Milestones

I have a lot to tell you. There was much time in the hospital when I did not feel like even opening my computer. There is a significant amount of time that I do not remember. So here is a quick summary of what has happened in the last month.

I tried to keep a journal of what was happening each day. From Monday, Dec. 14, through Thursday, Dec. 24, I did pretty well, except I made no entries on the 22nd and 23rd. A few days after they passed, I wrote for days Dec. 26 through Dec. 29, "Blur." On Wed., Dec. 30 I wrote, "1 unit red blood?"

Thursday, Dec. 31 I wrote, "Started losing hair, platelets, 1 unit red blood." Then on Friday, Jan. 1, I wrote, "Coughing up red gunk. Breathing labored." That day I was moved to the ICU unit, a milestone. I stayed there a week and do not remember much of that week.

Another milestone is that Be came back to Houston on Wednesday, Jan. 6. You cannot imagine how glad I was to see her. The next milestone was the following Friday. I was supposed to move into a part of the hospital for which the care was between the ICU and the 11th floor stem-cell transplant area. But I ended up back on the 11th floor, and in the same room I was in before. Amazing.

Then I needed to start gaining strength by walking and doing other exercises. I could barely walk, and the first time I tried, my male nurse held onto a belt around my waist and Be followed with a chair on wheels in case I needed to sit down quickly. My legs felt like trees. It was difficult to get them to move. I worked hard, and on the following Tuesday, my doctor said, " I think it is time to get you out of the hospital." I could not believe it, and I was actually afraid (lack of faith) that it was too soon. But I left the hospital on Thursday, January 14, and the doctor was correct. I have been making steady progress since then.

In the hospital, I was constantly getting infusions of all kinds of medication. Since I left, much of this medication has to be taken orally. Here are the original 9 different medications and the schedule for my taking them.


On Saturday, January 17, we moved into an apartment that is close to M D Anderson. This apartment is a part of the ministry of the Kingwood Church of Christ, and is a great blessing. Below are pictures of me on the couch and half of the kitchen.




We continue to go to the hospital daily to get infusions of certain medications and to have my blood tested. A big part of what I must do now is gain strength and keep from getting infections. I have developed a runny nose, and that is possibly not good. But a nasal washing (yep, it is as bad as it sounds) came back with negative results, and Be's nose often runs when mine does, so we are just tolerating it.

Since leaving the hospital, I have not had to have any infusion of blood products, nor a shot of the white blood cell stimulator Neupogen. That means that the transplant is making progress in taking over the production of my blood. That is tremendous.

The final milestone I will mention is that I have been given permission to eat fresh fruit if it has thick skin. I am enjoying bananas and watermelon for the first time since the end of April. Yum, yum.


Please keep praying for me. Your prayers are having a great affect. Thank you!

Happy Birthday (day 0)

At M. D. Anderson, the stem cell transplant people call the day that a person receives a stem cell transplant that person's second birthday. One of the nurses congratulated me on my second birthday, and I thanked her but told her it was my third birthday. When she gave me a puzzled look, I told her that my second birthday was when I became a Christian.

At any rate, the day that the stem cells are infused is a big day. So I used my computer to take a couple of pictures to mark the occasion. There were five bags of cells to be infused. The doctor was here for most of the first bag, but he left the rest of the infusion to my nurse. She stayed in the room with me the whole time, monitoring my vital signs frequently.

After the infusions, which took about 1.5 hours, I was pretty much out of it because of the steroids and the benedryl that they gave me. Even today I have been quite drowsy and listless. I hope that tonight I can sleep off the generally bad way I have been feeling. As with the earlier chemo, I have no appetite and have an "on the edge of nausea" feeling. At any rate, here are the promised photos.

An Agonizing Episode

I cannot explain many of my character flaws, and I especially cannot explain this one. But it is formost in my mind now -- I really dislike having to get ready for a shower. I have even been known to work in my shop all day, getting covered with sweat and sawdust, and then at bedtime finding some excuse to delay my shower until in the morning, at which time I find that I do not need a shower. So you can imagine my consternation when I was informed that I have to take a shower every day while in the hospital.

Another thing that I really dislike is turning off the water when I am taking a shower. I love soaking in the nice warm water and just relaxing. Okay, today I finally forced myself to get in the shower for my daily cleansing. (Incidentally, I am glad that during this hospital confinement I actually get to shower and not just take a sponge bath like the last time I was in here for a month!) But today before I finished showering, my tower starts beeping!!! I must call a nurse to take care of this. You see, I have to be connected to the tower even when showering. So I must quickly rinse off and forgo the pleasure of soaking, or else have her come hang a new bag on my tower while I am pleasantly soaking in the shower.

Life gets tedious, don't it! By the way, I did not call the nurse until I quickly rinsed, dried, and clothed myself. No soaking today.

PS If anyone can explain my "shower disorder" I would love to hear the explanation.

Caprock Canyon State Park

On Friday afternoon, October 2, Jason Holland picked me up in his pickup truck and we drove to Caprock Canyon State Park, arriving at about 5:15 pm. This state park is just outside of Quitique (pronounced "Kitty Kway"), Texas. We were too late to check in at the park headquarters, so we drove to our campsite and set up our tents.


