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.