morrowlife

Here’s a bunch of metal chairs out on the lawn here at the City of Hope.  At night.  I noticed them out there on my way back to the car at 9:20 PM after a day at the hospital with LRN4.  Great art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken on May 29, 2013, and part of my exclusive Statue series.

Claim: a large enough group of chairs together at the same time at night constitutes a statue.  Dissenting opinions may be registered in the comments section below and will be ignored.  They’re a statue.

The happiest day of the year is here!  Hence, the Very Special Saturday Edition of the blog.  Happy birthday to me!  It was a very pleasant day – sunny and warm but not too hot.  We spent a pretty substantial part of the day sitting in our plastic Adirondack chairs in the shade of the front porch reading from and writing to our computers and maybe a book or two.  That may sound a little dull, but it was an outstanding afternoon.  Trust me on this.

While we were out on the porch, we also took the opportunity to open my extravagant gifts and the numerous cards I received from family and friends all over the world.  What a haul!

Actually, I received a lovely miniature [amazon asin=B0000645YL&text=food processor] from LRN4 and a delightful [amazon asin=1599550423&text=book] from my kind parents-in-law, signed by the author, who is a friend of theirs.  I read a few of the poems already and they’re really touching.  Thanks for that great book, in-laws!  And thanks for the cool food processor, LRN4!

LRN4 already checked out the food processor for me.  She made me a mango, apricot, banana, and coconut milk smoothie.  It was delicious.  I see the road ahead paved with smoothies.  She also made me an outstanding devil’s food cake with powdered sugar instead of frosting.  I’ve had two pieces – lunch and dinner – and can safely say it’s a perfect cake.

We were supposed to go to my cousin Betsy’s for dinner, presents, and cake, but she called last night and canceled, as mentioned yesterday.  So more cake and presents on Monday!

Oh, did I mention to my Loyal Readers that I’m an Amazon affiliate?  If they click on any of my Amazon links and then buy anything from Amazon during that session, I get a little kickback and it costs them nothing.  At least that’s what happens if I managed to set up the links correctly.  Not that I’m asking anyone to do that, of course.  Just thought I’d mention it as a matter of passing interest.

Okay, LRN4’s condition.  Unchanged.  She’s feeling good and doing well.  She still has a long way to go to build back up here strength, so we need to start walking a bit more often.  Heaven knows I also have a long way to go to build up my strength and build down my fat.  We did walk back and forth to the clinic again today, but that was it.  We also made it to the post office and grocery store (had to buy that devil’s food cake mix) and that was about it.  Blood test tomorrow to see how LRN4’s levels are, followed by another blood test and doctor visit on Monday to see what he’s going to do about it and possibly find out the results of Thursday’s bone marrow biopsy.  That’ll be a very important day and I must say we’re both just a bit nervous about it.  Cautiously optimistic might be a better term.

Welcome to new Loyal Reader Tonya – her name is immortalized over there on the right as Loyal Reader Number 31!  Use your newfound fame for good, LRN31.

And that’s about it for today.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: ice cream assault!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a statue in the waiting room where LRN4 is getting her daily treatments now.  Definitely indoor art.  Kind of reminds me of a harp.  Or maybe a bone.  Or possibly a piece of wood with holes in it.  Or maybe it’s a metaphor for tranquility.  What do you think it represents, Loyal Readers?  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken here at the City of Hope, and part of my famous Statue series.

I like statues.  And there are a lot of them around here.

Pretty good day for LRN4.  We took a very long walk this evening and managed to include a couple of trips up and down about 30 steps, which is really good for her.  Doesn’t do me much bad either.

We visited LRN4’s doctor this afternoon.  He did the long-awaited bone marrow biopsy, for which we should get the results on Monday or Tuesday.  Nails being bitten.  He has also started dealing with something that concerns us a bit – her white cell and neutrophil counts are both down a pretty serious amount.  There could be various explanations: she could have a viral infection, so they drew more blood to check for that; there could be something going wrong with the transplant and today’s biopsy should give us insight into that possibility; and it could just be what her body is going to do – the doctor has another patient whose levels rose at first, dropped down pretty far, and finally went back up about five months later.  So we’ll see.  In the meantime, we wait.  Not happy about that.

