San Antonio April 30

Arrived in San Antonio

Josh and I arrived in San Antonio at 7:15 PM Saturday night. The airport appeared to be abandoned, as if they had already rolled up the sidewalks and gone to bed. We retrieved our luggage and went looking for a taxicab. To get out of the terminal, there was no handicapped doorway and the area in front of the exit door was uphill. I tried to wheel myself up and then through the door Josh had left open as he pushed the luggage cart through the door. It did not work. I started to slide backward and Josh was not able to rescue me quickly enough. Fortunately, I rolled into sympathetic arms and a nice young woman pushed me out the door and over to the taxicab line. Josh was already there trying to get us a taxi van. The attendant went way overboard and rounded up a handicapped van that could secure my wheelchair in the back with chains. This left the back seat for luggage and Josh sat up front with the driver. It was fiesta time in San Antonio and many city streets were blocked off by police cars for the big parade with mariachi bands and dancers. Each time the taxi driver slowed down at an intersection and then accelerated through it, I thought I was afflicted with whiplash. The wheelchair moved forward slightly and then the chains jerked it backward forcefully. What a ride! We finally made it to our hotel, exhausted and sore. We checked in and I fell asleep for the next day and a half. Josh only slept for a day and explored the area around the hotel while I continued to sleep. He found a small market, the McDonalds and the local internet service. The hotel charges $10/day for internet service while the San Antonio internet is $10/week. He signed up for the San Antonio public internet service, but when we were upgraded to a river view room, we found the internet did not work on that side of the hotel. The upgraded room also did not have a handicapped accessible bathroom, so we opted to go back to our original room before the thousands of oncology nurses arrived for the conference.

On Tuesday night, Tina arrived and on Wednesday morning, we left early for the convention center. I picked up my motorized scooter chair at the convention center Tuesday evening with Josh. We went down to the Riverwalk earlier in the day with my wheelchair and discovered the Riverwalk is not very handicapped friendly. Some of the paving is ornamental but painful for those in wheelchairs. Restaurants are not accessible to the handicapped because you can’t get in the door unless you climb stairs. Josh and I finally found a place to eat on Tuesday. It was not our first or second choice restaurant but by then we were hungry and thirsty and Josh had worked very hard pushing me in the wheelchair. At 4 PM, we picked up the electric scooter chair and Josh pushed the empty wheelchair back to the hotel. I have the scooter until noon on Sunday, about 24 hours before we leave for home.

Wednesday morning Tina and I headed to the convention center in my scooter chair. There is construction going on at the convention center so it was rather inconvenient to go in the temporary entrance, walk down a corridor, turn left, walk down another corridor and then exit the convention center. We then walked outside in a westerly direction until we came upon another door that we entered which led to the main lobby. We went to the resource area to pick up my materials for my SIG (special interest group) meeting on Survivorship, Quality of Life and Rehabilitation on Thursday. I also went to the Speakers Prep Room and worked on my slides, adding information I received since the slides were due on April 21. We were getting loaded down, having picked up our tote bags with convention materials and my syllabus for the entire Congress. We left for our hotel at 2:30 PM and arrived at the room about 3:00. Josh was getting ready to do his interview for his school project and the maids wanted to clean the room. We asked the maids to give us an hour so Josh could finish the interview and Tina and I crashed on the beds until 5 PM. The maids then came back and Tina and I got ready to go to my dinner meeting. I called ahead to be sure Tina could get in as my caregiver and was told by IMER that it would not be a problem. In the meantime, Josh and Tina decided to drop me off at the dinner meeting and go out to dinner, and then come back at 8:30 to pick me up. I was close to the beginning of the line when they left, but to my surprise they stopped letting people in to the meeting just before they got to me. Several people had cut in line in front of me and I did not complain until I found out that I was the first person they were not going to let into the dinner meeting despite my having pre-registered for this educational offering. I pointed out that several of the women in front of me had cut in line and that my caregiver had just gone to dinner, leaving me to attend the dinner meeting until 8:30PM. The woman behind me in line verified that several people had cut in line and that I needed to attend the meeting because I was in a wheelchair. I was grateful for the help and I was let into the meeting. Getting to a seat was more difficult. I had to park my scooter and haul my oxygen and my bag over to a table as there was no way my electric chair would fit between the tables to get to an available seat. Of course, while I was parking the scooter, someone took the seat the waiter had found for me. I talked to him and he found me another seat. Relieved, I sat down, hoping to learn a new treatment targeted therapy for metastatic breast cancer. I was disappointed as the physician started to speak about a 1998 study comparing ACT (adriamycin, cytoxan plus taxol) with ACT + herceptin, targeted to her2neu. This was not new, as the study was released 11 years ago and led to FDA approval of herceptin, now a big source of revenue for Genentech Bio-oncology. I was at The March in Washington, DC with some Genentech employees who had helped us work on developing The Cancer Survival Toolbox when they learned of the FDA approval of herceptin. We helped them celebrate the rest of that night. The nurses who spoke had good information on symptom management of side effects of targeted therapies, but there was not much new information on targeted therapies for metastatic breast cancer. I was very disappointed. I did not receive a continuing education credit for this meeting because they ran out of program materials before I got into the dinner meeting. I did receive a memory stick with the class presentations on it, so I have all the slides that were shown, and hopefully, some of the narrative that went with the slides.

Thursday morning was the official start of the 34th Annual Oncology Nursing Society Congress. Tina and I left the hotel at 7:40 AM to get to the convention center by 8 AM, have breakfast, pick up the rest of my materials for my 11:15 AM presentation, and head for the opening ceremonies at 9 AM. I was supposed to present Marcia Grant with an award during our SIG meeting, but when I went to pick it up, it was not with the other materials for the SIG meeting. We followed the crowds of people heading for opening ceremonies, but their lines ended at a mariachi band serenading the nurses as they went down two long escalators. My scooter would not fit on the escalator steps so we turned around and looked for an elevator. After finding the elevator, we headed downstairs and sat on the right side of the huge hall for opening ceremonies. The keynote was entitled “Why I Wore Lipstick to my mastectomy” presented by Geralyn Lucas, an editorial producer for 20/20 who wrote a book of the same title, which was turned into an Emmy nominated movie. It was a good presentation and I enjoyed it. Tina cried through parts of it. After opening ceremonies we headed for the elevator, only to find a large crowd waiting for the one elevator to the second floor. I ended up getting stuck in the elevator because we tried to fit too many people in the elevator. I pushed the scooter as far forward as it would go and it got stuck underneath the railing at the back of the elevator. We could not get out before the door closed and headed back downstairs. On the ground floor people were surprised that I did not want to get out of the elevator. Tina and I were the only ones on the elevator. So Tina explained our dilemma and the nurses helped get my scooter out from underneath the railing and turned it around to face the front of the elevator. By this time we were on the second floor again and everyone allowed me to get out first which barely gave me enough time to prepare the room for my SIG meeting.

Tina and I went to another lecture, then visited the exhibit hall before we started looking for a place to have lunch. I must tell you that I was absolutely stunned to see three people from Stanford F Ground Staff walk into the Survivorship SIG meeting while I was talking from my slides. Albert, Rosella and Mary were there. Albert is supposed to be picking Josh and me up from the airport Monday evening so I really did not expect to see him in San Antonio today. More about that, and other Congress news tomorrow. It is nearly 1 AM and I must sleep. The OCN Recognition Breakfast is at 6 AM but I do not think I can get up for it. Tina will not last all day if we leave that early tomorrow and I will run out of batteries for my oxygen before it is time for me to moderate the podium session if I start the day at 5:30 AM. So Goodnight to you all. Tune in tomorrow.