Month: April 2014

Mr C continues to eat everything in sight and do most of his normal things. He is going to have a nontrivial chunk of cancer removed from his head on Thursday. The little cancer doc – the only remaining cancer doc – since the big cancer doc told Mr C byebye – will be doing the surgery in his office. Mr C will whine a little bit, but he has had this done lots of times.

After my great day of no worries yesterday – today, I started to worry about the infection that started exactly 3 weeks ago. I worry that it isn’t gone. Just hiding. Waiting to spring out again. There is something I can do. I can monitor his temperature like a mother hen.

Enjoy Every Sandwich: Today’s offering will be turkey, lots of cheese and cranberry sauce on a fine buttery croissant for the patient. Turkey, a hint of cheese and lots of mustard on whole wheat pita for the caregiver.

Great fireworks last night. I didn’t begin to do them justice. Heck, I didn’t even set up the tripod. So, I can not complain.

I will complain about winter. I am tired of winter. Today to took the winter liner out of my raincoat and I stored my fuzzy bathrobe away. And my heaviest leggings have been banished to the back of the sock drawer. I’ll just be cold. Enough already, Mother Nature.

Another good day – that is two in a row. We are on a roll.

I took the day off from worry. And taxes. I was going to go shopping. But, I went to the grocery first. Ended up getting a chicken, sweet potatoes, and cauliflower. So, I cooked. The chicken spent an hour in the oven. I did yoga while the chicken was roasting. After 60 minutes – me and the chicken were both done. Mr C ate hardy. I exercised restraint.

Carlton took his bike for a ride today.

Fireworks tonight. Cherry Blossom Festival Fireworks.

I looked into renting a real photo-scanner. Realistically, I have more prints than I can scan the way I was doing it last summer before Carlton’s recurrence. I can rent a quality Kodak “professional grade” photo scanner for about $300 for 3 days. That might be about what it would cost to send everything to India to be scanned. But, I like the idea of doing it in my kitchen.  The scanner rental folk have been scanning medical documents for years. I think they are legit.

Enjoy Every Sandwich: Today’s Sandwich. Turkey with guacamole on English muffins. With lentil soup for Mr. C. Gotta pack in those calories, you know.

Spring seems to be hiding. But, it is a still a wonderful day in the neighborhood. Mr C made huge steps towards returning to his old perky self.

He spent most of the day out of bed. He ran the vacuum. He tinkered with his bike. He went for a little walk. He went for a bus ride. He is Carlton again.

Enjoy every sandwich – today’s sandwich was tuna on a nice croissant for the patient. On a pathetic 100% whole wheat pita for the dieter. With a nice cup of tomato soup. The patient got a big dollop of sour cream in his tomato soup. I got Tabasco.

It is a wonderful day in the neighborhood – except the Nats lost their home opener.

OK, put your aloha shirts back in the closet. Mr C’s funeral is on hold for now!

Today we saw 3 of his doctors. The cancer surgeon told him that he had done all he could. The radiologist was happy with the results of the PET scan. (The radiologist and I both thought that his cancer had progressed much farther that it has.) The radiologist really can not do anymore either – but he wants to see Carlton again in 6 months.

Carlton also saw his dermatologist. That doctor is going to do some “routine” skin cancer surgery. Yesterday, he saw his primary care doctor. She is trying to get is blood counts back in line. I think they got wonky as the result of the infection he had.

It has been suggested that he see a medical oncologist – but the only thing those doctors do is chemo and stem cell transplants. Carlton isn’t going that way. And, there is certainly no evidence that indicates he would benefit from either treatment.

I believe his short term prognosis is fine, longer term not so. But, I haven’t a clue what the time frame is. Nobody is willing to hazard a guess.

I intend to do everything I can to help him get his energy levels back up and to watch for any recurrence of the infection. And, the cancer, we will just have to wait and see what happens with the “tiny” areas suggestive of metastasis mentioned in the PET Scan report.

Back into “enjoy every sandwich” mode, until the next crisis.

Life is good.

◊Spring flowers are popping out

◊The Airness is back, and they didn’t wipe the disk.

◊Mr C continues to eat and regain his strength.

Life is good today. Seeing three doctors tomorrow.

Ah, the joys of modern medicine. A couple of PET Scan CDs arrived via snail mail today. Did any of the docs call or email – nope. Seems to me, there are some areas of concern. But the brain, liver, kidneys are OK. So, I am hoping that if we can get him eating and if his energy comes back, we can get some more good times for Mr C. We will see what the doctors say tomorrow and Thursday.

Now, about my computer which is still at the apple store. When I pick it up it will have had the disk wiped and Mavericks installed. With any kind of luck at all, my time machine backup is good. If I were not dealing with Carlton, I would reinstall all my software and just pull data from the backup. But, I am not sure that I am mentally up to that. SO, I am thinking about either doing a complete restore from my backup or and I think this is doable – fire up migration assistant and just “migrate” my data, programs and settings.

Input please. Thanks! My time machine backup has mavericks