The latest

11-2

Another round of the latest stuff today. I found out today that each infusion of this stuff is actually only half of a round, so with today’s dose I’ve only had two actual rounds. I’m not complaining about this stuff, mostly because I’ve had very few side effects from it other than a really mean dose of acne. That really isn’t much to complain about, but it’s on my head and itches like crazy. My son came up from south Texas today and brought his tractor with a brush hog, front end loader, and a 3 point blade.

11-3

Called a driver to deliver three loads of crusher run. To the uninitiated, crusher run is just crushed rock that hasn’t been cleaned yet to remove sand and to size the rock. As he brought it in my son, Wes, spread and bladed it into a driveway. In case you don’t remember or haven’t heard the story, I got stuck in my front yard a couple of months ago. The truck didn’t sink, it just sat and spun, just absolutely no traction. I might as well have been sitting on ice. On the second day I got a winch and spent almost four hours winching it to a spot where I could get it to move on it’s own. So, to make sure we didn’t have to worry about it anymore this will be an all-weather road surface. We have a very hard layer of clay underneath all of this, hence the need for rock, so this should do us for quite a few years. Wes is leaving his tractor here for a while, so I’ll be able to get a few more things done around here and be able to dress the new road up if it needs it. Hopefully, somewhere in the near future I’ll be able to get our tractor up and running soon. Mostly all it really needs is some TLC, but making time for it is another thing, not to mention all of the other projects that still need attention. We’re still in the discovery stage of finding all of the stuff that got moved and trying to find a place for all of it.

11-4

Loaded up and headed to the Granbury place for a day or two. Several projects left to have it presentable and ready for sale. All of it is cosmetic, but we’re not quite ready to show it yet. A stuck door, a dab of paint, that kind of stuff. All minor, but all still require time. We only have a day or two here before we head to Houston for a couple of days. Tomorrow I go to the VA for one last checkup for my dentures. The dentures by the way, have been mostly a blessing. The positioning of the teeth have taken a little getting used to. I have bitten my cheek or lip many times. But they do work extremely well and there’s not much I won’t tackle. Sadly, a large juicy cheeseburger is not one of them. I don’t have enough bone left in my jaw to support the denture enough to take a bite out of anything much larger than a slider or a donut. Once I get a bite though, it’s all mine. My saliva glands seem to be able to keep up much better now and for the most part I enjoy eating.

11-5

A trip into Ft. Worth to the VA to see the best dentist I have had the pleasure to know. This woman has singlehandedly renewed my faith in both the VA and dentists. A very tall order to be sure. If she were to go into private practice I’m sure she would soon have as big of a practice as she wanted. The one thing that becomes immediately clear is that she cares. She takes the time to not only take care of the patient’s needs, but to get to know the patient and what they need.

A few errands later we were back in Granbury. One of the stops was by an AT&T store to have my phone checked out. Their first question was do I want a new phone. No, I just want this one fixed. Sorry, your iPhone 4s is too old for us to do anything with. So it’s back to Dr. Frankenstein’s lab to see if we can bring it back to life at least long enough to get the contact list and pictures off of it. And, no, I didn’t have it backed up. Yes, I know how important it is to back up, but I’ve been a little busy lately. I miss the days of my Rugby phone that saved all of it’s info on a chip. At least that way if your phone dies you can still get your info off of it. Ah, but Apple in it’s infinite wisdom has decided that all of this should be uploaded to their cloud. That way they can charge you for storage.

11-6

Packed up and loaded up, again, heading south on our way to Houston. We’ll be stopping by some friend’s house on the way for a little R & R.

11-8

On our way to Houston. We’ll be staying with Teresa’s brother and sister in law. They live about a half an hour away from MD Anderson ( not counting traffic problems ). Our trip this time is only two days, but when we’re through there we’ll be headed back to the Austin area to meet up with all of Teresa’s brothers and sisters for a family get together.

11-9

In Houston for blood work, CT, and a Dr. visit. Everyone at MD Anderson seems to have made it their own personal mission to help everyone they can. It almost makes cancer tolerable. I say almost for me because cancer has taken away from me my strength, stamina, and my way of earning a living. My strength and stamina are returning slowly, but trying to get by on what social security doles out can get a little trying. Here’s a problem for one of your friends that has a kid that’s a math genius. Your monthly pension check is $1100.00, your house payment is $600.00, your car payment is $300.00, leaving you $200.00. Utilities are $150.00 leaving you $50.00. The question now becomes how to buy groceries, pay for insurance and everything else. Dip into savings ? That will only last so long, especially since you had just gotten to a point in your life where most stuff was paid for and you could actually afford to put something away. And before some little genius says get a job, go put on an old man suit and see how many people will actually talk to you about employment. Employers are looking for someone young so they don’t have to pay for all of your experience, and of course if you’re young you just don’t have enough experience.

