morrowlife

Here’s some interesting graffiti on a wall somewhere in Canada.  Very nicely done!  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken during our 2012 East Coast cruise, and part of my famous Cruise and Vacation series.

We made sure to keep moving along after we saw that picture, incidentally.  No sense tempting fate.

Pretty good day today.  LRN4 hasn’t felt very well today, but she’s doing okay.  I’m hoping she’s back in great shape again tomorrow.  But we’ve had some great news: LRN4’s sister Melanie has been confirmed as a good match for LRN4’s stem cell transplant!  That’s the best possible case for us, so we’re absolutely delighted.  We still need to see if she’s in remission next week before we know the timing of the transplant.  We’ve had great forward progress, but there’s still a lot of waiting to be done.  I don’t want to wait!

Let’s see – what else is going on other than stuff around the hospital?

Not much.  I’m enjoying staying with Betsy and Bob.  They’re going out of their way to make me comfortable and I’ve always really liked them both.  They’re away for the night tonight for Bob’s birthday, so I’ll have the house to myself for the night.  I wonder what I’ll do – probably something crazy like going to bed earlier than usual!  Maybe I’ll even get up early tomorrow morning.

Time to write my daily letter to the family and get home.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: non-sausage frenzy!

See you on Monday.

Here’s LRN4 in front of a really cool two-story bandstand we found in Canada.  The band sits in the top story and fish and beavers live in the bottom store.  Or whatever lives in a fountain.  Plankton?  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken during our 2012 cruise to Maine and Canada, and part of my famous Cruise, Vacation, and Statue series.  Isn’t that a statue there in the middle of the fountain?

Lots going on around here.  LRN4’s still in the hospital.  Sadly, her first round of chemotherapy didn’t result in remission.  Her blast cells were reduced from 100% down to 7-14%, but that’s still not good enough.  Even more sadly, she has what’s know as the FLT3 mutation.  That’s just about the worst thing you can have, so she definitely needs a bone marrow transplant.  They’ve made all the arrangements for her transfer to City of Hope in Duarte, California and we expect to go sometime in the next couple of days.  We’re pretty much in a holding pattern here at this point – they don’t want to start the next round of chemo until after the transfer, since that would stick us here for a month, so LRN4’s just getting pumped full of antibiotics, platelets, and hemoglobin and we’re spending our time keeping our strength and spirits up.  I imagine we’ll get very busy when we get to California.

LRN2 started his job on Monday.  He reports that he’s spending most of his time learning company policies and a little bit of technical information about the job.  He discovered to his horror today that they’re not allowed to bring computers, cell phones, or other electronics to work, and that their work computers are locked down pretty tight.  We gave him the bad news that locked down computers are the rule in the workplace these days.  You have to mess around with your own machine on your own time.  Hopefully, he’ll get used to that real soon now.

LRN2 also bought a car a few days ago, so he can actually get to work!  He got a 2002 Ford Escort ZX2.  He wanted a small, reliable car; this one is definitely small and hopefully reliable.  Time will tell!

That’s about it.  LRN4 consumes my life right now.  We’re in a fight for her life and we intend to win.

I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this combination shocking food violence news and exciting Morrowlife employment agency job opportunity: garlic-bread-stealing, mugging fox!

See you tomorrow.

Here are LRN4 and yours truly enjoying a nice Hawaiian party back in California.  Great Art courtesy of somebody else’s camera and part of my famous Vacation series.  Well, we weren’t really on vacation that day, but it kind of looks like it.

It’s been a very difficult week, as advertised above.  We discovered a week ago today that LRN4 has acute myoblastic leukemia – blood cancer, and a pretty bad case of it.  She was in horrible condition when we got to the hospital.  We though she was recovering from a very bad case of strep throat, but when she got steadily worse even after taking three different antibiotics, we decided we needed to go to the emergency room.  They were pretty casual about our visit until they got the results of her blood test, after which they got very serious.  We’ve been here since then.

LRN4 was in very rocky shape on Wednesday and Thursday of last week, but they hooked her up to a machine that scoops white blood cells out of your blood and used it for the first three days.  It lowered the number of cells sufficiently for them to start chemotherapy, which took place late Friday evening.  Tonight will start day six of seven chemo days.  We’ll be here in the hospital for 2-3 more weeks after chemo finishes, waiting for LRN4’s bad blood cells to finish dying and healthy cells to start growing afterwards.  We’re told there’s a 70% chance of her going into remission after her first round of chemo.  In any case we’re looking at a total of 3-4 rounds, possibly followed by a bone marrow transplant.  We’re basically planning on spending the rest of the year on this.

