Life in lessons....

So the pain in the ear got worse over the weekend even after over doing it on Tylenol and Advil (rx strength from the doctor). So I sucked it up and went to the dentist on Monday morning before work as one tooth actually did hurt. After waiting around for a few hours – he has been on vacation for the past week so there was a lot of catching up for him to do – I finally got the tooth in question checked out. It looked good, as did the other teeth – no signs of cavities. But, considering that I don’t complain of pain unless it is really bad (I am one of those people with a high tolerance to pain) the dentist decided that we should take some x-rays. I knew that I was in trouble when everyone in the office crowed around my x-ray and one of his assistants turned to me and asked “Are you sure that you are not ready to die from the pain?” I got out of the chair and went up to the board to take a look at what the big deal was…an abscess…not the thing anyone really wants to hear. It seems that my habit of grinding my teeth caused me to crack a molar and from there it just went down hill. But thankfully, because of the earache it was caught fairly early and the tooth can be saved after a root canal and a new gold cap! (Usually people have to have the tooth pulled).
Here is a picture snatched from the web for an idea of what they were looking at:



The differences between my x-ray and this picture are:
1.It was one of my molars that we were investigating
2. That black mark (or shadow if you would rather) – was just above the molar and it covered the roof of my mouth
So I now have a lovely rx for 2000 mg of penicillin for the next week and then we will proceed with the root canal.

It worked!
It finally worked!!!
I have wonderful perfect sequences!
I think that I’ll have to go out and celebrate tonight!
Oh, whom am I kidding? There is too much laundry to be done and a few dust bunnies that need to be evicted….but still – it worked!!!

Snached from Brian
According to The College Board these are the books you should have read by the time you went to college. The ones in bold are the ones that read before I went to college. The ones in italics I have read since high school.

Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre - freshmen year reading...I thought that I was going to kill myself before I finished this book...I still hate it...
Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the FliesPoor Piggy....
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird One of my fav. books of all time! First read when I was 12...
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García - One Hundred Years of Solitude Great book - but "Love in the Time of Cholera" is the best!
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island My Mom and I read this one together the summer I turned 10!
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden Isn't it "Walden Pond"?
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace I read "Anna Karenina" a few years ago and it took all summer...it became a mission to finish it...but finally I did it!
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of MirthEthan Frome was actually the book that got me started on her...My mother still does not understand my love of "The Age of Innocence"
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Sons

Damn I read a lot of books in high school!

Just when I have gotten over my case of poison ivy and old nemesis has decided to rear its ugly head…ear infections. I got water in my ear on Friday night as I was trying to wash the henna out of my hair not an easy thing to do, trust me.
I have called the doctors office and am STILL awaiting a call back…
Other than that, things are going pretty good. I actually got my sequences to work after two weeks of trouble shooting and many blank gels. It was one of those things where I checked every step of the procedure and all of the steps worked, but when it was put together it didn’t. I actually have to rerun the samples today as it worked too well and the signals were too strong ands were bleeding into one another. But I would rather have that than nothing at all.
Ummm…I really don’t think anything else is going on…it is kind of a lazy day here in the lab…just a bunch of catch up work…if anything else comes up, I’ll let you know!

So there is the dress that Andrea has picked out for us to wear in her wedding. I think the colour will be "Cranberry" or "Wine" as she is having "Fall Colours" as the theme. I am so excited about this! She said that she is going to look at it this weekend in person and to see what colour it would be.
I am glad that she sent this to me this morning as it gave me a "pick me up" after this past weekend.

Back on March second, I had awoken early and decided to just get up and start my day. As I was sitting at the dinning room table drinking my coffee and reading The Post. Suddenly the Kitten started to make noises and was trying to get into the window. I put down the paper and walked over to the window to see what was going on. There was a morning dove sitting on the ledge, and she had been attacked at some point by another animal, a cat I assume - as there are a number of wild ones around my place. I called the local animal; rescue groups and they took my name, address, and phone and said that they would try to find someone to come over and capture her. I put out a bowl of breadcrumbs and another of water for her - locked up the Kitten (he was very displeased about it) and went back to my paper. Every once in awhile she would coo. When she did that I would just coo back at her. She drank some of her water and picked at her breakfast and then took a nap. A bit later she cooed once more and then took off. Right after that Rita called me to tell me about my Grandfather.

When I was down in Florida, I picked a bunch of mangos from my Grandfather’s tree. It is something that I do every time I am down there and it is “Mango Season”.
The ones that picked we not ripe and according to my Grandfather would need at least a few weeks before they were perfect. I put them in a brown bag out of the heat as he instructed me to do. They have not ripened at all. Instead they are rotting away. I have never seen his mangos do this before.

