Back in Seattle -2- Doing normal things?

It is great to be home! We haven't seen any doctors or nurses since we are back, so we have plenty of opportunities to relax. It is kind of strange though, all this time on our hands. For the past year we have been so busy in and around the hospital, that we are rookies in doing normal things. Anyways, I think our attempt to behave like normal folks is working out pretty well (see pic). And to help our hospital addiction, we luckily do have an appointment later this week, ooeeeffff.

Back in Seattle -1- Home Sweet Home

Home, what a good place to be!

We will write more later, but first we have to run to the shop because 'little' Maarten completely grew out of his car seat while doing protons! Unbelievable....

News from Boston - 8 - It is done!

The bell has rung
We are done
Seattle here we come!

Benefit sale was HUGE success!

From Boston, we have the pleasure to announce that the fund raising was an unbelievably huge success! A huge, Huge, HUGE success! 6.700$! Francois and I can hardly believe it.
It is enough to cover our travel expenses and lodging in Boston, and will give us room to spoil our little boy tremendously. It's just unbelievable!
The generosity of each of you, through both the sale and direct donations, made a huge impact on us. Such demonstration of love to Maarten, from US, Italy, Holland, UK and France, among others, is very overwhelming. We wish we could give a hug to all of you in person.

As far as the update from Boston, Maarten is still working hard on his push-ups and almost completed his series of radiations! Tomorrow is the last treatment and Maarten will have the pleasure to ring the bell, as is the tradition here at the hospital to wish goodluck for the future. We will ring it loud and clear!

Thank you all!

Updates from the Yard Sale

Our Yard Sale has started today at around 9:00 AM. We had many people visiting us and showing their support. Here are some low resolution cell phone-taken photos just to show you how much people have donated to help a good cause. We are waiting for you tomorrow if you didnt have a chance to stop by today.

Getting Ready for the Yard Sale

Countdown now has started for the Yard Sale.

Today (September 17) we loaded all generous donations into trucks and moved them to the Church where the sale will take place. We have something for everyone. Take a break from your daily routine and join us this Friday and Saturday for the Yard Sale at Peace Lutheran Church. Dont forget to spread the word.

News from Boston - 7 - Countdown

It is still pretty quiet here in Boston and we have no great touristic highlights to report other than a little boat ride on Charles river and some more strolls through town. Good news is that Maarten is doing well, although he has been a bit more tired than usual these last couple of days. That is part of the deal and is called radiation-fatigue. Well, I can add that his parents are also suffering from fatigue, homesick-fatigue! If all goes well, we will be out of here next Wednesday and that is only a couple of days later than anticipated. We made the mistake to start counting down and since then time goes very slowly, it almost stopped! Unfortunately, the delay makes us also miss Maarten's yard-sale by a hair, what a frustration! Well, enjoy the cookies and the Dutch apple pies, may the yard-sale be a big success!

News from Boston - 6 - A quiet week (for us)

It has been a quiet little week. Protons in the mornings and the afternoons to ourselves. Maarten has been doing some hard work though and is almost crawling. Now the fun will start for the parents who have to follow him everywhere with the milk backpack.
While we are keeping ourselves quiet in Boston, our friends in Seattle are being real busy with the organization of the yard-and bake sale. We see emails flying around, asking for trucks to help carrying the to-be-sold items, spreadsheets to sign up for shifts during the yard-sale, flyers to be posted at local stores, and the list goes on and on. It makes us realize what a big event our friends are organizing, and it is such a good feeling to know that so there are so many people caring for our little boy. The help for Maarten is not limited to US frontiers, a wave (tsunami) of love has reached us also from our old co-workers in Italy, UK and Portugal. It is all these good vibes that makes Maarten so strong, and we thank you all!

News from Boston - 5 - Long weekend

We are having a nice long weekend (today is a national holiday) and thus lots of chances to do some more hard-core tourism. Based on our experience in Naples, Italy, whose inhabitants traditionally spend their Easter weekend (read: long weekend) in a traffic jam while trying to leave the city all at the same time, we figured that everybody would be residing outside Boston to enjoy the last sunny days of the season. We, of course, would be smarter than everybody else and decided to stay INSIDE the city, where we would have the kingdom to ourselves.

Our first touristic goal was to do the entire freedom trail in one session. This trail leads to all the important historical sides of Boston and is the most easy trail to follow because there is an actual red line painted on the pavement. Arriving at the trail head, we found that the entire Massachusets had gathered to join us in our mission and with everybody staring down to the pavement in search of the red line, it was impossible to navigate through the human masses.

In times like this, you have to keep your head cool and be flexible. So we decided to radically change our plan and caught the first-best ferry in search of solitude and peace. Although our rich experience in Naples should have warned us that taking a ferry to an island on a sunny Saturday morning is not the brightest ideas of all, we decided to take our chances.


Well, we may have not found solitude, but the ride on the see and the feet in the water definitely gave us peace. Mission completed.

News from Boston - 4 - The tube

People often approach us on the street to ask about the yellow tube coming out of Maarten's nose. I'd figured that maybe some of you are also wondering about that, so here is a little post on our friend-with-an-attitude: the tube. The tube is to make sure that Maarten gets his milk, water and medications. It is going through his nose straight to his stomach, and we have a little matching backpack that delivers milk continuously.
Since the tumor was rapped around nerves involved in swallowing, the surgery 10 month ago damaged this zone and Maarten has been using the tube since then. Though Maarten has fully recovered his swallow capacity by now, the simple view of a piece of bread can trigger a gag. He simply has to learn again to use his mouth. The people of the 'food-therapy' warned us that it may take a good while before he can eat a 10-year old camembert. Ah well, we will find a way to push it through the tube!

News from Boston - 3 - The fun part

Its not just all hospitals and misery here in Boston, on the contrary, Boston is a wonderful place and we are doing loads of hard-core tourism. See here a picture of the 'ride the Ducks' Boston-style. It's bit less frantic than Seattle's ducks and the driver couldn't keep Maarten's attention very long.... but we (the adults) were having a blast.

Another super good thing about Boston is that it is much nearer to Europe than Seattle (no offence), and both French and Dutch grandparents plus aunt already hopped over for a couple of days. It was actually the first time that Maarten was held by his aunt Astrid (at aunties previous visit, Maarten was still at the ICU), and he immediately loved it!

I suppose we could go on and on our great adventures here in Boston (like feeding ducks with sticks and stones, trying out every Starbucks in a 5 mile radius and so on), but maybe it is smarter to keep some news still for the next posts.