That’s the bad news.  The good news is that our oncologist continually tells us that leukemia is curable.  We have great faith in that prognosis.  She’ll be cured.

A couple of things have had to fall by the wayside, of course.  The first is our planned March cruise to Hawaii with our friends Doug and Connie.  That’s a shame, not a disaster.  We can go to Hawaii again next year.  It’s a pity, but not a disaster.  We’re still scheduled to cruise to Europe in November and December for our 35th anniversary.  If the transplant doesn’t happen, we’re optimistic we’ll be able to make that cruise.  Otherwise, it’s anybody’s guess.

If canceled cruises are the only casualty of this challenge, we’re doing great!  Cross your fingers for us on that one, Loyal Readers!

In the meantime, I’m spending my time her at the hospital with LRN4, except for a few hours a day that I spend unpacking boxes at the house, watching the landscaping progress in the back yard, doing laundry, getting cars registered at the DMV, and whatever else comes up.  There’s plenty to do, and it’s kind of a nice change and a challenge to get the house “finished” before LRN4 gets home.  I think I’ll hold off on hanging pictures until she’s here to direct that work, but I’m committed to having everything unpacked, the backyard done, the pantry and closets organized, and the house spotlessly clean for her return.  It’ll happen.

Work is well underway on the backyard!  The jacuzzi got here yesterday and it back there, most of the pavers are down, and the raised beds are just about done.  There’s still a lot more to be done, but it’s moving quickly.  I’m excited to get home in an hour or so and see how far they’ve gotten today.  I’m taking a lot of pictures so LRN4 can track the progress too.

Family and friends have rallied around and are really taking care of us and showing they love us.  LRN4’s sister Melanie has been here every day.  LRN2, Melanie’s husband Ken and their daughters Marcie and Tonya have also been here.  We’ve had numerous phone calls from my parents and brothers and sisters and LRN4’s dad and brother, and all our kids, of course.  Then there are the text message, emails, and Facebook posts.  There’s been a flood of communication.  I’m kind of struggling to keep up with it all, but I think we’re holding our own.

The future looks rosy.  The immediate future will be tough, but I’m convinced that the future will be extremely good.  The events of this past week have refocused my mind and heart and made me realize how truly precious LRN4 is to me.  She is my entire world.  I don’t know how I could live without her, and I’ve taken her so for granted for so long.  I’m quite sure our mutual life will be the sweetest we’ve ever had.  I’m going to make it that way, at any rate.

No food violence news tonight.  I’ll be back with that tomorrow.  Instead I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this: Shannon Morrow, I love you deeply.  Be mine forever!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s the view from the ship during our last Hawaii cruise, taken just as we were arriving in Ensenada.  Get a load of that flag.  We were only in port for a few hours and LRN4 and I didn’t get off the ship, but it was nice to see land again after five days at sea.  As discussed in this space before, we’re less than a month away from taking the same ship on the same trip.  I’m getting excited to go.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Cruise, Vacation, and Machinery series.

Disaster strikes!  My beloved pickup is in critical condition in the automotive hospital!  I spoke with them today and discovered that the misfire isn’t due to spark and isn’t due to fuel.  That leaves only one cause – the dreaded compression.  That means one thing and one thing only: either a valve job, a complete engine rebuild, or a new engine.

Okay, that’s three things.  But they’re really just different manifestations of the same thing, and that spells cubic dollars.  I don’t know which option I’ll choose, but it’ll be one of them.  Probably either a complete rebuild or a new (actually factory rebuilt) engine.  The beloved pickup will live to drive another day.

Fortunately, I received my big severance check from Lockheed today.  Although I would have preferred the engine rebuild money to be put to work as living expenses for a month.  But you can’t have everything, can you?  For one thing, where would you put it?

Thank you, you’re a great crowd.  Don’t forget to tip your server.  Or your blogger.  Speaking of which, should I put a tip jar on the blog?  Nah – I’d rather have my Loyal Readers just click through to Amazon from my blog, buy something nice for themselves, and let me collect a nice little commission.  Try it, Loyal Readers – it’s easy!  So much better than a plain old tip jar.  Although feel free to send me money too.  The juggernaut must be fed.

