MRI Escape

Back on Sept 5, Emmett had his 'big' MRI after his first phase of chemo. He hadn't had a scan since May, so it was a big deal to see how well treatment had worked. We had decided beforehand that after the scan, good news or bad, we'd just go away for a few days and enjoy some fun time to ourselves. By the time we got out of town that night, it was pretty late. We went down to the Cape (Cape Cod) and stayed in East Sandwich for a few days in a little cabin. It's a small beach town. We went out one night to this family owned pizza shop.  There were a lot of take out orders, but we were the only ones in there, as it was past normal dinner time.  We had stayed at the beach throwing rocks until every drop of sunlight was gone.  The owners started chatting with us and turns out his oldest daughter had been a patient at Children's when she was a baby also.  They were a very kind family.  When we were finished, they wouldn't let us pay our bill at all and let Emmett help himself to another orange soda, for the road, out of the cooler.  I didn't realize this because I was picking up our stuff when Micah went to pay.  I didn't get a chance to say thank you because we were in the car when Micah told me.  We are continually amazed at the goodness of strangers.  Of course our natural reaction is to insist that they don't need to do this for us, but strangely, we have started to let go of that reaction.  Partly because truthfully, you hardly ever win that argument in our situation and partly because it is somewhat insulting and rude to refuse a gift like we're too good for it, but mostly because we feel that is one of the few benefits to Emmett being sick.  Not the benefit of free pizza, but the benefit to see the goodness of so many people, their small and large acts of kindness, not wanting any praise for  it, just doing it out of the sincere goodness of their hearts.  You will never read about it on the news, which makes you feel like all there is left in this world is greed and selfishness and fraud and danger and crime.  The benefit of being in our shoes is that I know there is plenty of good left in this world and we couldn't even post about all of it that we have personally seen, let alone all the kindness that is shown to plenty of others that we don't know about.  There are LOTS of good people 'out there'!

Apparently we didn't take a lot of pictures, or I just haven't searched long enough to find them, but here's The Man. Not tired at all, ready to go, despite it being 10:30 at night. He loves going new places and exploring. That is one part of his personality that does very well with his life-hospital, hotel, cabin, Ronald McDonald House, our home away from home in Boston, our visit to Michigan....wherever it is, Emmett sleeps well, loves being in new places and has no problems with traveling. I hear that some kids don't sleep well if they're not in their own crib/bed, or it takes a while to adjust to a new place. Yay for Emmett being such a flexible kid! (or maybe he's so flexible because he has moved around so much? Either way I'm not complaining)  And yes, those are purple pants!  From the hospital.  He's grown out of the 'white size' and the next ones up are purple.  Looks pretty good on him, I must say.  PS Besides orange, I'd say his favorite color is pink. 

After a few days on the Cape, we spent our last night up in Maine at York Beach. 

This beach (or at least the time of day we went) was very kid friendly-the water was really shallow for a while the evening we went and Emmett loved it.  He could splash around without being taken down by the numbing cold of the water (truthfully, I think Plum Island is the coldest; these other beaches aren't too bad) or waves crashing in on him. 

The next morning we went to Nubble Light House.  You can't actually go over to it, but it's pretty neat to see from across the water.  There are sometimes scuba divers that dive around in this rocky water.  The waves crash pretty hard on this rugged area.  Emmett was pretty brave climbing these big, slippery rocks.

We actually bumped into one of our 9N nurses while we were here!  (Heidi-we'd actually had her for the very first time the week before;  otherwise, I'm not sure I would have recognized her so quickly)

There's a little Family Park near York Beach so we got Emmett a pass....

and I think this is the only time he smiled!

He hated the carousel, even with Micah holding him the whole time!

So we didn't even try to get put him on the train alone.  

He was ok just watching all the other kids ride it, though.

Luckily, there's also a zoo!  This was a closed in area with a bunch of deer and they would wander in and out of the fences and come up to you (especially if you had a handful of food).  We thought it was kind of cool.  Can't say I've ever seen deer in a zoo before.

There were also some lions.  Two of them.  I think Emmett had been totally spoiled by the Franklin Park Zoo Lion, because every time we've gone there, the lion won't sit still!  So these 2 lions were just sitting a ways back from the fence, mostly sleeping, and barely moving, until one woke up and opened his eyes and lifted his head a little bit.  Emmett is very creative. He knew exactly how to solve this problem.  All on his own, he walks away from the lions and goes over to a tree, picks up a handful of mulch, walks back to the lion cage and throws it at them.  Of course, it only goes about 8 inches and is no where near them (which is probably a good thing.  I doubt they encourage throwing things at the lions) and Emmett tries this technique multiple times, with no luck.  He was trying to feed them!  We thought that was pretty smart of him....next time we'll just have to go see our other lion instead :)