The Great Mast Cell Beach Experiment

Mastocytosis flare recovery 11 months 11 days

To the Beach

Well, I am officially in Florida for my nearly month long beach trip. I know many of you are cursing my name right now at the thought of that but truely it is for medical reasons. My doctor is hopeful by skipping the dreaded fall flare season back home and recovering at a place that has a history of making my symptoms go away, I will be a new woman. His hope is that I will be able to attempt to eat when I get home. I think that might be a stretch. I will be here for the one year anniversary of when it all came crashing down again. I have not used my GI track and jumping from TPN to food would mean skipping all enteral formula, which is supposedly less reactive. I trust him though and he is usually right so I will do what I am told and spend the next several weeks chilling by the beach trying to let my mast cells calm down.

My family loaded up the van and we began the two day trip to the coast. I’ve never been big on road trips but I am starting to see the charm. Being a military family, It used to be that road trips were for going home to see family for the holidays. Packing up the kids and all the needed equipment, clothes, snacks, and entertainment was exhausting. We needed a vacation just to recover from our vacation. Anyone been there??? Now It help the kids are not babies and able to pack and entertain themselves. It’s nice having everyone all together making memories. I will really miss them when they go home. On the way we encountered a beautiful full rainbow right at sunset. I felt like it was God’s promise to me that everything was going to work out fine.

Packing

So what does packing for a trip of that length look like? The logistics have taken me a little while to figure out. I’ve never been gone that long before or known anyone who has. I found a great post on the internet for a capsule wardrobe. It’s a mix and match kind of thing where you take 16 pieces of clothing and can rotate them to make 40 outfits. I knew my condo had a washer and dryer so I was game but I had to take a couple of extra pieces… just in case.

I ended up packing 1 large suitcase, 1/2 with clothing, 1/2 with things I knew I would want to make the condo seem more like home. I took soft sheets, towles, and that sort of thing. I had a small suitcase for things like my hair dryer, toiletries for a month, beach towel, my amazing little shower water filter, more on that tomorrow, and those sort of odd shaped things. I packed my pillows in a space bag to keep them clean and to take up less room. I took my air purifier, I never travel with out it these days, it’s a life saver. Of course the family needed to take some luggage as well. However, the things that took up the most room in my van were all the cases of TPN and medical supplies. Lee came home from my home health company where he picked up 8 coolers plus a huge box of all the accompanying supplies I require. It was quite a sight.

Beautiful Florida

We made the trip in two days and finally arrived at my girlfriend’s house. Beautiful place! Anyone wanting to stay on the beach near Destin, you have to check it out. This was the view from my bed. www.vrbo.com/474240 or www.youaremysunshinedstin.com

Blessings

We had the best time just visiting, catching up, and watching our families meet. Cheryl and I meet through work probably 12+ years ago. We used to travel together and work on various projects together and then became great friends. Although we have never lived in the same state, we used to exercise every morning together. We would get up at 6am, or crack of black as we like to call it, and walk on our treadmills together while we talked on the phone. This trip we walked on the stunning Miramar beach together. We may live in a broken world with things like disease but God is in the business of redemption. He specializes in restoring and healing, God is good!

Whatever is good and perfect comes down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow. James 1:17 New Living Translation

Christal