morrowlife

Here’s a bunch of black pillars. With water running down them. Standing in a pool of water. Also dripping water all over the sidewalk. They were really cool. And look, there’s a building belonging to my alma mater there in the background! Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken today during our nice long walk, and part of my famous Garden and Statue series.

Yeah, I know it doesn’t look like a garden. Let’s call it a sculpture garden.

It was a very pleasant walk, by the way. We went through the park containing these pillars and then a few blocks down the street. On the way back, we stopped at Whataburger for lunch. Yum! It was really nice to get outside for a while and it was very pleasant just to be together. Also, it was a warm, sunny day!

We went to see the transplant doctor at 11:00 this morning. As predicted, there wasn’t really anything for us to learn. He believes a second stem cell transplant is our best bet at this point, even though it’s a relatively low probability thing. They’re willing to do it here, of course, but we asked if they had anything to offer that we can’t find at the City of Hope. They don’t. So unless our doctor at the CoH can’t get it approved by his committee, we’ll go back to California for transplant round two.

Oh, we did learn one thing today. The reason the DLI transplant isn’t an option for us is that the success rate for AML patients is negligible. That’s a pretty clear explanation, as far as I’m concerned.

We’re going back to see doctor number one early tomorrow morning for the review of the preliminary bone marrow biopsy results. Again, I don’t expect any surprises.

After the early morning visit, we have all the live long day to do . . . something. We don’t know what. We have to check out of the hotel by 11:00 in the morning and our flight out isn’t until 10:30 PM. So there’s a lot of time to kill. We still don’t know how we’ll kill it, but something will happen. I’m just happy to be together.

We had dinner tonight at Longhorn Steakhouse, one of LRN9’s company’s restaurants. In fact, we used the gift card he gave us last Christmas. The food and service were great and the price was certainly right. Thanks, LRN9! Highly recommended.

By the way, you can’t buy Darden gift certificates from Amazon. You can get them for just about any other national restaurant chain. What’s up with that, Amazon and/or Darden? I wanted to include a link here.

And it’s way past time bedtime. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: watch parakeet!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s Weeping Rock. It appears to be a rock that . . . umm . . . weeps. Maybe. I have no idea. But it looks nice.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken in Zion National Park last September, and part of my famous Hiking and Vacation series.

Okay, we weren’t technically in any shape to hike, but it is the trailhead for three pretty well-known trails and we could have hiked there. So it’s part of my famous Hiking series. Don’t hate me.

Another kind of frustrating day. Early this morning, LRN4’s nose started bleeding quite heavily and refused to stop. We went over to MD Anderson’s emergency room to have them take a look at her and see if there was anything they could do about it. There was. They decided it was due to low platelets, so they gave her some and she stopped bleeding. Sounds easy, no? Well, it took about six hours to get that done, and LRN4 was absolutely miserable the whole time. I guess she was in a fair amount of pain and it was kind of hard to breathe without being able to use her nose and with blood pouring down her throat. Not good.

The other cause for concern is that this is the first time she has spontaneously started bleeding. Her platelets were fairly low today, but they’ve been much lower before without bleeding. Are things getting worse for her or was this just a freak incident? Probably some of both, but we certainly hope it’s more of the latter. We really don’t want to go through that many more times.

So we got out of the emergency room at about 3:45 and then went up to the stem cell transplant center for our consultation, as mentioned yesterday. They were just trying to work us in, so we waited until about 5:45, at which time the nurse came in and told us they weren’t going to be able to get to us today. So we have an appointment at 11:00 tomorrow morning to try again. We don’t think they’ll have anything substantial to tell us, but we’ll go anyway. Maybe something good will come of it. We came all the way here for this, so we might as well go over there tomorrow and talk to them.

We can’t wait to go home on Thursday.

Did a tiny bit of work on the new app with LRN23 this evening. We’re trying to get the computational accuracy right. He and I both have a bit of homework to do and we’ll talk again tomorrow. I think we’re very close to submitting it to Apple, possibly before their holiday shutdown. It’ll be nice to get it out there for him.