The campsite had a pit grill for burning wood, and a grill-on-a-pole for burning charcoal, a picnic table under a roof, and some toilets. There was no running water. The campsite was by a fairly deep and steep-sided creek bed. There was no water running in the creek. Jason cooked turkey brauts on his gas grill, and we had those and beans for supper. As it got dark, the moon came up and it was so bright we could not see very many stars, though it was a cloudless night. But we had a great view of Jupiter, and we saw three satellites cross the sky. We went to bed at 9 pm, and we heard a pack of coyotes howling throughout the night.

The next morning after breakfast, we hiked a very nice trail from 9 am to 1 pm. That was a round trip distance of 7 miles. There was not much elevation change on the trails he chose. When we came to a place where we would have to go up a steep incline, we turned around and returned to the trailhead. Jason was very nice to choose trails that I could handle.

Saturday was a beautiful day for hiking. There was a cloud cover all day, and the temperature ranged from 45 degrees in the morning to 72 degrees at the end of our hike. I was especially impressed with the variety of Fall wildflowers in the park. Also, there were only 4 tents in the camping area, and we met only one other group on the trails. Just wonderful.

After we had been on the road home about 15 minutes, it started raining and rained for 2 hours. But there was no rain on us in the park. I was amazed that I was able to walk 7 miles. Of course, I walked slowly, but I walked. It was great!

GENIUS OR INSANITY?

I am a little slow on the uptake, but eventually I usually catch the clues. While down in Houston, it finally dawned on me that Be and I own a CLUNKER. When we bought a second car, we kept the CLUNKER because we could get almost nothing for a 1990 GMC van with 240,000 miles and no air conditioning. Besides, we needed a utility vehicle. But I decided to check out the Cash-for-Clunkers offer when we got back to Abilene.

There started to be more and more alerts that the Obama money was running out. I figured that we had missed our opportunity, but decided to call Toyota anyway because there is a salesman there that we trust. Then I ended up in the hospital! Did that deter us? Us, two of the most financially conservative people in the world? Of course not.

Today we put a down payment on a new Toyota truck without even going to the Toyota dealership. We called Rick and asked him to see what he could work out trading in our van on a small (cheap) pickup. He came back with $4500 for our van, $500 from Toyota, and $100 they get paid to dispose of the old car which they pass on to us. That is, a $5100 discount. Over the phone we put down a deposit, and they started looking for such a truck since they did not have one in stock. We are getting a new Toyota truck for a little more than $14,000. Genius or insanity? We will see, but the deed is done. Can you believe it? We do not even know the brand of the pickup or the color (but the color will probably be white or silver), but it is a four cylinder engine and has air conditioning.

Let the kudos or catcalls begin!

Am I Really Home?

When I headed for M D Anderson near the end of May, I took a "Nazarite" vow. I did not take any instrument to shave with. So my beard grew and grew and grew. Following is the evidence. The final photo shows that it is great to be home. By the way, I did not drink any alcohol either.

A quick update on my situation: We came home immediately after my second round of chemo was finished; we have an appointment back at MDA on August 21, conditional on my blood counts being satisfactory; I have to go to the hospital every day for an infusion of anti-fungal medicine.

Twitter is a wonderful thing for our family. I love the way it is working for us.

Flexibility

It appears that one must remain flexible in getting treatment for cancer. Our instructions were to come to M. D. Anderson every evening at 7:00 pm for an infusion of Ambisome, an anti-fungal medicine. The process would take about 3 hours each time.

But everything has to be pre-approved by our insurance or there is a chance I would have to pay the full amount for the treatment. So we started following up on the pre-approval process Thursday afternoon. The person helping us was on top of it, and submitted request right away. On Friday afternoon, the person helping us called and said that the request was sent for investigation by the insurance company, but Friday was a holiday so everyone was out of the office. Therefore no approval would come before Monday. We started calling everyone we could think of to get help. Finally we called the nurses station in the ward where I had been for the last three weeks. They knew how to get in touch with a doctor. They called back in a few minutes and said the doctor had ordered a pill to be taken orally, that insurance would definitely pay for it, and we could pick it up at the M. D. Anderson pharmacy. We drove up to the hospital and picked up the pills, and went by the place I was to take the infusions and told them I would not be coming in for any of the appointments they had me scheduled for.

This method of treatment may not be as effective as the infusions, but it surely is more convenient. Now I take a pill in about 5 seconds instead of driving, infusing, and driving for about 4 and 1/2 hours. We should find out Wednesday when I finally see the clinic doctor how much damage has been done by this change, but I an expecting there to be NO damage. I think the doctors were just being very cautious. We shall see.

At any rate, one must remain flexibile. Monday I will have some blood tests to see how my counts are doing. In the meantime, I am doing some walking, and trying to get back to a more normal life. It sure is nice to walk from one room to another. We are really enjoying visiting with Tinker and Betty.

God is good.