LRN4’s sister Melanie came over for dinner and conversation this evening.  We had a great meal and she brought us a delicious chocolate pie to top it off.  What a nice evening!  Happy Valentine’s Day to Melanie.  And to LRN4.  Especially to LRN4.

Also get-well-soon wishes to LRN4.  She’s still quite miserable.  She talked to her highly-trained medical staff this afternoon and told them she’s still not feeling so hot and wondered aloud whether she should come back for stronger measures.  They said as long as she’s not feeling worse than when she started, she should stay the course.  She’s been very sick for what seems like a very long time – sicker than I’ve ever seen her.  I’m worried.  Also missing her normal self.  It won’t be long now, I’m sure.

Work continues on my project to learn Visual Studio.  I’m not at all happy with the book I’m using, but it appeared to be the best available book covering VS 2005 (which is generally the version still in use for the projects I’m thinking of taking on – fortunately, it’s also the one I happen to already have).  So under the circumstances, it’ll have to do.  The problem is that it tries to teach you C++ at a very basic level first and then it gets into the Visual Studio part of Visual Studio.  I don’t mind a refresher course on C++, but this thing is going into minute details, which I don’t feel a need for right now.  But I can’t skip any of it, because it sprinkles random essential information in the middle of the minutia.  So it’s a bit slow going.  But I’m making progress and can feel that I’m right on the verge of gaining the knowledge I came for.  Any minute now.

My [amazon asin=B009OWLPM2&text=new shoelaces] arrived in the mail today.  They look great – I’ll have the coolest shoes in the gym tomorrow morning.  However, they also came with a velcro strap – the kind you typically use to bundle wires together or some other such thing.  I have no idea why it was shipped with five pairs of shoelaces.  Maybe just to keep the spare laces together?  Or is there something the cool kids are doing with velcro straps and athletic shoes?

And that’s about it for tonight.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: astronaut food taster!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s LRN4 enjoying the beauties of Halifax, Nova Scotia.  It was a perfect early fall day, we had a great tour, and we thoroughly enjoyed it.  Those Canadians really know how to have fun.  Great Art taken last September with the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Vacation and Cruise series.

Progress!  At least on the business front, anyway.  I am now the proud owner of Business Casual Software LLC, a Nevada corporation.  To celebrate, I created a Facebook Page, which already has three fans, not including myself.  So I guess it actually has four fans.  Because I’m its biggest fan.  Definitely its biggest fan.  So far, LRN3 is my only Loyal Reader who also likes my business page, but I’m hoping to boost that number by a bit.

Now that I know how to do it, I’m planning to create a page for LRN4’s blog.  Maybe I’ll work a deal with her: I’ll like her page if she likes mine.  I think she just might go for it.  One thing I can guarantee – she’ll have a whole lot more likes on her page immediately than I’m getting on mine.

Spent some time last night learning Visual Studio 2005, which is the version required for some work I’m contemplating doing.  I’ve pretty much kept my development work up till now in the Mac/Linux/Unix/embedded processor domains, so there’s a bit of a learning curve with Windows.  Luckily, the concepts pretty much all translate from one system to another, so I expect I’ll pick it up well enough to become dangerous within a very short time.  The development environment seems pretty impressive so far, and I have a good book to guide me, so I’m optimistic.

Also spent a little time corresponding with one of the users of my Morse Trainer app.  I’m delighted to report that I have about 2,000 downloads of that app in the past six months.  Of course, I expect to beat that handily with other work in the near future, but that’s not too shabby for my second app.  My arm is now just a little bit sore from all this patting myself on the back.  What a guy!

Speaking of soreness, LRN4 continues to be pretty sick.  It still appears that she has nothing more serious than cold symptoms, but it’s settled in her throat and ears, causing quite a bit of discomfort and a practically nonexistent voice.  I miss being able to talk with her!  It’s been eerily quiet around the New Fortress of Solitude.  A bit too much solitude, even for me.  Get well soon, LRN4!

We’re going to the Springs Preserve tomorrow to see the raptor show.  Should be good fun and the weather looks to be somewhat cool (maybe mid-40’s to 50 during the hours we expect to be there) but sunny.  I’m excited to see the place.

And it’s time to retire for the evening.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: fake escaping rhino!

See you on Monday.