morrowlife

Here’s the top of LRN4’s dresser, featuring pictures of the kids when they were a bit younger. Some younger than others. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken on August 1st, and part of my famous Las Vegas series.

No post yesterday. I stayed up late working on the app again. I am so close to releasing it. I have about seven more open bugs that I have to fix before it goes to Apple. Then I get the screenshots done, write some advertising text, put in whatever graphics are missing, and submit it.  Then a few days go by, it gets released, and the big bucks start rolling in.

At least I assume that’s how it will end up. Probably.

LRN4 is doing pretty well today. She got her third chemo treatment of five this morning. Her strength is reasonably good and her energy level is reasonably high. She tried a bottle of [amazon asin=B00BKNWGQ2&text=chocolate Ensure] this morning and actually found it palatable. Her doctors have been recommending it for quite some time to pump up her calories and protein and she’s been resisting it because of very negative experiences with the stuff and her terminally ill grandfather many years ago. I don’t know whether the Ensure has changed or LRN4 is having a Green Eggs and Ham moment, but I do know that she needs the stuff and she’s getting it.  I’d really like her weight to stabilize and start going back up to a healthy level. Yes, I know ending the chemo will also probably do that naturally, but I don’t think we can wait for that anymore.

I’ve started giving her micafungin every day.  A home healthcare nurse came over yesterday with an [amazon asin=B009UFR9XM&text=IV pole], some IV tubing, a bunch of flushes and other supplies, and several bags of micafungin.  She showed me how to infuse it and now I’m on my own. I don’t know whether LRN4 should be nervous or not, of course, but I’m now both a certified PICC line flusher and a highly-trained IV giver. Not to mention a prolific pill hander-outer. Three times a day since the end of May!

And that’s about it for today. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: butter tart battle!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s LRN4’s partially-eaten Labor Day 2013 breakfast. I think that was the best waffle recipe I’ve ever tried. They were light, fluffy, and delicious. On the downside, they were made with yeast and required an hour to rise. But it was worth it. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken on Monday morning, and part of my famous Food and Las Vegas series.

Oh, and check out that nice little pile of pills there hiding behind the [amazon asin=B00CHUK8IA&text=Cool Whip]. She’s taking them by the handful these days.

No posts for a few days. I hope my Loyal Readers haven’t been too worried about us. I’ve just been working on my app. LRN4 is doing fairly well. She appears to have stopped losing weight since she stopped taking all the chemo drugs. For a few days, anyway.

Let’s see, the last post was on Wednesday. On Thursday, we went to the City of Hope for LRN4’s bone marrow biopsy and to see our doctor there. The visit went well and the biopsy was less painful than the last couple have been. We got the news on Friday that while the leukemic cells have been greatly reduced, they’re not completely gone yet, so we’re moving forward with another round of chemo this week. LRN4 had the first dose this morning. She went off the Nexavar on Thursday as well, but is back on it today, albeit at half the previous dosage. It’s kind of doing brutal things to her, but it just might save her life, so we’re sticking with it. Don’t know when she can quit that one again. The good news about this week’s chemo is that the leukemia is sufficiently weakened that the California doc decided to shorten the course from ten down to five days. We’ll take any break we can get.

The extreme weight loss has made LRN4 pretty weak, a bit unsteady on her feet, and kind of shaky. We’re exploring opportunities to help her gain the weight back, including the dreaded Ensure and/or Boost products. She’s been very reluctant to take those because she hates how they taste, but we’re kind of running out of options. She really needs to get as much strength back as she can. So we got three different samples today and she’ll start trying them out tomorrow.

Otherwise, all systems are go, our spirits are relatively high, and we’re pressing forward regardless.

LRN2 is home! He hitched a ride with LRN4’s brother and his wife, who came to visit us on Friday. They stayed until Sunday morning, along with LRN29 and her husband. So all four siblings were here. It was a fun visit.

But my favorite part of all that is that LRN2 is here. He’s looking really good and sounding really good. We’re working on some medical care for him and hoping to improve his employment prospects again. There’s something out there for him – I’m sure of that. Welcome home, LRN2!

I’m really making progress on the app. There are still several bugs and a couple of features I need to add before it ships, but it’s getting really close. I’d say it’s definitely beta quality now and rapidly approaching releasability. LRN31 has provided extremely helpful feedback and is evangelizing the app among her teaching friends. Thanks, LRN31! You’re definitely getting a free copy when it’s released.

And it’s quite late yet again, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: lock-picking cockatoo!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a picture of the dashboard on our car at 4:33 this afternoon, August 28, 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Notice anything unusual, Loyal Readers? That’s right, it’s zero degrees Fahrenheit. Kind of cold for August in Vegas, huh? This Great Art was taken at a stoplight on our way home from LRN4’s medical appointment and grocery store run. Immediately after the shot, I rebooted the car, at which time the thermometer read 101. I think we may have a bit of a warranty issue. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Machinery and Las Vegas series.

I can’t help noticing the Microsoft logo there on the dash. Is this the moral equivalent of a bluescreen?

I also can’t help noticing the song that was playing. That’s right, I’m cool.

LRN4 is doing pretty well today. She continues to feel weak and look very thin. I checked out the Nexavar website today and noticed the warning that the drug may cause fatigue and weight loss – even anorexia in some cases. Fortunately, LRN4’s appetite is still there, but we may have a smoking gun to explain her current weakened, thin state. The good news is that she’ll probably start gaining the weight back and otherwise getting back to normal after she’s finished taking the drug. And if it helps her get into remission and stay there, it’ll definitely be worth it.