11-10

Got results from the CT today. The demon is still growing, which means that the current round of chemo isn’t working. The plan now is to get radiation on the lymph node in my chest to see if we can reduce the size of the tumor there. The doctor said it was cutting off one of the airways in my lung enough to be a problem in the future. She said she saw what looked like the beginning of infection and that if we don’t take care of it now that it could lead to pneumonia. I’ve had pneumonia three times in my life and don’t want it again. If you think flu is bad, you ain’t had nothing till you get a good case of pneumonia. The worst case I had took me a month to get over, and I was in my 20’s then. I don’t even want to think about how it would affect me now.

Back on the road and headed to Austin for a couple of days to visit with one of Teresa’s sisters. All of her family will be there for a short get together.

11-12

Back to Granbury to try to do a few more things before we have a realtor come over for a look. We’re beginning to miss our bed at home greatly now.

11-14

Met with the realtor today and listed the house. Packed up a few more things and headed north. A late start what with the realtor and trying to get everything ready to show the house. Back in the Oklahoma place at 11:00 PM or so.

11-17

Met with doctors today to set up the radiation treatments. I should be getting about ten treatments. Like the first time, it will be a Monday through Friday thing. This time instead of a mask, they made a cradle of sorts to make sure I’m in the same position every time. And like the last time they put three tiny tattoos on me to insure correct alignment.

I seem to be falling into the same trap of trying to wait to post to let everyone know what’s going on. I will try to do better, but no promises. We still have to install the wood heater here and the weather people are calling for freezing weather by this weekend. On top of that, we still have a ton of work to do around here, so there’s not a lot of time for reflection and writing.

So, off this goes to the interweb cloud thing for all to see.

He don't call, he don't write

I know I haven’t written in quite a while and I apologize. The past month or so has seen a lot of changes. Read on to see why it’s taken me so long.

8-21

This has been the week from hell. Sunday my mom passed away. She had Alzheimer’s and had been gone from us for a number of years, but it doesn’t make it any easier. On top of that we’re packing to move. The house looks like a cross dock with boxes everywhere. We made a flying trip to the north forty Tuesday to drop off animals and plants and then turned around and came back. While we were there I installed a phone jack and the phone company was there to install the line. Wednesday, they finished the installation, so we now have a landline and DSL.

This morning I went to where we had the trailer stored, picked it up and spotted it in front of the house. The living room was so packed that we had to start moving boxes onto the lawn just to be able to get through. My daughter came up to help with the packing.

8-22

Moving day arrived with most of us working on about 5 hours of sleep. By 9:00 AM all of the volunteers had arrived and we started loading the truck. I say we, but all I really did was stand around and tell people where I wanted stuff to go. We finally finished loading around 4:00 PM and headed north and got to the Okla. place around 9:30 PM. By the time we got there, we were all too tired to do much unloading, so we all headed to bed.

8-23

Up around 8:00 and began the unloading. Between the loading and the unloading it reminded me of an ant hill that some kid had just kicked. People seemed to be going in every direction and if you weren’t looking right at them, they even seemed to be going in two directions at once. Amazingly enough the biggest part of it was settled into place by 5:00 PM.

A special thank you to all of those that volunteered to help with the loading and unloading. Without your help this move would have taken weeks longer.

8-31

Back in Houston. Today was a CT, X-ray, and blood draw.

9-1

Saw the Dr. today, and while it wasn’t good news, it wasn’t all that bad either. She said that while the nodes in my lungs seemed to be stable, there was one in my lymph node in my chest that was growing. The plan for now is to quit taking the daily pill, give it a month or so to clear out the chemo, find a local oncologist, and get some IV stuff to figure out if it will do any good. The name of it is Cetuximab. It reduces the cancer on approximately 15% of patients, stops growth in another 30%, and the remaining 55% had no benefit. The biggest reason for trying this is that some of the trials that MD Anderson have require that you take this before to see if it has any effect. We have found a local oncologist and I have an appointment Tuesday. I will keep going to MD once a month or so for the foreseeable future and every two months or so have another CT etc.

