Category: March 2020

We got in last night.

Our house is fine and the plants are alive, thanks to John’s friend who watered them 🙂

Here’s my “new” view, from my new spot on the couch. It beats the view of the back of the van! That big cycad (the thing that is in a huge pot that looks like a dwarf palm tree) is going back outside soon. It’s not really an indoor plant, but New Mexico winters get pretty cold. It’s on rollers, because yeah, it’s too heavy to move otherwise. And that nice big screen TV is sort of wasted on me. I don’t actually watch TV, although maybe I should learn to like it. But weather permitting, I hope to spend most of this spring & summer in the backyard.

My Japanese maple on the front porch is alive and putting out new little leaves!

And the pear tree we planted in the backyard last fall is alive and blooming!

We planted a bunch of new little trees when we moved in for additional privacy from that house above us. And soon the big white birch will leaf out too.

Hi everyone, we are going to make it home today!

Some of you have expressed curiosity about our van and surprise about how we’re able to make such good time driving across the country. Well, it’s thanks to John and our camper van!

The front of the van has two seats – driver and passenger. Behind the seats is a curtain. Behind that, along the wall behind the driver’s seat, is a bench with a mattress. That’s where I’m sitting, with my back against pillows against a metal rail. I’m riding backwards, directly behind John, back to back.

I wear a seatbelt that John installed. I’m not sure if the seatbelt meets all regulations, but I feel fairly safe back here. In a sudden deceleration, I would just be pushed backwards against the rail between me and the back of John’s seat. The seatbelt is mainly to keep me from rolling off the bench, onto the floor.

Luckily I do not tend to get motion sickness, so I’m fine riding backwards and reading or using my computer. Typically I’d sit in the passenger seat, (and also I’d switch off driving with John), but post-surgery I’m more comfortable on the bench in the back.

At the base of my 6’ long bench, down past my feet, just inside the back door is a toilet. There are curtains that pull across the back windows so the interior of the van is entirely private. There’s also a curtain between the foot of the bed and the toilet, but frankly, we never bother with that one, lol. John also made custom fitting shades for all the front cab windows, which we put up at night. When the shades are up we don’t need to pull the interior curtain between the van and the cab.

Across from the bench and toilet, along the wall behind the passenger seat, there’s a sink, counter, cooler, microwave, and air conditioner. The sink is connected to a big jug of fresh water with a pump, and drains to a big jug for gray water. We also have shelving above, for luggage and dry goods. There’s a nice fan in the roof that vents out, between the two solar panels. The air conditioner also has a fan that vents out a wheel well, and the toilet also has a fan that vents out the wheel well on the other side.  

We use the sink water sparingly, but have no problem going for several days without a refill. The toilet can hold enough effluent for several days without dumping and does so admirably, with little or no odor. We have not had to empty the toilet on this trip, and can wait to do so after we get home.

The toilet is a different design than is typically used for RV’s. It’s more commonly used for off-grid cabins and things. It’s an amazing toilet, I think I’ve blogged about it before. (For more info, google Nature’s Head Compositing Toilet.) Here’s a previous post of mine about the van, and here’s one with a lot of detail about the toilet. (Despite the title, it does not contain pictures of poop, lol.)

The various pumps and fans and coolers and kitchen appliances are all powered by two solar panels on the roof, connected to a bank of batteries under the bench. We have 600 lbs of batteries down there, which equates to a good amount of power. Our internal power system, from the solar panels, has nothing to do with the van’s engine system. The van has a conventional gas-powered engine. It’s just all our interior amenities (microwave, etc.) powered by solar.

The van itself is a 2012 Nissan NV2500 cargo van, the tall version. It is tall enough inside that John and I can both stand up without stooping. This makes it very comfortable, even though the van chassis is only as big as a full-sized pickup. That makes it really easy to drive, including out on forest service roads (which is our preference, of course, not this cross-country shit).

Here is my view from my back-facing seat.

At night we can extend the sleeping bench across the entire floor space, allowing room for John and I both to sleep. I lay with my head behind the driver’s seat – exactly where I sit during the day. John lays with his head behind the passenger seat and his feet angled toward mine, because the sink is where his feet would be if he slept exactly parallel to me. We sleep in a V shape, with our feet together and more space between our heads. It’s plenty of space for us; definitely not a king sized bed, but more than we have in our tent when we’re backpacking.