Made a little bit of progress on the app today. I feel like I keep going down rabbit holes, but I’m making slow progress. I spent some time working on making the report generation much more generic but kept running into reasons why I couldn’t do it. I think maybe I need to either refocus those efforts into smaller bits of the puzzle or just abandon them entirely and recognize that report-generating code is hard to make generic. There’s still more work to do on the emails, by the way. I need to figure out how to capture the recipient’s email address so it can be saved. I can do it the easy way or the clever way. Not quite sure how to do it the clever way, so easy may end up winning out tomorrow.

I don’t think I’ll get much more done tonight. I need to sleep so I’m safe to spend eight hours (or possibly much more) driving back and forth to Los Angeles.

That’s right, we’re going for a visit to the City of Hope tomorrow. We’ll see our doctor for a regular visit and LRN4 will get another bone marrow biopsy. We won’t know whether she’s in remission for at least a couple of days after that, so we’ll be anxious.

We also need to pick up a couple of prescriptions at Walgreen’s near the hospital and check our post office box. We don’t expect to be back on the road before about 5:00 PM, which is just about the worst possible time to be on the freeway leaving Los Angeles on the Thursday before a holiday weekend. So we might be moving extremely slowly. Or maybe we’ll be surprised and just sail home. But I’m not counting on that.

LRN2 is coming home on Friday! I can’t wait to see him again. I’m sure we’ll have a really nice time together. I don’t think he’s too excited about moving back in with us, but I’m hoping for the best and feeling good about it. He’s driving his car home and his stuff is hitching a ride with LRN4’s brother, who is coming with his wife to visit us for the holiday weekend. LRN29 and her husband are also coming, so all the brothers and sisters will be together. It ought to be a nice weekend.

And that’s about it for tonight.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: violent cupcake fight!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a yellow-pink rose. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken (surprise!) at the City of Hope’s rose garden, and part of my famous Garden series.

I’m out of rose pictures now. In fact, I may have used this one before (although I couldn’t find it after a quick search, so there’s at least a possibility it’s unique). Never fear, Loyal Readers, we’ll be back at the City of Hope in no time, unfortunately. In fact, we’re going back on Thursday, but just for a one-day trip. I’m a bit worried about the time of that trip, in fact.  This is a holiday weekend, and it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting out of there very early. LRN4 has another bone marrow biopsy scheduled, so if I was to guess our departure time, I’d say it’ll probably be about 4:00 PM. Possibly the worst time to leave on one of the worst days of the year. We expect a long, slow trip back home. We could always stay overnight with Betsy and Bob, I guess. I imagine the Friday morning traffic out of Los Angeles might be a bit better than the Thursday afternoon traffic. What do you think, Loyal Readers?

Plus, we have company coming on Friday afternoon, so we can’t be home too late that day. Thursday night’s probably the best for us.

Wonders of WordPress today, by the way. I didn’t get a post done on either Monday or Tuesday. I have an excuse! I’ve been working like a dog on my iOS app. Up Monday night until about 2:00 and Tuesday night until about 3:00. I seem to be the most productive after about 9:00 PM, for some reason. So when it’s crunch time, I like to just stay up late and get the work done. So I just didn’t blog.

But everything’s going pretty well for LRN4, so never fear, Loyal Readers. She’s still getting tired very easily and has been basically feeling kind of run down, but she reports this morning (Wednesday) that she’s quite a bit improved. I’m frankly a bit worried about how this next round of chemo will affect her. Maybe it’s just because she’s out of the hospital and away from the City of Hope this time, but she seems a bit weaker than after her previous chemo treatments. They say that stuff has a cumulative effect on a person and I can see what they’re talking about now. Plus, she’s still taking the Nexavar, which, according to their website, is known to cause serious weight loss and fatigue, along with the hand and foot pain she’s going through. We’re really hoping she can discontinue the Nexavar after taking it for two months. It has a pretty good chance of keeping her alive if it doesn’t make her completely evaporate first.

But she’s doing well, as I mentioned at the start of the previous paragraph. As well as can be expected, anyway. Just a little weak and extremely thin.

Made a pretty big breakthrough on the app on Tuesday. By the time I went to bed at 3:00 Wednesday morning, the app was generating a passable Student report. I wish I had a better eye for design so I could make it prettier, but the data are all there and I think the code I wrote can be reused fairly well. I probably need to move the reusable parts into a class of their own, I guess, but it’s otherwise in pretty good shape. My next task will be to make it save the report with a unique name, email it out, and then delete the report from the device to eliminate disk clutter. It’ll just regenerate reports whenever the user wants to see them; they take almost no time to produce and I don’t want to get into the overhead of searching for files when their shelf life is so short anyway.

And I need to get back to work, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: purse-snatching bear!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s one more rose from the City of Hope rose garden – behold the Bob Hope rose!  Slightly out-of-focus Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Garden series.

Wonders of WordPress today.  I meant to post on Friday night – really I did – but I was working on my app until about 1:00 on the morning and then I just went to bed without giving a single thought to my blog.  Sorry about that, Loyal Readers.

Friday was a pretty good day.  LRN4 felt pretty good all day and that’s really all that matters.  I made some significant progress on the iOS app, which is nice too.  Still lots left to do, sadly.  I still haven’t actually generated a report, but I have a lot of the infrastructure to do that set up.  Soon.  Maybe Saturday.  I’m trying to finish the iPhone-only infrastructure and then generate a single report.  The iPad, the additional reports, and the rest will come relatively easily after that, I suspect.

Visited with my brother-in-law Ken for a few minutes today.  I was returning his jumper cables and he was home from his most recent trip.  He and Melanie are coming over for dinner Saturday, which we’re looking forward to.

And that’s about it for today.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: aggressive raspberries!  This time, it’s the food itself that’s violent.

See you on Monday