Just as I finished writing this entry, my Father called me to tell me that my Grandfather died. I feel as if in some way, these were all signs...

A woman was walking along the beach when she stumbled upon a bottle. She picked it up and rubbed it, and 'low-and-behold' a genie appeared! The amazed woman asked if she got three wishes. The genie said, "Nope, sorry, three-wish genies are a storybook myth. I'm a one-wish genie. So... what'll it be?"

The woman did not hesitate. She said, "I want peace in the Middle East. See this map? I want these countries to stop fighting with each other and I want all the Arabs to love the Jews and Americans and vice-versa. It will bring about world peace and harmony."

The genie looked at the map and exclaimed, "Lady, be reasonable. These countries have been at war for thousands of years. I'm out of shape after being in a bottle for five hundred years. I'm good but not THAT good! I don't think it can be done. Make another wish and please be reasonable."

The woman thought for a minute and said, "Well, I've never been able to find the right man. You know, one that’s considerate and fun, likes to cook and help with the house cleaning, is great in bed, and gets along with my family, doesn't watch sports all the time, and is faithful. That is what I wish for ...a good man."

The genie let out a sigh and said, "Let me see that fuckin' map again".

I am posting this for maidenmorticia (over at Live Journal) as a pick me up, but I thought that everyone else could could use a laugh too!

I thank everyone for the kind words and thoughts that you have been sending me in regards to the situation with my grandfather. I have been asked a few questions about him and my relationship with him. As with most things in life, it is complicated. I’ll start explaining my relationship with my last living grandfather by explaining the backgrounds and childhoods of all of my grandparents. As you will see, things were different growing up for each and every one of them, but there is one thing in common with all of them. They got to where they wanted to be by education, which may help to explain to those that may not know me as well why I am so education driven. It is in my blood. It has been the tested and proven method of getting ahead in your life on both sides of my family.

Growing up I had always heard the stories of the lives of my grandparents directly from them, with the exception of my father’s father. The stories are of such different times and events that as a young child, they were usually better than the book stories that were read to me.

My Mother’s mother (Mom-Mom) lived a life of privilege in Philadelphia and grew up on Second Street where even her parents had grown up, right across the street from one another. Eventually they married (he first became a detective with the PPD and she went to finishing school and then traveled all over the states and Europe). They had two girls (Aunt Beth and my Grandmother) and a son (Daniel) who died when he was just a few months old. Aunt Beth (she was almost 8 years older than my Mom-Mom) told me that my Grandmother was their mother’s saving sanity - as she was so heart broken when Daniel died. Sadly, My Great Grandmother did not get to enjoy her daughters as she died in the influenza out break. My Great Grandfather did not remarry until the girls were grown and raised (with the help of the other women in both families). From all accounts, it was a very happy childhood. She learned how to ride a bike and to drive a car, which was not common for the women of her time and society. She went to college and at the time of her graduation was offered a scholarship by the University of Pennsylvania to become a doctor. Her Father had allowed her many freedoms in life, but he found it unacceptable for his daughter to become a doctor, as she would be exposed to so many undesirables and told her that she would become a teacher. Finally, a compromise was reached and she started her Ph.D. in biochemistry at UPenn until the war (II) broke out and she left her program (they granted her a MS) and got a job working for the war effort.

My Mother’s Father (Pop-Pop) had a much different life. His mother had come over from Ireland to marry his father. Life was much better here in the States than in Ireland. She had a house, a child, a good husband and was able to stay at home while her husband went out and worked. However, life would take a sudden and devastating change for them. His father also died in the influenza out break, and my grandfather was sent to live in a home for boys without fathers while his Mother worked long hours as a maid for a family on the Main Line. They had fallen quickly from stable middle class, and now had become what many people called “poor ignorant Irish”. (Oddly enough, in high school I sat next to the Granddaughter of one of the children that Hannah had watched over. My grandfather commented how strange life and can be and how things can even out when he saw her name in my yearbook.) My Grandfather worked hard to get ahead in life, was rejected from military service as he was the sole care taker of his mother (it is actually still a rule the military cannot take your only child if you have no spouse). He made the best of the situation and went to college in Philadelphia (Drexel) and got a job working in a gun powder factory during the war - where he met my Grandmother who was analyzing the components of the gun powder that would eventually go into the casings that he was designing. They married when my Grandmother was 34, and she retired from working so that she could raise their 5 children. Eventually she did return to teaching, but by the time I was born her sight was failing her. She claimed it was from the hours she spent looking through the microscopes in the lab – hummm…who does that sound like?.

