Thursday, August 09, 2012

Robins in the Serviceberry




26 comments:

  1. Howard Dean is Firstamundo!

    Greetings from Cancerlandia.
    Yesterday, in addition to my dearest friend's news of breast cancer, my brother-in-law had surgery for prostate cancer. Apparently it went well, and he'll be home this afternoon.

    We managed to send a teddy bear up to his room this morning, but it was something of an adventure. There is no one with our last name at the hospital nearest him. So I found an old email from him which included: My surgery is scheduled to be done at Catheter Miracle Center." Of course, there is no such place. So I took a chance and called Catholic Medical Center and they had him by his first name (he uses his middle name). They’re sending a two-tone, brown, traditional-looking bear to his room this morning with a card that reads: “Filled with bear hugs; squeeze to dispense.”

    So what do you do when there are a half dozen loved ones in your life dealing with cancer? Do you make peace with cancer? I don't need to go the "hate cancer" route. I'd like some healthy, kind way of approaching this, though. Cancer is not a friend, and it is really not the enemy. The problem is that our bodies are reacting to a changing planet (pollution, warming, etc.), by mutating. I wonder if this is a normal part of evolution (mutation), but has gone awry as everything has been so sped up and tampered with.

    Anyway, I love a lot of people who have a lot to undergo. It's good to have a place to come where I don't need to be the one taking care of others, but can just come by and say where I'm at, among friends.

    Hey! It's raining! Cool!

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    1. Mutation is normal. There could be no evolution without mutation. Mutation is usually bad but sometimes it is good, and over the hundreds of millions of years life has developed the good outweighs the bad.

      Im not convinced that cancer is fundamentally more frequent today than it ever was. The thing is that 200 years ago most people died of something else before the cancers they were otherwise destined to have ever appeared. I believe it was Woody Allen who said, "Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternative." In a backhand way, cancer isn't so bad when you consider the alternative.

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  2. Ah, Love!! I think one of the very hard things for peeps to get is that we really are not going to get out of this alive. And stuff runs in families, that's for sure. My birth family and my kids birth family doesn't seem to do cancer. Hearts, strokes, head stuff. And we keep hoping, and fighting, and praying, and loving because it's all we can do.

    Catheter Miracle Center -- into the age of iphones and auto-correct, lol! I've gotten some doozies from Thankful who is pretty much phone bound. And yesterday on facebook, an example: epi pen got translated by auto-correct into Epic Penis, lol!

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    1. Oh, let me assure you that there were no typos in my brother-in-law's message! The whole family just has this silly, witty humour!

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  3. My phone line's been pretty dang good today. Not perfect, but good. So I'm going to assume they've done what they can on their end, and work on speeding up this side. I may try firefox again, as waterfox seems to some issues. Will see. Also need a new copy of AVG, as it is unable to update new virus definitions. One more try, and then I switch to something else.

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    1. I'm glad your phone is working well.

      I'll once more recommend Norton antivirus. I've used it for years and have been very satisified -- as I was not with McAfee. I hadn't heard of AVG before.

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    2. My son, the website designer, and computer guru says AVG is great. Go for it.

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    3. We're a Norton family here, and content to be. It works very well, and can be procured on a disc, so no downloading.

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    4. If I were going to pay, I'd go with nod32/eset -- I picked them from the Virus Bulletin years ago, and never got a virus of any kind with them, though there was one hilarious period that it kept identifying Safeway turkey coupons on various websites as a virus, lol! What I most liked about them aside from the zero fail on every platform was that it cotched more *wild* viruses that all the rest. The others are pretty much dependent on an uptodate set of virus definitions.

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  4. Computer problem identified. The reason I couldn't access my external hard drive was that there was something wrong with it. It doesn't work on my other computer either. And apparently the reason programs such as IE were loading slowly is that the computer was wasting cycles trying to reach the extermal drive. As soon as that drive was turned off, the problem went away. I'll miss some of the data that was on my external drive, but none of it was essential. Everything essential was on my main drive and backed up to the external drive.

    And I discovered I needed to "activate" Windows after the repair. I'm not yet sure whether that solved the erratic mouse-click performance that developed after the "repair." It at least looks better at the moment.

    On Monday I signed up for backup to "the cloud" -- that is to on-line storage. One complete disk backup has been completed. Looked expensive in terms of what's going on my credit card, but when you consider this is three years it comes to just $6/month.

    I'll also be getting a new external hard drive. One of the conclusions I have drawn from all this is that belt and suspenders is a good idea when it comes to backup.

