Before I jump into trip stuff we’ve got to start with the life updates first! I had my regular 6 month oncology check up at Mayo clinic with Dr. Costello.
Our visits are always really short, I think we spend more time talking about traveling and his interest in my beekeeping than health related stuff. This is how our conversation went this time
Him: What did we talk about last time you were here 6 months ago?
Me: That you would consider changing our 6 month visits to 12 months visits
Him: Hmm that does sound like me, ok I will see you next summer. Congratulations
And he shook my hand because it meant that I’m 5 years post cancer treatment and I can consider myself cancer free now.
In his field of work where he primarily sees sick and dying people, I’m sure it’s a good feeling to give one of your patients a clean bill of health. I absolutely do not want to take for granted the hard work that him and his staff have done to give me a second chance and will always do the best I can to make my health a priority.
After the Mayo visit, Joanna surprised me with a small get together with our friends to celebrate the conquering of Derek my tumor.
Right before I started chemotherapy, it was recommended that I do a “deposit” at a sperm bank due to there being a 1/3rd chance of having my reproductive system affected by the cancer treatment. Link to my blog post about my very shitty day. The end result was that there was no count and it’s been 5 years of consistent testing confirming that I was one of the lucky 1/3rd. Joanna and I have been working with the urology and family planning departments at Mayo for the last year and are just about to start the IVF process which is the only way we’ll be able to have biological children.
She’ll need to get her eggs harvested sometime in November/December and I’ll have to do a procedure called a micro TESE which is like a testicular biopsy where they stick a needle in my junk and look for sperm cells. If they are present, Joanna’s eggs will be fertilized in a lab, and we can move forward. This is a one time deal and is a 15% success rate at best. If we can have kids, cool. If we can’t, there will be plenty more travel blog posts to come in the future.
Another thing that we’ve been doing the last year is casually house hunting. I’ll check out Zillow every few days and we’ll go to open houses in our free time. We didn’t want to work with an agent because we weren’t really serious and didn’t want the pressure to buy since we didn’t feel ready. We went to over 40 open houses, some of them were put on the market on a Wednesday, we’d walk in on Saturday and the selling agent would tell us that there are already 5 offers on the house and we have 2 hours to decided before they stop accepting offers.
Eventually I told Joanna “F this housing market, let’s just keep renting, buy some nicer furniture to replace the craigslist stuff I got 11 years ago, and focus on paying down her student loans.” Naturally, after I said that, a listing popped up which met all of our criteria. We put an offer down on it. Now we own a house…crazy how things work out.
We always saw ourselves getting a turn key house that was move in ready. This house is absolutely not that but it makes up for it in having “personality”. It’s about 10 minutes from either of our parents and on a .45 acre property which backs up into public land which makes it a great space for keeping bees. It was built in 1963 and was only owned by one family. The parents have passed away and left it to their son who spent 3 years cleaning it out to get ready to sell. During the negotiation process he only asked that we close in 2.5 weeks which is really fast, usually it’s 30-45 days. Thanks to my dad, we got it all done even though the whole process felt daunting.
Immediate priorities for the house are new windows to replace the original 1960s ones which are rotting, new siding, removing the 1-3 layers of wallpaper, painting the interior, refinishing the wood floors which were covered in lime green carpet, remove the invasive buckthorn in the backyard, and fence for the dogs.
We only closed on the house 3 weeks ago and have gotten a lot done so far. Here are some before and after progress pics.
Back in February we were having dinner with friends who were talking about their cancelled Spain trip that was booked for Spring 2020. They asked if we’d be interested in going with them and of course we said yes. Little did we know that we were going to buy a house several weeks prior to said trip and do IVF immediately after.
I’m writing this blog as we’re halfway to Amsterdam. We arrive at 6am Saturday and then hop on a flight to Madrid soon after. I feel like I’m normally way more put together for trips but with everything else going on in life, I just didn’t have the capacity to do the same amount of research that I normally do. I don’t even know where we’re going to eat which further illustrates the problem!
What I’ve got planned so far are just the cities that we’re visiting. We are moving pretty fast to cover a lot of ground in a short period of time. Hopefully not too fast though. Starting the trip in Madrid for 3 days, Granada for 3 days where we’ll meet up with one of my co workers Maria for dinner, then Seville for 2 days.
Joanna and I will split up from our friends who will move onto Rome but we will take the train back up to Madrid to meet up with my friend Luke and his girlfriend Halea who have been traveling the world since June (more on this later). Joanna will fly home the next day because she has to conserve her PTO. I will rent a car and drive up to Asturias with Luke and Halea to go hiking in the mountains. We’ll make our way down through Sepulveda and spend the last 2 nights in Segovia where I get to meet up with Ivan, another one of my co workers.
Wow that felt exhausting just typing that!
Honestly I don’t feel like I deserve to go on this trip. Or at least, I don’t think I’ve earned it yet. There’s just so much left to do with the house before we plan on moving in about 3 weeks where I don’t feel like being gone for 2 weeks is the best timing.
After closing costs, down payment, and paying the contractors, we’re definitely a lot poorer than when we originally planned for this trip.
We both agreed that we will put at least a 12 month pause on big trips until we can regulate the house expenses. I keep seeing posts on Instagram about “girl math” so in the same vein, the justification for this trip is that we already paid for the flights and airbnbs so there basically are no added cost right? I’m already hemorrhaging money so what’s a little bit more to go on one more adventure? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Me right now on the plane
With so much coming your way, you guys have definitely earned that vacation. Looking forward to Spain diaries. Also, congratulations on the 5 year mark!!