My Father’s family does not have the long history in the States that my Mother’s has. All of them came around the turn of century to escape the persecution that had started in Europe - even before most people realize. All are from what was the Austrian Hungarian Empire. My Father’s Mother’s (Nana) family was from the area that would now be known as Cracow (Krakow), Poland. My Father’s Father (Bob) what would now be known as Austria as well as few people that came from the Russian area. When asked what I am (family wise) it has become easier to just say Irish on my Mother’s side and Austrian Hungarian "Ashkenazic" Jewish on my Father’s.

(Did you know that the word “Ashkenazic” means “Germany” in Hebrew? Hence why Yiddish is based upon German. The Jews that inhabited other parts of Europe are known as "Sephardim” Jews. They are historically Spanish and Middle Eastern. They have their own language know as “Ladino” and are the ones that ‘wrote’ “The Kabbalah”. There are your fun facts for the day!)

My Grandma Clara (Nana’s mother) and one of her sisters (Goldie) were sent to live with relatives in the States after their mother died and their father remarried a woman that could only be described as mean and nasty. In the new world, they both were educated and found jobs when school was finished. Life was not perfect, but it was better then the life back in the old country. Eventually, they both married men (for love) and sadly my Aunt Goldie and Uncle Sidney were never able to have children, so they spoiled my Nana and Aunt Evy (short for Evelyn). I remember my visits to them as a child – they were always fun and extremely loving. The family of my Grandma Clara and Aunt Goldie that were left in the old country were never heard from again after the Great War. Their names are listed on intake sheets from various camps, but there are no records of them being liberated by the Allies. The household that my Nana grew up in was not rich, but they always had enough as the story goes. (The Creator made sure that they were provided for.) The girls grew up in the Brooklyn, where education was pushed and there were no excuses for not knowing your lessons or your Torah.

Bob of the other hand had a different upbringing. By all accounts, his Mother made Hannah look like a saint. She was a demanding woman that was unhappy with everything and everyone, including herself. The stories that I know about his up bringing are not from him, as he has never spoken of his parents or of his brother to me. I barely remember his father (Grandpa Max) but my mother even to this day will tell you that you could have never met a more wonderful man. My Grandfather’s parents spoke little, if any English when they came over here. When the Depression hit, he went out to Central Park and sold fruit. He also did something else - he took pictures of people with their children. When my mother asked him why he did this he replied, “Why would anyone not want a picture of his or her child?” He went on to explain that he figured if he enjoyed having pictures of his own children, how could anyone else not enjoy this small comfort. Eventually, my Grandfather’s mother left his father claiming that she was not well enough provided for. Many that knew him claimed that he never recovered from this. Those that knew my great grandmother have stated that she was pretty, but mean. She was a woman that loved beautiful things and wanted them and did not care what she had to do to get them. It did not matter to her who’s dreams and hopes she would have to shatter, but as long as she was happy that was all that mattered. It was one thing when she did this to a grown man, but she also took her unhappiness out on her own children. My grandfather realized at an early age that the only way that he was going to get out of this situation was to get ahead in life. So he studied hard and did well in school. He met my Grandmother who was 3.5 years younger than him, but in the same year of high school. He went off to the Navy for a few years while she “grew up some”, changed his last name to sound less Jewish, returned from the war and married my grandmother who was now 19.5 years old. They were married on Christmas Day. He then got his undergraduate degree from Cooper Union and then went on for his MME degree at Cornel. During this time, my Grandmother on the other hand was keeping busy by raising my Uncle Chuck and my Father along with working on her own undergraduate degree at NYU. Eventually they moved out to Long Island and by this time my Uncle Teddy had come along.

I am going to go back to my place now and feed the kitten and then craw under the covers. It has just been a stressful day. I was just checking the news and saw this. He is from my home town. This war just sucks.

