response 150 of 257:

Sep 7 20:15 UTC 2003

Usually you hold down the number button?

response 152 of 257:

Sep 7 21:54 UTC 2003

Yeah, an ASSHOLE posted.

response 154 of 257:

Sep 8 01:46 UTC 2003

        Those damn Mohicans. I had to bail, 
        a third of the way through. 

response 156 of 257:

Sep 8 15:22 UTC 2003

On my Aiwa I program a station by pressing the 'ENTER' button once. 
It's assigned to the next available slot.  To clear a slot I press ENTER
twice. Yours sounds like it's different, though.

response 158 of 257:

Sep 9 15:31 UTC 2003

jim sounds like a great guy - i'm glad he's taking care of you.

response 160 of 257:

Sep 9 16:33 UTC 2003

Yesterday I phoned the Home med people about returning a large box full of
dressings and syringes. They will pick them up but thrown them out.  The
syringes are sealed in a bag but someone might have put arsenic in them.

Then the visiting nurse called to come out and teach us how to change the
dressingon the PICC catheter (they removed it at the hospital Friday).  The
hospital must have called her to reschedule from Wed to Mon than forgot to
cancel.  She will pick up the bo x of supplies for use in training nurses.
jim kept two syringes for filling ink cartridges with, and the roll of tape.

Hard to get it all coordinated, I guess.  Today the hospital called to ask
where exactly to phone and mail.  Jim gave them his addres as home and work,
and himself as contact instead of my brother.  (Someone made a wrong
assumption when filing out my blue card - instead of asking me who to contact
they copied over my brother).  My brother is somewhere or other between Boston
and Toronto or maybe is home from vacation already. He never answer my email
of a week ago when I let him know I had been in and out of the hospital.  Got
to get this Patient Medical Advocate thing signed and turned in next time we
capture a pair of witnesses who don't work for the hospital like Jim's
neighbors do.


Today we need to wash (Jim does) the woolen sweaters and things that I was
going to wash in May but could not as I was bedridden with pulled muscles.
If the moths have spared them. They smell funny from my apartment basement
(which floods when it rains as the gutters don't work).  And see if any of
Jim's chair collection has a padded seat and back.  

response 162 of 257:

Sep 9 22:05 UTC 2003

That would be appreciated!  What I have now is not working well  and Jim loves
to try thermarest products.  Still need to try my armchair at the apt but I
did not have the strength to first remove a thermarest mattress that JIm had
folded and stored in front of it because he found a free space to do so.  It
will take a few weeks to get my apt usable after the few months when I was
just dropping things wher they fell, and the two weeks when Jim was sleeping
there and spending days with me at the hospital.  I came back andfound he had
been eating peanuts for supper (evidence being the pie plate he uses to
microwave them, on a burner) and a frying pan (from the burner?) on the chair.

TOday I got a chain-mail type thing about Bush trying to steal another 87
billion dollars from us all from another translator (to whome I passed along
a Polish job).  She says she had breast cancer treated in 2000 and the cure
was much worse than the symptoms.  I guess breast cancer caught earlier must
have a lot less symptoms than I had.  I can handle the cure better than the
hospital stay.  Also (did I mention) a description of what the linux group
person in SPain ( who it turns out is also a translator) went through -
surgery, radiation and chemo for a tumor on his tongue, which made it
especially difficult to gain back 20 pounds.  He says he was not sure he would
make it at times but he and his friends devised a liquid diet. 

I don't have to deal with liquid diets, or nausea, or coming for chemo
treatments every day, or coming from the UP for a bone marrow transplant, just
somehow surviving the exhaustion and minor side effects.  (Wish I could get
more sleep at night - maybe my digestion will improve over the next four
months, that is my only really annoying problem right now, so who cares if
I am too hoarse to be heard at 5 feet).

Jim discovered you can print photos (not quite the same shape at 640x480) at
K-Mart for 50 cents.  He goes out shopping daily and has these little
adventures on the way.  He also found a pear tree.  We are down to about 200
pears without the new pear tree and I don't have the energy to help make pear
juice.  Our pear tree has a few very hard green pears and the grapes are not
quite edible enough for the raccoons to knock them all off yet so Jim is
eating them sour.

I survived the 7 hours wait for blood test results better than I did last
Friday, possible because Jim agreed I should not be practicing walking the
same day this time (or visiting stores afterwards).  A couple of hours sleep
in the daytime and I can wobble around the house a bit and even sort laundry
and I FED MYSELF bread and cheese and milk.  Jim is making a stir-fry now out
of the rock-hard tomatoes from the neighbor and some Napa cabbage.  500
calories to go.  I weighed 95 at the hospital with clothes on.  I hope some
is going into muslce and the rest into padding for my seat.

Today was uneventful except for one call from the visiting nurse about picking
things up, one call to confirm that I have moved (to Jim's house) and that
my brother is not the one to contact (he never answered my email yet) and one
call to remind me I have chemo Monday.  I unplugged the phone to sleep. 
Tomorrow I will attempt another shower with Jim's help and with short hair.

response 164 of 257:

Sep 9 23:03 UTC 2003

Jim better not be muscling in on "my" pear tree in Vets Park.  ;)

response 166 of 257:

Sep 10 13:49 UTC 2003

No it is a local nursing home with an orchard.  There is a pear tree in Vet's
Park>  We know of two apricot trees but mostly just apples on campus and city
hall has apples too.  Probably failed grafts to crabapple.