In the morning, John gets up, folds his half of the bed away, gives me my morning medical shot, gets into the driver’s seat and starts driving. I get up somewhat later, and stumble around trying to accomplish basic personal hygiene and get a bit of breakfast in a moving van.

I’m very lucky it’s been 3 weeks since the surgery. Even one week ago I would not have been able to handle moving around in the van. I just didn’t have the mobility. I couldn’t bend down or twist or use my abdominal muscles at all. I still can’t fully stand up straight or easily reach down to the floor. And I can’t sit upright without being propped up. So I just recline back there while John does all the work.

John listens to books on tape and just drives & drives. He only stops to get gas, and occasionally to eat or use the toilet. We are eating food we have in coolers in the van, and not going to stores or restaurants. Our only physical contact with the outside world is when John touches the gas pumps, or pays freeway tolls. My sister called the van our own private apocalypse capsule.

We bought the van used a couple of years ago, for a very modest amount compared to fancy custom Sprinter vans, which can cost as much as a small house. Our van cost $23,000. The previous owner was living in it rather than traveling, so it didn’t have a ton of mileage.

We are the third owners. The first owners used it for some sort of small business – you know, like a plumber’s van or something like that. I don’t know what kind of business it was. I think it might have been an art gallery. And I don’t know why they bought a brand new van and then sold it fairly soon afterwards. Maybe their company didn’t do well.

The second owner did the majority of the camper conversion. He’s the one who installed the solar panels, bank of batteries, sink and counter, and the main section of the sleeping bench. Then John installed the toilet, the air conditioner, the bench extender and a variety of other improvements including additional shelving & lighting.

We’ll be home soon. And here’s the burning question – how much toilet paper do I have?!? LOL! I don’t know! I don’t remember. I also don’t remember the current state of our dry goods, cold medicines, etc. I’m really hoping I have some more Tylenol sitting around somewhere because that’s what I’m using for surgery pain, and let me tell you, I need it.

Back in January I was humming along, minding my own business, la, la, la, when suddenly my New Year’s resolution colonoscopy led to an abrupt cancer diagnosis and before we knew it, we were flying off to Boston for treatment. This was long before the coronavirus had caught anyone’s attention. I did not think to myself, “Huh, I should stock up on TP before I fly to Boston for cancer surgery.” Nope, never crossed my mind.

Hi, just a quick note to let you all know that I’m feeling a lot better today than yesterday. Life always seems brighter without a stomach ache. My stomach aches are just going to come and go for awhile.  There will be good days and bad days.

We also slept much better last night than the first night, even though last night we had pouring rain, thunder, lightening, and strong winds shaking the parked van. The previous night our parking spot was barely off the freeway and the traffic just bore down on us. I’ll take thunder and lightening over traffic any day.

We are on the third day of driving home (second full day of driving). Yesterday we had rain; today is dry but windy. This afternoon there’s even been a bit of sunshine. John continues to keep plugging along, doing all the driving (typically we’d switch off, but I’m not up for driving yet). We should be home tomorrow.

I’m curious to see our house. It’s been almost 2 months since we left. John has a friend who has checked on it for us a few times, so we’re hoping for the best.

Thanks for the condolences after my sad and sorry post yesterday! We’re going to be ok!

Well, John and I are on our massive drive across the country trying to get home before this coronavirus gets any worse. I emailed my medical records to my primary care doctor in Albuquerque on Monday, and called them on Tuesday, but I haven’t heard anything back yet and now it’s late in the day on Thursday. I need to be assigned to an oncologist asap.

We left Boston around 5pm eastern time yesterday, Wednesday, and made it as far as a rest stop in upstate New York. The restrooms were closed, but they left the parking lot open for the trucks to park overnight. I think most of the big semi trucks have some basic facilities in their cabs.

So we did the same thing – parked the van and closed our curtains, ate some of the food we brought, set up our bed and fell asleep. It was loud sleeping that close to the freeway, but I don’t think I would have minded except I’ve been having bowel issues from the colorectal surgery. Nothing unexpected I don’t think, but a lot of discomfort and nuisance. Actually, I’m miserable. This trip would have been nearly impossible if it weren’t for the toilet and sink in our camper van. But even so, it’s been rough. I’m mean, I’m extremely grateful I didn’t have to have a colostomy bag, but the current situation is hardly an improvement. Presumably it will get better eventually.

