doing data entry so they can concentrate on getting their clients ready for filing their tax returns.  This is again, like the adaptive exercise class, perfect for me, because it means I'll be earning enough to cover my monthly expenses while I build up the techno tutoring business.

Which brings me to that, which I consider to be my main business.  When I first arrived at the Senior Center for the first class, I started explaining to them that I was starting this computer consulting business and so might have to miss some classes if I have a client.  One of the instructors overheard what I was saying and excitedly exclaimed that she had just received an email from a local assisted living residence that was looking for just that.  I had my interview on Monday and have been hired to come twice a month, starting January 23, to answer residents' questions which they will have prepared ahead of time.  Of course, the goal is to have some of the residents hire me personally.  I've given the activities director some of my flyers to post by each of the elevators to promote it.  She and I clicked right away.  It turns out one of her best friends is my next door neighbor - I was just there for a holiday party.

I've also received lots of leads of other assisted living and retirement communities for me to contact from all of you, my wonderful friends, to whom I had emailed my most recent promotional flyer.  I've enclosed the two flyers here on the side.  You have also emailed my flyers to your friends, as I requested, and I have heard from some of them.  My favorite was a referral from Evelyn Perl. When I had my first appointment with her, I noticed that there were lots of business files around her desk and asked her what she did.  She looked me straight in the eyes and answered "I kill people."  It turns out she writes, directs and produces murder mystery plays!  She also had spent many years on the stage in various musicals and has several walls lined with photos from the various productions.  This is one of the aspects of this business that I love - meeting all these new and interesting people.

However, unfortunately I've had to cancel my planned trip to my friend Marvin's 90th birthday party in Puerto Vallarta.  It's in March and I am going to be super busy through tax day, April 15th.  I hated having to cancel, but I had no choice.  Hopefully I will make it to his 95th!

So this year is turning out to be pretty good.  For the next 3 months my life will pretty much consist of techno tutoring, bookkeeping, exercise and getting my legs back.  It's amazing how much has happened since that fateful time in 2008.  That seems so long ago.  My future seemed so uncertain, I was filled with so many fears.  Now I don't even worry about the future.  I know it will work out - it always has.