In the meantime we are slowly going through the boxes and seeing what of it we need and what will fit in our reduced size house. We moved from a 3 bed, 2 bath house that had about 1350 sq. ft. and the Okla. house is 1150 sq. ft. You would think that since we’ve only given up about 200 or so sq. ft. that it shouldn’t be much of a problem. And you would be wrong. We had been in that house for 19 years and it seems like every nook and cranny had something in it. And obviously all of it was precious to one or another of us. Problem one is trying to find a place for all of it. Now we have a very large barn (full), and a 45 ft. and a 48 ft. trailer, both of which currently have trails in them to get through to what you might want to get.

The next two weeks were filled with us trying to uncover and/or rediscover our stuff. It took us another week to find our shoes. The biggest problem with other people packing your things is that you can’t immediately put your hands on what it might be that you’re looking for. What may seem like the perfect place to pack away any given item is never quite what you might have thought it should go with. And the labeling on boxes that had already been used twice before was another problem.

9-21

Got to the hospital in Ada where I will be getting IV treatments of Cetuximab. The infusion room there is right next door to the ER in case there are any severe reactions to your chemo. Got settled into the infusion chair and they started an IV and gave me Benadryl and a test dose of the stuff to check for any reaction. No immediate reaction, so on with it. Nurses constantly asking if I was alright. After about two hours I began to notice a slight heaviness in my chest and the nurse immediately turned off the Cetuximab. A quick inspection of my hands showed a patchy flushing and an itchiness. This was a reaction to the medicine. After another hour they restarted the IV and another hour to finish it. All in all, I was there from 9 to 5. A long day to be sure.

9-23

Back down to Texas for another load. We’re in the mop up phase now, where we are picking up all of the little things that been forgotten, left behind, or just didn’t have room. Four days of packing the little trailer and we still have one to two more loads. The house hasn’t been this empty since the day she got the keys to it. We’ve kept one bed, a love seat, a recliner, and a few small items that can be easily loaded. While we’re here we’re back to antenna TV and I miss not being able to pause or fast forward.

The real estate agents are all in agreement that the house should be almost empty and certainly nothing left on the walls. I suppose that since the invention of the internet, Facebook, etc. Nobody seems to have enough imagination to figure out what it would look like with their stuff in it. Kind of funny to me. I’ve never been in a house for sale that I was interested in that was completely empty, other than a mobile home, and even some of them had furniture in it for staging.

10-2

Another sad day for us. A very dear and great friend of ours, Dennis Gilmore passed away today after a massive heart attack Tuesday evening. Our hearts and prayers go out to his wife Lisa. It was a real blow to us. We had known them since 2002 when we went to work for Interstate Distributors and hit it off. He will be greatly missed.

10-3

Headed back to the north forty with a wish and a prayer that we make it problem free. Four hours later we were back with almost the biggest load my pickup has pulled ( not counting the travel trailer that we borrowed last year ). The bigger problem now is where to put everything we’re bringing back.

10-5

Back to the oncologist in Ada for another infusion. This round went much better and only took a couple of hours. This stuff hasn’t been affecting me anywhere near as much as any of the others. My main complaint with this is the acne that has appeared on my face, chest, and head, and the biggest complaint is that my head itches all of the time. My energy level doesn’t seem to be affected at all, although it’s still not up to where I would like it. My appetite is good although I’m still not gaining an appreciable amount of weight.

10-10

Up early for a delivery of lumber for the front porch. The porch will be 12’ x 24’ and covered. Thankfully, there wasn’t much leveling to be done. While my energy level is good, my stamina still has a way to go to be anywhere near normal for me. I’m usually good for about 5-6 hours before I have to give it up.

10-12

Finished the porch in time for Teresa’s birthday today. Along with trying to settle everything we moved into a new home, there are a myriad of other projects that require my attention, not to mention the acreage I try to keep mowed to keep it looking like some semblance of civilization.

10-16

Worked on the big trailer today, trying to get anything we need either unloaded or organized to be able to find it when we need it. One of the biggest things for me was to unpack and organize my shop and hardware supplies, things that I would need for any number of projects that are still on a list of honey do’s . The trail through the trailer has widened enough now to be able to walk completely through the trailer without hitting anything, and lost things are slowly becoming found again.

I guess it’s about time to wrap this up. I have been getting a prod from several people to get off of my duff and write. My apologies, but we have been extremely busy and I will try to get something posted more quickly. My health seems to be good ( at least to me ) and I’m feeling better now than I have in quite a while. My stamina still has a way to go, but my appetite is really good and my strength level is coming up slowly. One thing I can count on is that there will be plenty to keep me busy over the coming weeks.

