Just trying to relax a bit before the craziness of the two oldest kids' CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) basketball tournament which starts next week. As it is DD has a CYO game tonight, a Town game tomorrow morning and a CYO game tomorrow night while oldest son has a Town game tomorrow morning (same time as DD) and a CYO game on Sunday. As a non-Catholic it strikes me odd that the Catholic league would have a game on a Sunday but I digress.

My brother and father both took off for the Daytona 500 leaving me here to hold down the fort. I hope it rains on the bastards all weekend. :P

Had to shave "the boys" for my recent surgery. I'm just sittin' around watching the hair grow back.

My 1993 300e still has the same battery I installed new on Feb 12 of 2000, thats over 10 years old now. How could it last so long? I do nothing but drive it 3 miles a day and park it in a garage at night. Cold Kansas it is... Battery life of 10 years is unheard of.

Wind blowing like crazy all night long. Two wrought iron chairs from the front porch made their way into the side yard; bedroom floor upstairs was bouncing (and not from anything involving me and Darling Wife :P); and the dogs were frantic when I took 'em out in it this morning.

Trying to get a urine sample from the the girl dog Emmy (she has crystals) - slid a bowl under her as soon as she squatted; as soon as she stood back up, the bowl got airborne (thank goodness I was upwind!).

Harassing the IT guys to finally fix my laptop (keyboard died Monday - gotta dock it or plug in an external keyboard and mouse to use it) since I'm headed for Guadalajara at some insanely early hour Monday. Schtuff is hitting the fan on the current transfer, so I get to go play the bad guy and kick some CM butt. Oh goody.

On a brighter note, Short Alaskan Mate of Twin Brother is stopping by this evening, and bringin' her mom (she's in town visiting Hopkins, may be doing post-grad work). She's a sweetheart, so looking forward to seeing her.

Ma should actually be coming home today (been planned for "tomorrow" all week long). She's been having some pretty fierce headaches, and the docs haven't nailed down exactly why. Been getting shaky hands, too. The one seizure she had might actually have been one of many - most to mild to cause outward symptoms, but maybe contributing to her fatigue. And her short term memory had a switch flipped this week - from "occasionally spotty" to utterly shot.

For instance - she's been afraid to use a phone for weeks. LOVES talking to people if you thrust a live phone up to her ear, but can't get past initial dial/answer/say hello unless we force it. Darling Wife went so far as to put her/me/Ed/Twin Brother on speed dial, and make sticky labels for each of us - so all Ma has to do is push and hold the Ed button to call him. Still scares her.

Last night, 5 minutes after Darling Wife walked in from the hospital (20 minutes after leaving Ma's bedside) Ma calls. Woot! She used her phone! Wanted Darling Wife to look up some Baltimore politician from the 40's who had something to do with some crooked road project. NO clue what prompted the request, but OK.

15 minutes later, Ma calls again. She had no recollection of having called before, no idea who the Baltimore politician was, or why she would have asked about him.

Trying to figure out what is causing the new stuff has revealed that Ma's got a new tumor, in her cerebellum. Might be causing shakiness, but neurologist says some of the symptoms don't fit. Scar tissue (from radiation) is worse (expected), could be causing the seizures, maybe the headaches. LMD has spread, but no where near as much as expected. Could be contributing to everything.

So the short term plan is to add a second seizure medicine, bump Ma from tylenol to vicodin for the headaches (if controlling the seizures doesn't stop them), and hope her blood is ready to do a round of chemo early next week.

Doc Oh described Ma as "fragile" yesterday - but we're not quite accepting that term yet. She's still feisty, she's still laughing, she's still cracking jokes. Guess what we've settled on is that "fragile" means her veins are tissue paper from the steroids, so extra care is needed for blood draws. Her blood is like water from the thinners, so she's gonna bruise if you breathe heavily in her direction. Her medicine cocktails are so interactive that timing and sequence of giving them matters.

Day by day, trying to make the best of everything.

Now that's the right attitude.

Hats off to you and yours.

RamonaJim- still on our list of thoughts and prayers....hats off to you guys for the great care Ma and Ed are receiving. Dealing with 40MPH winds with gusts at 50MPH I almost got slammed into a building this morning walking into work....glad I'm not flying today....
Wish everyone here a great weekend and remember Spring is on the way jut 15 days til we turn the clocks ahead. Sunday I get to learn how to change a tire....yeah...

51 minutes to Friday here in Guadalajara, so I'm hereby declaring it close enough.

Wrapping up another day of trying to figger out WTH we've done to screw up data transfer to our new CM, and Darling Wife pops up on instant messenger.

DW: You there?
Me: for another couple minutes - driver here soon.
DW: gotta haul Ma to the ER
DW: shoulder pain is back, she's throwing up again, Doc Oh says to take her in
Me: ****


That was 5 hours ago. Been able to talk to her once since then (cell coverage sucks mightily at the ER and here in my hotel room). Sounds like, best case, another round of tests, blood work, head scratching, and "could be this, that, something else, combinations of the above, or something we haven't even thought about but it isn't shutting any major systems down so take two aspirin and call Doc Oh in the morning."

Worst case runs the gamut from pulmonary embolism to heart attack to brain bleed to tumor growth to LMD spread to gawd only knows what.

And I'm sitting in a ****ing hotel 3,000 miles away.

Not being able to fix the things that hurt the people I love has ALWAYS been damn near impossible for me to deal with. I've (mostly) learned to accept that I simply can't fix some things. Being able to stand close, look into Meridythe's eyes, hold her when she needs it - these things I do for her have been MY crutches, the tools I use to get past not being able to make the hurt go away for her.