WOnder if we can dry most of the pears from the friend's tree.

Today the rash no longer itches and is lighter.  I stopped allopurinol
yesterday.  The throat is much the same.

Jim has been cooking breakfast for an hour or so.

response 168 of 257:

Sep 11 15:56 UTC 2003

We were probably a bit premature in cutting my hair.  When I pull on it little
bits come out.  Most of it does not come out.  My mother (who had radiation
for brain tumor) said she had greying hair before and it grew back dark, in
her sixties.  Got to plan ahead and find some sort of cotton cap.  This is
minor.  Jim wants to put in a shower filter to trap the hair.  Good thing I
got sick in warm weather but it will continue through December and I will have
very short hair in January.  

Off for another blood draw and they can phone me the results as I expect
nothing unusual.  Jim liked the looks of the lunch he found me Monday (cooked
chopped vegetables inside a pizza like crust).  They serve until at least 1
or 2 pm.  (Hospital cafeteria has less of a captive audience than the kitchen
serving the low-fat patients).  There is also a Wendy's and a Pita place that
has Veggie (cheese) and Very Veggie (?) pita sandwiches.  

response 170 of 257:

Sep 12 01:30 UTC 2003

We had blood draw, lunch and some back to normal blood test results which
means it is time to knock out all those multiplying blood cells again.  The
lymph cells are also back to normal and should be killed off mostly.

The nurse there explained to me how Monday would go.  They add another
chemical which takes 4 hours by itself and may cause fever and chills and you
need to monitor blood pressure.  Plus the other three chemicals (CHOP).  The
first is called Rituxin.  I may look it up.  Maybe I don't want to know.  It
could take 8 hours if they slow down the Rituxin to stop side effects.  She
said to bring something to eat, a book or cards to stay busy with, etc.  They
give you a bed and a potty.  I hope it is not a big room with TV blaring. 
Treatment starts at 10:00 and could end by 3:00 or as late as 9 pm (they
close).  Subsequent treatments should be only 5 hours - not bad for every 3
weeks, I suppose.  The last blood draw took up 6 hours total with waiting.

I was told not to be wearing a mask, that is for bone marrow people who have
no immunity at all.  It was hot and damp inside.  So since I have immunity
today and through Sunday we stopped at the library and got a pile of videos.
Did not have the list.  I have sore muscles again from walking around there.

We picnicked outside with the fried vegetable in dough special but I got sore
sitting in the wheelchair so we came inside.  They have little chairs with
attached tables near the window so you can admire the outside from inside.

You can get 8 oz whole milk from a vending machine for 65 cents.  We brought
our own instead (in a milk not a water bottle).

We fetched my armchair (it should work for short periods of reading in an
upright position but not for using the computer) and forgot the fruit dryer.
On the way out our friend who works there was coming in and offered us another
pile of pears.  Jim is still picking from the tree down the street.  Dried
pears for the next few years.  Our own tree was picked clean by squirrels.
The raccoons have not yet judged our grapes ready to destroy.

All the wheelchairs are adjusted for people with two long legs of different
lengths, some twisted at odd angles.  I am lucky I am skinny enough to curl
up in them instead.  They are not readjustable as they are nearly all broken.
I felt sorry for people who had to sit 'normally' in them.  Saw the 90 pound
kid there with his mother.  He wears a mask and needs chemo daily but is in
remission.  

response 172 of 257:

Sep 12 14:36 UTC 2003

Thanks for your advice.  Both my parents died in their sixties of cancer which
was diagnosed when they were around my age.  My mother's two brother's and
the daughter of one (age 30 - Hodgkin's lymphoma) and my father's sister also
died of cancer, each a different type.  My father's oldest sister died at age
88 of a fall after cancer treatment for 2 years before that.  I will think
about telling the two teenage kids.  Cancer in Macedonia is probably a lot
less curable.  Still have to write my Slovene friend who is caring for her
sister who had stomach cancer.  In Slovene.  I wonder how you say spleen. 
I forgot to get that dictionary yesterday. 

I am amazed at how many people I have been notifying.

Today I am trying to help one of them with a Slovak birth certificate that
needs notarizing.  I am not making a trip to the bank, they are unlikely to
notarized if Jim takes in my signature, so we are asking a Polish translator
to print it out and notarize it.  The owner attempted a translation.  It does
not look very English and would be hard to correct.  I hope I have, here, a
copy of some other SLovak (or even Czech) birth certificate that I can send
him as a model, which I will then correct based on the original SLovak which
he faxed, and he can send that to the Polish translator for printout and
notarization.  It might be quicker for me just to do the translation.

Jim wants me to work on getting a prescription for a 3" fancy foam mattress
topper to replace the camping mat.  If my voice worked better it would be
easier.  I hope this is just an allergy to the drug I stopped.  

Breakfast has arrived.  Jim will try to find the model certificate on the
other computer.  Should be interesting.

response 174 of 257:

Sep 12 17:22 UTC 2003

While in my never-never land I sort of let other things slip and the bank has
now charged me $9 for my checking account going too low.  Jim does not
understand how it happened as he says he only took out what he put in.  I
think it may have something to do with my landlord forgetting to cash a rent
check from a while back but at this point I have drawn a line across the
bottom of the balance sheet and started all over.  I am no longer keeping
track of our expenses.  Let Jim count calories instead.  I am starting to
answer mail from a few months ago.  Jim promised to do the wool laundry from
April on a dry day.  Back to reality.