If she has a virus, she may have to go back into the hospital for a couple of days.  That’s no fun, but not a really big deal.  The big downside of that possibility is that we might get kicked out of the village for those two days.  The doctor says it might not happen, but we do need to be prepared for that event.  I would probably go back to the Residence Inn, where there’s a full-size refrigerator; we have a bunch of food in the fridge that I would hate to lose, and the Residence Inn is the only place I could keep it all.

In any case, things will be fine, but I’m really getting comfortable here and would hate to leave and then come right back.  I’m also not happy at all with what seems like possibly a setback for LRN4.  Stay tuned.

Otherwise, situation normal.  We spent all day on campus.  It was peaceful and relaxing, although it took us three trips to the clinic to get everything done.  They gave LRN4 her anti-fungal IV and drew blood at 8:00 and then called her back at about 11:00 for platelets in preparation for the biopsy.  And then we went back to 1:30 for the biopsy, virus check, and chat with the doctor.  They’ll check her blood again on Sunday, followed by our Monday doctor visit.

Welcome back to LRN16, who reports she’s reading the blog again.  Good to have you back!

Okay, that’s it for today.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: Del Taco stabbing!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s an ancient Egyptian head that’s currently in the fascinating collection at Bryn Athyn, rather than in ancient Egypt.  Looks like one of those mummy masks to me.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Statue series.

Great day!  We didn’t do anything.  LRN29 came up from San Diego again this week.  She had little to no trouble finding us in the Village and we had a very nice visit.  She went to LRN4’s morning appointment with her.  I walked over to the clinic with them and then went back to the Village.  Had a chance to chat with LRN3 during the walk back, which was nice.  Spent the morning working.  LRN4 and LRN29 were gone for about two and a half hours because they didn’t get called in from the waiting room for quite a while.  Just when I was starting to wonder whether they were ever coming back, they came back.  So it went well.

And that was about it for the day.  LRN4 and I hung around the apartment all day.  We never even took a walk.  Our normal walking time was occupied by LRN4’s remote attendance at an HOA board meeting that went a bit longer than she expected.  So we’ll have to try again tomorrow.

Which looks like it might be busy.  Our friends Danelle and Jack are scheduled to come see us.  They live in Lardville and we were pretty close.  It’ll be fun to get together again.  Apparently, they’ve been vacationing in Utah and Nevada and they’re on their way back home.  Hopefully, swinging by the hospital won’t be too far out of their way.

I got what appears to be a really good app idea from my niece Tonya the other day.  I’ve been discussing it with a few other family members, all of whom seem more or less enthusiastic about it (granted, some more than others).  I discussed it with LRN1 for a while today and it sounds like a relatively easy project, code-wise.  The challenges are in marketing it to a wide enough audience, which is nationwide and doesn’t read all the same publications or go to the same conferences – in fact, there are numerous publications and numerous conferences; addressing the security issues associated with the data that would be generated and stored on the device and potentially on one or more servers; and generating sufficient revenue from the product to justify what could possibly be an expensive marketing campaign.  In fact, it would be really great to find a way to generate recurring revenue from customers.  I’m not quite sure how that will happen, though.  Oh, and I also need somebody to generate some really compelling artwork.  For little to no money.  Still, I think there’s a lot of opportunity there and I definitely want to do it.  Might even be the first to market if I jump on it.

In fact, I’m thinking of getting LRN1 on board to work on the coding so I can concentrate on the business side.  That’s kind of ironic.  I retired early from LockMart so I could have fun coding, but I’m spending almost all my time working on business stuff (see also my work with my nephew John on his project, which could definitely be a full-time job but which I’m trying to keep to about half time for now, if possible).  However, I have a lot of recent experience in that area and it might end up being the fun part of the business for me after all.

Why do I want to keep my efforts with John to half time?  Because he and I believe the likely revenue stream is about half a head for the foreseeable future.  So I need to keep the other half of my time free to work on other projects.

There are two projects out there for me to actually code – my good old Morse Trainer app, which I think has the potential to return a few hundred to maybe a couple thousand dollars over its lifetime if and when I find a way to monetize it at all; and some potential work with LRN23, which sounds like fun but is currently completely undefined.

On the very positive side, I appear to have more work now than I have time to get to.  On the negative side, none of it is guaranteed to make me any money.  Back on the positive side, there are potentially plenty of dollars to be made from at least a couple of my projects.  Business is fun!