Speaking of apps, I got an email from somebody who is hoping I’ll develop a Windows version of my  education app. I really don’t see that happening. I guess I should do a bit of market research and see if that’s the most profitable direction I could go. My current feeling is that I want to move more towards a server-based product, with clients for iOS and either OS X or a browser. Decisions!

And that’s about it for today. We want to go home! I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: spaghetti sculpture heist!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s an exciting nighttime view of the Healing Garden at our local hospital. Looks kind of abstract, huh? Well, it’s not. It was just dark. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken a few days ago at St. Rose Hospital, and part of my famous Garden and Las Vegas series.

Greetings from Houston, Texas! We got to the hotel at about midnight last night. We’re here for LRN4 to be checked out for the previously-mentioned clinical trial. Results are mixed so far. On the positive side, almost all of the people here have been excellent and provided speedy, courteous service. On the negative side, there were a couple of very long waits for service (2 – 2.5 hours each). On the very negative side, it looks like the clinical trial we came to be evaluated for isn’t really right for us. Turns out the drug is really intended as a way to get people into remission when existing drugs aren’t working. While they’re always hopeful that every new drug will help people get into a durable remission, that’s not really what they expect this one to do. So it doesn’t really do more than what we’re doing now.

The doctor told us he thinks our best current bet is a DLI transplant or maybe another stem cell transplant. We’re going to chat with one or two members of their transplant team tomorrow to see if they have any suggestions. If we get another transplant, we’ll definitely do it at the City of Hope. Unless, that is, there’s some reason why they can do it here and they can’t do it there. We’ll just have to wait and see. The great news here is that we’re not in immediate danger, so we have plenty of time to find our way to a cure.

Here’s a note I put on Facebook this afternoon:

Well, it looks like this clinical trial probably isn’t for <LRN4>. She’s just too darn healthy – since her current regimen is keeping her in remission at least for now, the trial’s drug isn’t likely to improve things substantially. Turns out it’s not the cure we came here hoping for – just another way to get back into remission for people who need that.

They’re doing a bone marrow biopsy in a few minutes and we’ll meet with the doctor here on Thursday morning to go over the results just to make sure there’s really no leukemia in there, so the current answer could change, but we don’t think it will.

As sad as I am that MD Anderson isn’t proposing anything that will get us to a cure right now, I’m delighted that we’re able to keep <LRN4> in remission with her current therapy at home. Being too healthy for the trial has its upside. It’s way better to be at home.

We live to fight another day!

That’s what’s going on with LRN4. Some good, some not so good. Either way, it was a twelve-hour day at the clinic, which was more than enough.

No work the last couple of days. My Loyal Readers will just have to forgive me for that. We should have a bunch of time on our hands tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday, so maybe I’ll find the time to get a few things done. Count on it, Loyal Readers!

And that’s about it for tonight. We’re doing fine and spirits are high, or at least medium. So I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: undocumented elephant!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s our table full of Santas. All ready for Christmas. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPad-cam, taken on December 7, 2013 at home in Las Vegas, and part of my famous Event and Las Vegas series.

Christmas is an event, right?

Well, LRN4 is in the hospital, as predicted. We called our doctor on Wednesday morning and told him what was going on. He told us to go to the emergency room. So we did. The hospital was really busy – they had to keep her in the emergency room for about 12 hours before they could find her a room – and the nurses were quite busy, but they always give nice service there. They started the antibiotics flowing right away.

She had another feverish night last night. We’ve been concerned that the antibiotics might not be working. It appears that things are starting to improve by now, though. She was running a bit of a fever this afternoon again, so they gave her some Tylenol and it went away quickly. As of 10:00 this evening when I left the hospital, it wasn’t back. The rash continues to spread, but it seems to be fading where it first appeared. So what does that mean? I don’t know, But they still tell us they think we’ll be out of there by Sunday at the latest.

