Day 7, Monday, February 4th, 2013.

Today was simply a string of first-meetings/informational sessions. I met one of my dieticians, the social worker assigned to my case, and one of my pharmacists. We talked food; talked circumstances; talked pills. In fact, the pharmacist had brought a big ol' binder of example pills with attendant descriptions. As always, my biochem background prepared me exceedingly well for medical meetings: my nutrition and metabolism classes handle diet, molecular kinetics and biological pathways handle pharmaceuticals, and I think the frank rationality of a scientist handles the social stress acceptably well. I'm not freaked out by the medical aspect like most people are, but in complete fairness, I do have a lot of support from friends and family, which certainly does take most of the stress off.

Later that afternoon, we made an inspection tour of the Pete Gross House, and came away having decided to stay at the SCCA House for the duration. We won't have an en suite kitchen, or laundry, but the SCCA House is much newer, cleaner, and, we felt, more immediately homey and welcoming. It also boasts a number of amenities for the caregivers that create a social support network for them in a city that is not their own.

En route to Pete's, we were witnesses to a narrowly avoided car accident. One SUV was pulling out of an angled parking spot; the other was speeding quite a bit, barreling, you might say, down the street. Brakes were applied, tires were squealed, rectal sphincters were tightened. The vehicles missed by inches, which I was rather pleased with, as I happened to be walking immediately behind the half-parked SUV at the time.

I feel like we're starting to settle in to our neighbourhood and our current medical schedule of tests, getting to know what's available, and, since we're here for a good long while, we're backing off a little from the touristy lifestyle, though we do have tickets pending to both the aquarium (expire in June) and the Space Needle (window of opportunity = Thursday). 

I do like it here, though.

"Dietician is the legally protected term. Nutritionist is more like.... toothiologist." - Dara O'Briain