Today, we’ve been driving across Pennsylvania and Ohio. John is doing all the driving. I’m feeling worse, if anything. I haven’t felt this bad since I was still in the hospital those first several days after the surgery. John is patient and tenacious, driving steadily through the rain.

I haven’t left the van since we started 24 hours ago, and he hasn’t either except to pump gas. He is very careful when he pumps gas – wearing rubber gloves and washing his hands afterwards. We don’t want me to have to try to fight off the coronavirus in my current state.

Most of the rest stops are fully closed, with the parking lots blocked off. So I’m not sure where we’re going to park the van to sleep tonight. I’ve heard that Walmart often lets you park in the back sections of their lots, but who knows now. Everything is changing so fast.

Of course if we were on vacation we would stay in state parks or we would have researched off-road places in the national forests. But right now we’re just trying to get across the country as fast as possible.

Some of my friends and family members are in regions of the country where they are under shelter-in-place orders. One thing that I haven’t seen in the copious amounts of news stories about the coronavirus is the issue of different members of the household taking self-isolation directives more or less seriously.

The press has mentioned that younger people seem to be taking it less seriously, and in one article I saw, the author tried to make an argument that it split down party lines (but I don’t think the data they were citing backed up their thesis very well). In my limited, not-a-significant-sample experience, it isn’t by specifically by age or politics. But situations are going to vary, and that does sort by age to some extent. John and I are trying to be super careful because of my cancer, and certainly there are more old people in our situation than young ones. Plus, some people simply have a much higher threshold for some types of risks than others do.

But back to the issue of large families, roommates, etc., not interpreting the shelter-in-place orders similarly – even if the majority of the household is sheltering in place, it only takes one person to not take it seriously, and the entire household is basically wide open and exposed and exposing others.

Most news articles seem to imagine that households consist either of just one single person, or a couple with small children. Hello. Household units are so very much more complicated than that, often with unrelated adults and different generations of adults under the same roof. If a household of 4 adults has 3 adults sheltering in place, and one friendly Joe coming in and out and having friends and family over, then the efforts of the other 3 are essentially wasted and we might as well give up and let this thing overwhelm our country.

Ok, I’ve been ranting a lot lately. It’s a difficult time for all of us. Earlier today I was looking for a phone app where I could just look at pictures of puppies for adoption. No, of course I’m not getting another dog! I’m not even well enough to take care of the dogs I have. I just wanted to look at the pictures because I’m too distraught to focus on anything harder than puppy pictures.

But all the apps wanted to know my location and it was just too much. Forget location! I don’t even know where I am right now. Ohio? Indiana? I just wanted the apps to show me puppy pictures from everywhere. I should have just randomly picked some large city somewhere, but everything is so mysteriously connected nowadays that next thing I know, my google maps will start defaulting to LA or something, which has happened to me before. So puppy pictures was my failed attempt at doing something light and happy today.

Speaking of puppies, we’ve asked Monica if she can watch our dogs for a little while longer. I am just not healthy enough yet. I can barely hobble-wobble, speed-stumble the 5 feet to the toilet, much less chase after 3 dogs. And the instant I try to sit down somewhere they’d be jumping onto my lap, which has numerous extremely painful incisions. The thought of a 20 lb dog launching itself onto my stomach is enough to make me want to pass out just from thinking about it. Plus, dogs complicate my relationship with John because we don’t do dogs the same way. And right now, we don’t need any more stressors. Life has been very difficult and he’s been very supportive.

At Emily’s house John had installed a strap to help me pull myself out of the chair, and both a rail and a strap so I could get out of bed.

He also installed a walker-type apparatus that goes on both sides of the toilet to give support getting on and off the toilet.

The van is small enough I mostly have hand-holds, although it’s complicated by the fact that the van is in nearly constant motion.

We stopped early tonight; it’s only about 7:30, but we found a good place to stop for the night. It’s a rest stop with lots of truck parking, significantly further back from the freeway than the one last night.

The back lot is still empty, but it’s early yet. Not even dark. The trucks will be coming in and out all night.

As soon as we got parked and settled the rain picked back up again. It’s pouring now. I’m so glad we’re stopped for the night. Here’s hoping for a better tomorrow.