We were delighted to see Dr. Lipman, our old infectious disease specialist. He’s a really nice guy and an excellent doctor. We feel very confident that he’ll get LRN4 fixed up and do it in time for our Houston trip if it can be done.

Made some additional arrangements this evening with the airline for next week’s trip. We’re going on Spirit, which appeared to be cheaper than Southwest when LRN4 made the reservations. However, the price just went up by $200 when we prepaid for our carryon luggage and seat assignments. Next time, we’ll go on Southwest, I suspect. They don’t charge extra for everything under the sun and their planes are a bit more comfortable to boot.

Little work yesterday and today. I’m waiting for LRN23 to define some test cases for the app I wrote for him, after which we’ll finish testing and submit. I’m trying to get that done before Apple’s Christmas shutdown. I got a bunch of information on my booth at the February conference today and LRN4 and I spent some time brainstorming how we want to set it up. So there’s a bit of progress there.  We’re planning to do some layouts and finalize our plans very soon. I still have a ton of testing and documentation to get done. The deadline for a working app and a draft user’s manual is still the end of this month.  Busy, busy, busy!

Lots of other things to do while LRN4 is in the clink. We got our Christmas cards all addressed (I printed labels today), return addressed (used labels we already had), stuffed, stamped, and licked. Actually, LRN4 did all the work except printing the labels and carrying them back and forth to the hospital. And I hepped! Tomorrow, LRN2 and I are wrapping all the out-of-town presents and sending them out. While I’m at it, I think I’ll wrap the gifts I have for LRN4 too. Might as well have something under the tree, huh?

And I’ll head for bed and leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: jaw-dislocating hamburger! This time, it was the food that committed the violence.

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a teeny little man-made pile of rocks right in the middle of a whole bunch of big rocks. Plus, some added bonus running water! See if you can spot the rock pile there, Loyal Readers. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken during our visit to Zion and Bryce National Parks in September of this year, and part of my famous Vacation series.

Pretty good day. Went to the automotive upholstery shop for about the fifth time today. They still don’t have the right material. He called another supplier while I was there, but the right guy wasn’t there. So he sent me back home yet again. On the positive side, he’s knocking forty bucks off of the price. If and when he eventually does the work, that is.

LRN4 is doing okay today. Her infection doesn’t seem to have started healing yet. Antibiotics take time to work. We just need them to start working Real Soon Now. She needs to start healing up right now. Her fever has been kind of bouncing up and down all day, going along with some chills. Hold on a second, I’ll check it right now.

I’m back. It’s not good – 102.8 degrees. I’m calling the doctor tomorrow morning. If she needs to be in the hospital for a few days to get the infection under control, we really need to get that going now. We’re still scheduled to fly to Houston late Sunday night. It won’t work all that well for me to go by myself.

Did a little bit of work on the app for my brother today. I think we have it pretty much buttoned up and ready to submit to Apple. He’s taking a little time to test the actually functionality – it would be really embarrassing for him to release a cool little tool for people in his industry, only to have them find out it doesn’t work right. That goes from cool to very damaging, reputation-wise. So he’s running some test cases. After that, I think we’ll submit it. It’s been fun working on it.

Now I need to update my business website to kind of split it into three different parts – tools for forensic medical people, tools for teachers, and freelance iOS/Android development. I’ve been looking at options and I just need to dig in and get it done. I feel like I’m trying to do too many things at once, and I’m pretty sure it will come back to bite me.  Maybe one of them will take off and it will be clear where my post-Lockheed career is going. Or maybe not.

We just learned that our California doctor’s father died last week. Very sorry to hear that. We spend so much time with these people that they really start to feel like family. Our doctor is a young guy, so I wonder if it was an expected thing. We’ll probably never find out, which is okay.

And it’s past bedtime (again), so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: Samurai sword-wielding, knife-throwing shrimp attack!

See you tomorrow.