Sylvie's Travels Home

February 16 and 17, 2023

I met Pogo at pickleball and we went to La Isla for breakfast. We saw some West Mexican chachalacas (my favorite word!), a type of bird the size of a pheasant and apparently good to eat.

Pogo worked on our taxes a good part of the afternoon and I did some laundry. It was mostly cloudy so we decided to just stay in. I noticed how colorful our mop was so I created my version of a tiliche.

We met Mario and Josée at 6:30pm, and since we still didn’t have a car, they drove us to Punta de Mita for dinner. We tried a new restaurant called Zicatela and had excellent food such as mahi mahi, steak with mole and shrimp empanadas. At some point, Josée ate a spicy pepper from her green shrimp appetizer and had her mouth on fire for about 15 minutes. We got home pretty late and went straight to bed.

I talked to Martin many times and to tante Lise as well over the last few days. They got some bad news from the oncologist. He said that the cancer has spread so much that there is nothing else to do since she is too weak for chemo. Medication is helping unblock her intestines so if everything continues going well that way, she should be able to start a liquid diet and go home for a little bit until she needs palliative care. She tried to call me from the hospital and ended up sending me a picture of the room instead. Her voicemail was full and she didn’t answer my calls so I called the hospital and they transferred me to her room. She was obviously sad because she had read in her file that she was gravely ill and that it was incurable. Of course she knew it but I was hard seeing it in writing. She really hopes to go back home. I’m beyond sad.

After breakfast Friday morning, we all went to our 10:15am pickleball. I didn’t play really well at the beginning since my knees and tennis elbow were hurting again but I eventually got better. We played for almost 2 hours and walked back to the condo.

Pogo and I went next door to La Gaviota for lunch and ate way too much. Between the two of us, we ordered 3 shrimp tacos, french fries, hotdog and shrimp tostadas. We also had 2 sodas. It cost $18 with tip. The tide was finally low enough to take a walk but we were too tired from pickleball to attempt one. We went to the pool for awhile then got ready for my 4:30pm appointment with the sport medicine doctor.

Our friends dropped us off at the clinic. Luckily the doctor agreed to see me even though the receptionist didn’t have my appointment. I told him about my knees issues, he took ultrasounds of both knees as well as x-rays. $100 later, I left with a diagnosis of a bone spur in my left knee and a baker’s cyst in my right knee. Both knees have apparently torn meniscus. I will probably do MRIs to confirm it. Now, I’m flabbergasted that after so many years of having knee pains and discussing it with my doctor, having a few x-rays to see if it was arthritis and tons of PT that pretty much lead nowhere, it took 45 minutes in a little clinic in Mexico to get a diagnosis.

We came home, had a drink on the balcony while watching the sun set, put a few appetizers together for a late dinner and watched 2 episodes of The Last of Us. Max and Hernan arrived around 9:30pm after deciding to come back instead of the extra night they had planned on. So happy to have my baby girl back.