morrowlife

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’s our newly-installed back yard.  We’re really happy with the way it turned out – practically zero maintenance and it’s going to be a beautiful place to spend time and entertain.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Statue and Las Vegas series.  Note the cool turtle statue LRN5 gave us a few years back.  He fits right in here!

Been at the hospital with LRN4 every day.  She’s doing exceptionally well, getting lots of exercise, looking and feeling better just about every day, and generally wishing this whole mess were over and she could go home.  We’re likely to actually go home in about 10 days, which isn’t way too much.  It’s just too much.

LRN1 and LRN2 were here for the weekend.  We had a great visit, they enjoyed their visit with LRN4, as did she, and we sent them back to Provo with a 5×8 U-Haul trailer full of LRN2’s worldly belongings.  I really enjoyed their visit and was very sorry to see them go.  But at least I now have an empty exercise room, into which I’ve been transferring LRN4’s numerous exercise gadgets and gizmos.  When we have visitors in the future, they’ll have to make do with our one guest room and a blow-up mattress in that room.  But at least LRN2 has a place to sleep in his new apartment!

That’s right, LRN2 has moved into his new place.  Both he and LRN1 report that it’s very nice.  It’s a two-bedroom place with a single roommate.  I think he’s just subleasing the room to LRN2, in fact.  His roommate is an older guy who has been through a divorce and will have his three kids over to visit occasionally, so LRN2 will have some youthful company from time to time.  He ought to enjoy that.  He starts his new job in six days now.  He’s frantically searching for a car so he can get back and forth to the job.  Hopefully, that search will bear fruit in the next day or so.  Happy hunting, LRN2!

My latest [amazon asin=B001FA1NK0&text=Apple TV] has been acting very strangely lately – it’s playing video just fine, but reboots every two minutes when it’s not playing anything.  Very annoying.  It’s being retired to my office for further testing and evaluation, and I’ve ordered a new [amazon asin=B00BGGDVOO&text=Roku 3] to take its place.  It was a bit of a stretch not to buy another [amazon asin=B007I5JT4S&text=Apple TV], since I’m such a fanboy, but I’ve read excellent reviews on the new Roku and I’m excited to try it out.  I used the gift card my colleagues gave me at my retirement luncheon in California a few weeks ago, so it cost me nothing!  Well, nothing but 27+ years of hard labor, but I was also compensated for that in other ways.

And that’s about it for tonight.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: crime-fighting staring goat!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s LRN4 with her friend Jack.  That’s LRN4 over there on the right.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at Dorney Park last October, and part of my famous Event and Machinery series.

Update on LRN4: she’s doing great, responding perfectly to treatment, and feeling very good.  There’s still a lot of water to pass under the bridge, but she’s right on schedule and things are going great.

LRN4’s predicament is pretty much the only thing I’ve been concentrating on, so there’s not much else to talk about tonight.

Oh, there is one other thing going on.  The backyard project is going great!  They reported this morning that there were two days of construction remaining, so it ought to be done tomorrow!  Pictures will be provided.  It looks beautiful so far!  It’s going to be a great place to hang out.

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: meatball embezzlement!

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 absolute worst farm in the world.  I would think that a farm of about half an acre, all of which is tightly sandwiched between two thousand-foot-high cliffs, would be a difficult place to raise really healthy crops.  Seems like the amount of sunlight would be rather severely limited, for example.  But what do I know about big-time agriculture?  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone cam, taken at the model railroad museum in New Jersey, and part of my famous Train series.

Nice weekend, I suppose.  LRN4 still seems to be as sick as ever, though, which is quite sick indeed.  I may have mentioned it before, but I’ve never known her to be this sick for this long.  In fact she’s never before been either this sick OR sick for this long.  So to have them both happen at the same time is pretty bad indeed.  She’s tried three antibiotics so far.  The throat culture no longer shows any active bacteria, apparently, but she’s still in a tremendous amount of pain in both the throat and ears and now she’s dizzy and sleepy all the time.  I suspect that the dizziness and exhaustion are a byproduct of the second antibiotic, which hasn’t gotten out of her system yet.  Hopefully, that stuff will be gone within a few days and she can start perking back up.  In the meantime, things are pretty tough around here.

On the positive side, neither LRN2 nor I have gotten whatever it is that LRN4 has.  So far.

And it’s imperative that I don’t get it.  Our cruise starts in just over three weeks.  Since LRN4 has been sick for about three weeks and counting now, I don’t want to start with a cycle of this horrendous bug.  We’d absolutely hate to have to miss the cruise.

Which I’m getting excited about.  It’s not exactly like I’m not getting enough time off from work right now, but I’m still excited to be on the ship for a couple weeks, tour around the islands again, take some fun classes (but probably not ukulele lessons this time – sorry!), eat some really great meals, see a few shows, and generally enjoy lounging around.  In a totally different place from here.  Not that I’m not enjoying lounging around right here as well.

Anyway.  Efforts continue on learning Visual Studio C++.  I’ve finally gotten to the part of my wretched book that actually teaches how to program the Windows GUI.  There are multiple ways of doing it and . . . wait a second.

Okay, I’m back.  After doing just a modicum of research, I’ve decided to dump what I’ve been studying for more than a week (C++/Microsoft Foundation Classes) and switch to the more modern tech (C#/.net).  I should have done this from the very beginning, but I thought I needed to be compatible with legacy libraries.  But you know what?  I don’t have to and I’m not going to. It’s become painfully clear that MFC is really outdated, so I’m starting over and I think I’ll still become productive more quickly anyway.  And the big bonus is that I get to jettison that idiotic book I was reading.  After 14 chapters, that is.

Anyway.  I’m full of new-found enthusiasm!  I’ll get started first thing tomorrow (well, I exercise first thing and eat breakfast second thing and shower third thing, so I’ll get started fourth thing tomorrow, although that sounds terrible, doesn’t it?).

Not much else to report today.  LRN2 and I had dinner at Pei Wei the other night and enjoyed it very much.  I had dinner at Roberto’s (my favorite old San Diego taqueria – I can’t tell you how excited I was to discover there’s one right around the corner from our house) last night and LRN2 and I went to Cafe Rio tonight.  So I’ve had plenty of fast food lately.  Not too good for my Atkins-based way of eating, but I’m holding on – finally down below 200 pounds, which represents a 35-pound weight loss since the beginning of October.  Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.  Twenty more pounds to go, probably after LRN4 heals up and we start eating normal meals again.

Real Soon Now: Rubio’s.  I love Las Vegas.  They have everything here!

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: meatball embezzlement!

See you tomorrow.