Let’s see, now . . . is there anything else today?  Umm . . . I suppose not.  We had a nice day, ate some outstanding meals, worked, relaxed, and enjoyed being together.

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: sausage-based bicycle attack!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s yet another interesting statue here at the City of Hope.  Birds!  Trailing . . . something . . . behind themselves.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Statue series.

Oops.  Right after I promised the entire family I’d give daily status reports on LRN4’s condition, I forgot.  So I’m using the Wonders of WordPress to backdate this post to Monday evening, even though it’s actually Tuesday morning now.  Think anyone will find out?  If you do, keep it to yourself.

Speaking of keeping things to yourself, I’m curious to find out whether anybody in the family will actually read this.  So if you do, don’t keep it to yourself.  Drop me a note in the comments down there below this post.  People who haven’t commented before need to be approved the first time, but I usually get to that pretty quickly.

Oh, and if you want to become a Loyal Reader, just let me know that too.  There are many benefits to Loyal Readership.  You get your first name over there on the right and . . . umm . . . oh yeah, if you send me a picture of yourself, you get to see it right here on the actual internet.  There’s also . . . well, there’s . . . okay, that’s it.  But isn’t the admiration of your adoring public with your very own name and picture on the famous Morrowife blog enough?  So become a Loyal Reader today!

Okay, back to the blog.  We had a great weekend.  LRN4 has been feeling just a little bit better every day.  Of course, she’s only been out of the poky for a little more than three days, but that’s three days of solid improvement.  Can’t argue with that.  Her energy level was a bit low to start, but she’s been able to do more and more.  We’ve had a short walk around the grounds every evening in addition to our daily walks back and forth to the clinic for her morning anti-fungal infusion.

Some great news – while LRN4’s white cell count was actually down to 3,000 cells/microliter Monday, her ANC (neutrophil) count is up to 2,900!  The doctor told us it’s normal for the white cell count to be down a bit because the steroids she’s taking to counter the graft vs. host disease she had last week tend to do that.  However, the neutrophils are now in the normal, healthy range!  She has an immune system!  As the steroid levels start going down (and we’ve already started tapering them down), the white cell count will increase.  That number needs to get to 4,000 to be in the normal range, so she’s not really that far away in that area.  She’s returning to health.

Now we need to start building her strength back up.  She has done amazingly well at getting as much exercise as possible in the hospital, but she still lost a lot of strength.  Lying in bed nearly all day for about 100 days will do that to you.  She has stayed up and active nearly all day since we got here to the village, so I think that will build back up on its own with time, but she’ll do better than that.  We’ll keep walking more every day until she’s once again leaving me behind in the dust.  Won’t be long.

A few people have asked about our palatial estate here in the Village.  I snapped a couple of quick pictures.  Behold:

And that’s not all!  There’s also this:

And even that is not all!  Wait, yes it is.  That’s all.  Check out that collection of pills on the table there, by the way.  It’s my job to make sure she gets the right stuff at the right time.  And I’ve been doing an absolutely medium job of it so far.  Not to brag or anything.

Anyway.  We didn’t do a whole lot of stuff over the weekend.  Went to the store a couple of times to buy groceries and general supplies, went to church for an hour on Sunday, went for a few walks, ate some delicious meals (neither one of us misses the hospital food, which was just fine as far as hospital food goes, but definitely got old after a couple months), and generally relaxed.  Life’s good.

And that’s about it for today.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: Ronald McDonald robs Wendy’s!  Can’t we all just get along?

See you tomorrow.

Here’s part of a water fountain at Longwood Gardens.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken the day after my birthday last year, and part of my famous Garden, Machinery, and Statue series.

Great day today!  LRN’s white cell count is up to 0.5.  We’re looking for it to make it to 1.0 before the end of the month.  With that done, LRN4 free from needing blood products most days, and her able to get enough nourishment (which I think she’s doing already), we should be able to get out of here next week.  Fingers crossed!  We are so, so, SO ready to get out of here.

LRN5 and family will be back here in two days!  LRN3 will be here in three days!  It’s going to be an exciting weekend and week.  I’m really looking forward to it.  I wish LRN1 and LRN2 could be here too.  Maybe we’ll be together sometime soon.

And there’s nothing else in my life right now, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: toilet seat gum theft!

See you tomorrow.