10-20

Headed back to Granbury today to attempt to finish up. Mostly all that’s left is cleanup and packing up stuff from the outside sheds.

10-24

By now you would be wondering why I haven’t posted this. My internet connection at home in Oklahoma is good, but we’re back in Granbury to pack another load to take back north. My connection here is borrowed from a neighbor and is very close to dialup for speed. Speed in and of itself isn’t as bothersome as the fact that due to Wi-Fi restrictions it’s also spotty at times and the one thing I’ve learned about Wi-Fi is to NOT try to upload anything. One lost bit out of the millions of bits of information renders the entire file useless.

10-27

Back to Oklahoma with another load. This load is a bit smaller than the last several loads. We probably have at least one more good sized load.

Ok, I really will wrap it up this time. I’ll try to be better at this, but just to let y’all know, the next few weeks are crammed full of Dr. visits and road time between here and Houston. Trying to find time in all of this to write isn’t easy, but I will try.

It's a Party

   It’s been a while since I have written and I apologize. It stays fairly busy here, one week we’re in Houston, one week back in Granbury and then get ready to do it all over again. In between we’re trying to get packed to move. More on that in a bit.

Whiner Alert

   The one thing that is the hardest for me to get used to is the overwhelming sense of fatigue. I know that the heat plays a significant part of how I feel, but just walking into the back yard can almost wear me out. I am still able to ride around on machinery, but that is fairly limited here at the Granbury place. I’m not normally one to sit still for too long, and I find that when I try to push too much physically, it also wears on my mental ability to handle simple daily activities. The very fact that I am now limited to what I can do at one time without rest seems to suck the energy right out of me. I also now have to think about getting up before I do it. Before this, the only time I would have to think about the actions needed to get up was when I was exhausted. Now, it’s nearly every time I get up. The need to rest after the simplest of activities is just extremely hard for me to comprehend. Two years ago I was still trucking, twenty months ago my wife and I were on a trip to Alaska and back. Now, my daily routine consists of TV, solitaire, and a trip outside every hour or so. 

   Ok, enough of my whining. I know that probably within a couple of months I should be back in better shape. I have one more appointment with the VA for my teeth. With the last try in they fit great and I’m hoping that they will work better than the one day wonders that I now have. Don’t get me wrong, these have done really well. But with false teeth it’s all about fit. If I wasn’t going to get more teeth I would have to have these relined or something.

   We’re planning on moving almost everything to the north forty in Oklahoma in August. The date for the actual move is the 22^nd. That will be almost three weeks after my last infusion of chemo, which will be my last. I will still take Tarceva for the foreseeable future. If anyone would like to volunteer, by all means email or call me. I think we have the loading team all lined up, but if you would like to volunteer for unloading we have room to park 10 to 15 trucks, campers, or whatever. I’m still lining up a grilling crew to feed whoever shows and the idea has been floated to get a keg to help keep the unloading team cool and hydrated. We have electricity to supply a hotel load for rigs. We plan to have landline service in before we move. Be forewarned, the only cell service that has any reliability there is Sprint. If you have anyone else you will be incommunicado. AT&T has very limited luck, with mainly text only unless you want to drive 3 miles to get a signal and regardless of what Verizon says, pretty much anywhere off of the interstate you’re SOL. Directions are easy, but if you want to use your GPS, I’ll have to send you the coordinates. We are 30 miles south of the Loves truckstop at MM 200 on I-40 in Oklahoma. There are plenty of walking trails and a couple of ponds. We miss all of y’all terribly and would really appreciate your company. We really only have one full room of furniture to move (all upstairs) so I doubt if it will take all that long. Then we can get down to some serious partying.

8-5

   Left for Houston Sunday, saw the Dr. yesterday, and back home last night. After reviewing my blood work, the Dr. said that the numbers in the report on my blood weren’t good enough for me to get chemo. However, after talking to me about it, we decided that another round wasn’t really needed at this time. I’ll stay on the trial drug for maintenance. Their position on it is if the cancer is stable, meaning not growing, then I don’t really need anything else. My next visit is at the end of the month for more tests and we’ll see then what’s in store. The Dr. said that even if my blood work had been normal, it would have been hard to recommend another round due to the fatigue that comes with each round and tends to be cumulative. As I am now, walking or standing for anything over 15 minutes is a push for me.

   Well, I’ve been told I need to get this posted before everyone forgets how to read it.