Our first week we stayed in a Residence Inn. We thought at first that surgery might be done fairly soon, so had not made long-term plans. After Susie's medical team recommended and we agreed to multi-month chemotherapy and radiation stages to control and diminish the amount of malignancy, followed by surgery, we decided we needed an apartment. MDA has an attached extended-stay facility that people had recommended to us, but it had no vacancies right away. The MDA Travel office put us in touch with an apartment management firm they work with and we picked an apartment that turned out to be just across the street from the Residence Inn, and just over a mile from MDA. Here's a link. So far we've been driving to MDA, but there is a free shuttle service as back-up.
The Domain is four stories of apartments, wrapped around a parking garage and two patio areas, one with a swimming pool. Our apt is about as far from our parking spot as possible, so moving day we made numerous long trips hauling our belongings from garage to apt. One good move we had made was to exchange our compact rental car for a mini-van: more space, less money, it turns out. (I didn't check prices on larger cars when we made a reservation. On-line rentals for mini-vans, at least for Enterprise cars, rent at substantially lesser rates than compacts. Too much to think of in a short time is my excuse.) Here are a couple of apartment photos.
GO LOBOS! oops.
The apartment is right next to a Walgreen's and a short block from a Krogers and another block from a Super Target, plus a wide variety of chain restaurants, so it's all very handy. The Walgreen's clerks and pharmacists are getting to know us quite well. One clerk and I tell each other, "See you tomorrow," as I check out with another bag of essentials.
Texas Medical Center is HUGE. Here is the picture you find on-line when you google it. When we first saw this skyline, I thought it was downtown Houston. Found out later that downtown is behind this scene. Nearly all of the buildings in this photo are hospitals, clinics, research labs, medical schools, and more.
Here's a short summary from the Medical Center website:
Texas Medical Center is the largest life sciences destination in the world. With 106,000 employees, 50,000 life science students, and thousands of volunteers and patient visits, over 160,000 people visit Texas Medical Center each day. Over the course of the year, we welcome over 7.2 million visitors.
Here are some building close-ups.
This is the building we've spent most of our time in.
Son, Jeff Hinkle, was here for Susie's first chemo treatment last week. On Friday we drove to Galveston. Some scenes:
That's Pleasure Pier
Cargo ships waiting in the Houston Ship Channel.
I've already described in our e-mail reports our search in Channelview, TX, for the house that Susie, Jeff, Manny, and Mandi lived in, and rental car problems, so I'm not going to cover that here. Will skip ahead to the a fresher second installment.
Susie and Rob
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