I want to be there for her. I need to be there for her for myself.

16 hours until I leave. Every available flight that would have gotten me out of here earlier wound up taking longer to get me home, so staying with my original flights makes sense. Even though sitting here tonight, going through the motions in the factory in the morning, waiting for take off seems impossible right now. I need to be moving, getting closer to home, taking some action other than trying to sleep.

Sorry to hear this R/J... :( Best wishes and prayers for all of you.

Ditto, Jim. :( Continued thoughts and prayers.

Since we're on the subject, they're starting hospice care for my uncle (65 yo, former Navy pilot-"Fonzie"). Lung cancer (non-smoker) spread to his ribs and now to his brain and none of the tumors are responding to the chemo anymore. The VA never found the source of his decade of persistent back pain until they did a CT scan four years ago and discovered the tumor in his lung, before that they just attributed the pain to his aircraft carrier launches and landings. So the cancer had a pretty good head start. I was holding out hope. :( I wish I could visit more often, but he's up at the VA hospital in Maine. The brain tumor is really starting to wreak havoc. He doesn't recognize my father all of the time anymore, and he visits every 4-5 days. They have always been very close. He had an incredible mind, very detailed as mechanical engineers are.

He is an eccentric, never had a "real" job after he got out of the military. His thought was people bust their a$$es their whole lives to retire at 70 when they're too old to enjoy it. His plan, which he followed through on, was to enjoy himself until he turned 55 when he would get himself a job (got a consulting job for a major power-generating firm and would fly all over the U.S. getting new power plants up and running in addition to troubleshooting at other plants). Considering how things have turned out, that was a pretty fortuitous decision.

His dream as a kid was to fly helicopters. He joined the Navy after college with the hopes of doing just that. He finished first in his flight class and was told that he would become a fixed wing pilot and spent his time flying A-7E's off the USS John F. Kennedy. He retired from the Navy and joined the ME National Guard to pursue his original dream of flying helicopters, which he did. He had battled with back pain, which eventually became too much, so he hung up his flight suit.

He spent his winters in the FL Keys, doing repairs in marinas in return for dockage and beer. He was very frugal and made some good investments over the years so money was never an issue for him. He built a 3500 sq.ft. lakeside home in central Maine on some property that he and my father owned. And everyone with a lake house should have a submarine so he built his own one-man sub (which was chronicled in several New England newspapers over the years).

The AP released a summarized version.
He was a big beer drinker. Never before noon, though. :rolleyes: He's had a kegerator for 30 years. As an individual he was in the Top 10 of Maine Distributor's overall sales of kegs of Busch Light (which probably has as much to do with the Busch Light as it does my uncle).

He had his flaws but he was an incredibly loyal friend to many, would do anything to help anyone out and even though he didn't really like kids, was always great to my brother, sister and I and even put up with my kids for all the big holiday meals spending far more time at our house than I would have expected him to. Christmas '08 he spent four hours in the backyard with my oldest son, who shares the same name, showing him how to use his new telescope. My uncle has a big, electronic gyro-controlled one that must be 20" across, so he had a lot to show my son.

Of course, being the detail oriented person that he is, his gravestone is ready to go. In case you can't read it, below the name is the inscription is A7-E ECHO DRIVER "OUTA BEER-GOTTA GO." It'll be sad once he passes on, but it's almost sadder to see him the way he is right now.

http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z...nkee/TTH-1.jpg

That is one hell of an excellent story Swamp - thank you so much for sharing it.

And congratulations for being the kinda guy that can appreciate real people no matter what form they might take.... sounds like your uncle is an awesome human that many folks might have written off as being 'quirky.'

Thanks, Jim. And "quirky" might be generous to some. ;) He was certainly well-known, if not infamous, in central ME. He had a crane parked in his front yard, with a couple hand-built extensions, so that he could fly a car-dealer sized American flag from it. One thing I've always found kind of funny, he was born in Bangor (as was my father since we used to have our own growing facilities up there), has lived in ME for almost 35 years, served as a police officer, firefighter and town alderman but is still considered a flat-lander because he grew up in CT. Two years ago he even re-engineered and oversaw the reconstruction of the lake dam which had been the root cause of spring flooding every year for decades. On balance, he's probably done more good for the town than bad to it. :)

He and my mother had their issues over the years when he and my father got together. Usually beverage consumption related. But he always knew how to get her back on good ground. He was always well-intentioned, even if misguided.

I hereby relinquish my title of Emperor of Beer to Swamp's Uncle. :D

Hang tight, my 'Man. The title will be yours again. ;)

Swamp, the next one I throw back will be in honor of your uncle....:o only wish that I could crack one open for him too. Growing up in a military household, I have a certain appreciation for quirky ret. military...Here's to you Tom!!:beer::beer:

RJ. sorry to hear of that news, gotta be even worse being so far away. Wishing for the best.

I'm just getting ready to send wife and youngest daughter to Vegas for two weeks (she will be doing acupuncture to assist IVF process) which leaves me with the 5 and 6 yo's, a list of babysitters (fortunately I mostly work evenings) and a full tank of gas...oh yeah, and a bunch of seeds to start, which will be a good sized project for us this week...

Thanks, B. Best of luck over the next two weeks! That ought to keep you out of trouble. :eek:

Re: your wife, since you brought it up and didn't specify.:) Is she performing acupuncture to help someone else going through the IVF process or having it done to herself?