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    1. Bill, I'm so glad for you that you found the fix. I promise I've been empathizing bit time with you as you've gone through this. Whew, indeed!!

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    2. Bill, glad you got the computer problem identified. Sorry you need a new external drive though.

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    3. Well, no. The problem of the domputer thinking the mouse has clicked several times when it has only clicked once has not been solved. I've ordered a new mouse just in case that works. Doesn't hurt to have an extra anyway. Also got the new mouse pad w/ wrist rest I'd been forgetting to order.

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    4. Good plan! Sounds like a hyperactive mouse!

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  5. Replies
    1. Problem with all these polls is they try to pretend this is a national election rather than 50 state-wide elections. It was just a couple of days ago that someone here posted an article about how the electoral college skews things -- apparently in Obama's favor this time around.

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  6. I'm glad I didn't give in to my fit of pique and hurt feelings and leave Memories of Enge. This week I've been able to fill in, however ineptly, for Melodie who hasn't been able to post her beautiful daily calendar pages/pictures because she's been in NJ with Jill for her surgery. Of course my pics aren't as good as Melodie's, but even so folks appreciate the effort. There seem to be a lot of people who don't have the first clue about Paint Shop or Photoshop or whatever. Besides, both Melodie and Jill seem pleased with my efforts. And I'm pleased to be able to help in however small a way.

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    1. I don't have the first clue about Photoshop. And if I were on the group I would be very grateful for someone's willingness to fill in.

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  7. I have two kittens snuggling with me as I type. :-)

    I wasn’t going to post all of this, but it illustrates the silly, witty family humour, which is really a sign of bravery in a terrible situation. We got an update on Larry this afternoon from his dear wife:

    Dear Family and Friends,
    Where did we leave off? So much has happened since we last talked. The plan was to continue major antibiotics, hydration, monitoring, figure where the source of the infection started and what bug it is. Larry continued to have fever spikes Tuesday and Wednesday with some as high as 104. On Wednesday they removed his PICC line for fear that it too was infected with bacteria and they were correct. Now with no PICC they needed to start an IV for fluids and medications. Larry’s veins are a challenge because of all the cancer treatment but after 3 nurses, 4 pokes and 45 minutes they were successful.
    This morning the team of doctors shared that they have the source and what the bug is. As soon as they told Larry the news he texted us at 7:30 with the following: (Think of the Oscar Meyer song – “my bologna has a first name…”)

    My bacteria has a first name: It’s E
    My bacteria has a second name it’s C-O-L-I
    Oh I like to kill it every day, so E COLI please go away
    Cause little Grampie wants to play without E COLI every day

    Got to love it - even sick he still is making us laugh!
    This afternoon the team of doctors shared if no more fevers and labs look stable they will replace the PICC line tomorrow. So when we go home we will administer the antibiotics through his new PICC.

    Thank you for being here on this journey with us, we never feel alone. Love you all


    At the recent Family Gathering, my sister-in-law (Larry’s wife) told me that Larry has treatments on Wednesdays, feels best on Thursdays, and Fridays are pretty awful. So last week we sent a card to Larry such that it would arrive on Friday. It was a store bought card that said something like: hope you have some rainbows; let me know if you need me to come over and paint some on your ceiling. So when we heard that Larry went to the ER twice last weekend, we decided to send him a rainbow. Julie at the Gift Shop at the hospital was great! They didn’t have a rainbow balloon, but they did have a sun catcher device that included a mechanism (with rainbow coloured gears visible through clear housing) which cast a double rainbow all across the room and back. That sure sounded like something Larry would like. Today we got a note from my sister-in-law saying:

    Larry loves the double rainbow solar gift. And by the way we do too and all
    of the staff on the 11th floor - so glad he got a window bed! The family and I can see the flashes from our room at the hotel!
    Thanks for everything.


    We also received a note from brother-in-law Andy today in response to the teddy bear we sent him yesterday, after he had prostate cancer surgery:

    Thank you so much for the bear and the message that came with him. He sits in a special place on the piano right now. We are enjoying the bear, and are especially liking your kind thoughts. Andy

    Nice to know our little bit helps someone through a hard day. You may never know what a difference you might make if you follow your heart, but you definitely make a difference!

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    1. Even if I don't say much, I do appreciate hearing about what you're doing through all this.

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  8. It does, listener! Your bear sits on the desk near the window, and no time do I see him that I don't reach out an touch his softness, and remember the wonderful comfort during that awful afternoon. . . .


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  9. Gosh, thanks Bill and puddle.

    It means so much to me to hear that Bear still gentles your days, and still gentles THAT day for you. ♥

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