Latest from Bethesda

We are settling in for the night. We caught the 8:30am shuttle from the hotel to NIH this morning. Woody headed first to the lab and much to his dismay they took 11 vials of blood. Then we headed to put our jackets in the car so we didn't have to lug them around. We sat and read for a little while in one of the lobbies till it was time for him to go to the CT imaging area. We headed to the CT area about 15 min. prior to his appointed time. He signed in and almost immediately got his "banana shake." He has to drink 1/2 of it and then wait 20 minutes to drink the rest. After drinking the contrast, there is an hour wait till they can do the scans. He was finished with the scans a little before noon. We went downstairs to the cafeteria...Woody had soft tacos made to his liking and I had a favorite of mine, a roast beef sandwich, that I discovered on one of our former trips. After lunch, we got our car and left the NIH campus for a little while. We went to a speciality grocery store to try to find a couple of unusual ingredients that we need for one of our soups...along with just looking around and finding several other items that we decided that we wanted to try...sun dried tomato paste (in a tube) and a couple of unusual salad dressings and some pastas. We put our purchases in the car and then walked to look at this unique strip mall. We were disappointed to find that a cute children's shop where we had shopped in another time had closed...we were hoping to find a Christmas present or two. We then walked across the street to another shopping center. They had a grocery store and we actually found a couple other items that we were looking for there. The only thing that we came away not finding was dry soy beans...and we were told by a young lady at a health food store to try a Korean grocery store...hmmmmmm now to find one! Then we walked around to see what other stores they had there, and then we headed back to the car. We drove back to NIH and parked the car and then went to wait on the shuttle back to the hotel.

Tomorrow we will check out of the hotel and head to NIH on the shuttle. One of our tasks at NIH tomorrow is to fill out the voucher form for reimbursement for travel and part of the hotel bill. Woody's appointment to meet with the research doctors isn't until 1pm. We will get there around noon and sign in so he will be at the top of the list to be seen. As soon as we finish seeing the doctors, we will get in the car and start heading down the road towards Tennessee. We will drive for a while and then stop for the night...and where ever that happens to be...I will blog from there. Hopefully I will be able to tell you how much more Woody's tumors have shrunk! Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy. I'm praying that the rain won't make the drive too difficult. Today has been quite chilly...it never got out of the 50's. I am very glad that I brought my fleece jacket.

As you can see from the pictures, we have seen a lot of beautiful scenery on this trip and lots of different types of traffic. I hope that tonight's collage makes up for no picture last night...this is a grouping of pictures that I took yesterday. We were told when we stopped for gas, that we had missed the really pretty leaves by about a week and a half. But still lots of beautiful color! Be sure to click on the collage so you can see the pictures bigger.