I talked to my Father at Lunchtime today. He will be going down to Florida in the morning. He said that my grandfather would be transferred to the hospice center sometime today. Also, he said that he wants me to wait a few days before going down as there are something’s (maybe someone?) that need to be taken care of right away and he does not want me to have to get involved in them (but I am so good with the shovel!). I’ll guess that I’ll just have to wait to see what is going on…

I talked to my Father at Lunchtime today. He will be going down to Florida in the morning. He said that my grandfather would be transferred to the hospice center sometime today. Also, he said that he wants me to wait a few days before going down as there are something’s (maybe someone?) that need to be taken care of right away and he does not want me to have to get involved in them (but I am so good with the shovel!). I’ll guess that I’ll just have to wait to see what is going on…

I talked to my Father at Lunchtime today. He will be going down to Florida in the morning. He said that my grandfather would be transferred to the hospice center sometime today. Also, he said that he wants me to wait a few days before going down as there are something’s (maybe someone?) that need to be taken care of right away and he does not want me to have to get involved in them (but I am so good with the shovel!). I’ll guess that I’ll just have to wait to see what is going on…

I talked to my Father at Lunchtime today. He will be going down to Florida in the morning. He said that my grandfather would be transferred to the hospice center sometime today. Also, he said that he wants me to wait a few days before going down as there are something’s (maybe someone?) that need to be taken care of right away and he does not want me to have to get involved in them (but I am so good with the shovel!). I’ll guess that I’ll just have to wait to see what is going on…

I ended up not going to PA this past weekend. I ended up not doing much due to an outbreak of hives from someone eating shellfish near me at work on Friday. I called my mother when I left work (early) and told her that I was going to go back to my place and crash for a bit before I was going to undertake driving up to PA. She then talked to my Father and they both agreed that I should stay put and just recover from the hives, the posion ivy, and the high doses of steroids that I was on. So that is what I did (in addition to speding time at work) and I was starting to feel more like myself.

Yesterday morning I dropped Abs off at work and then the rental (I am still a bit ticked that I spent the money on it and really did not get to use it for the intended purpose) and went to work. I left a bit early so that I could go home to do Abs hair for the Helen Hayes Awards that she and Nick were attending. She look absolutly beautiful when they left (and the hair style was not too shabby I must say!).

With not much else to do for the night, Lara and I decided to go out for dinner to the local chinese resturant up the street and to finish the night off with some coffee. As soon as we sat down and were ready to place the order, my cell rang.

It was my Grandfather’s girlfriend number. Now, I admit – I did not call last week (I spoke to them the Sunday before last) and everything was fine. With all that had been going on last week, I figured “no news is good news”. How wrong I was. He has been in the hospital for the past week and she did not want to call as it “might upset everyone”. WTF? I told her to call me day or night! No matter what! She agreed! She promissed! And now my Grandfather is laying in the hospital, dying and she is calling because she needs my father to get her money! (I am guessing that the bank knows that only my grandfather or my father can write out checks and make withdraws on the accounts.)

I am so ticked off, it is beyond words. She is making decisions about him and for him and cannot even tell me what excatly is wrong other than:
“Sandi your grandfather is getting ready to check out. Sandi, I need to talk to your Father about money! I cannot do anything here by myself! Your Father needs to come down here and take care of this! I cannot get in touch with him and I need the money!”
What the hell does she need the money for at time like this? From everything that she is saying, he will not be getting out of the hospital any time soon - or if he is he is, he will not be going home or to a nursing home.

She has no medical education and she is making medical decisions?!

This is the same woman that was convinced that the doctors and insurance companies were not letting him out of the hospital (the cardiac unit of the hospital mind you) because it was cheaper to keep him in there than to let him go home and get the chemo and radiation (outpatient) for his cancer. EXCUSE ME!? Are you on Crack here lady?

Yeah, because we all know that the cardiac unit of the hospital is just SO cheap! After he got out and the doctors told him that he was not to start the chemo and radiation again until his blood levels stablized, she ignored them! She told me that she did not think that the chemo was effecting his blood counts! She said that she “knew” that it was the cancer that was causing all of the problems. I explained to her, in painful detail how chemo is basicly posion. That there is a fine line between killing cancer cells and killing a person and that chemo was not just a straight forward kind of thing. That blood levels needed to be watched very carefully. That sometimes, chemo is a stop and start process. That it would all depend on how well he tolerated it.

But has she listened? No.

I think that she has put him into a worse state than he was already in. I have spoken to my Father and we have agreed that we both need to go down to Florida and take care of the situation. She says that I am not allowed to come down as it may upset him more. Excuse me? What happened to when just two weeks ago you were singing my praises as he was doing so much better when I was down taking care of him? What about the fact that I (unlike you) don’t upset him. That I allow him to have some peace. I have just sat there in the hospital, listening to the doctors, questioning and discussing with them different treatment options. Never once have I yelled at them claiming that they were doing what they were doing because they were trying to save money. What do you do? You stand around the hospital telling everyone that he is your husband and that the doctors are trying kill him. Doing nothing but upsetting everyone around you, and you have the gaul to tell me that I am the one that does the upsetting? Screw you!
Yes, right now I am bitter. Yes, right now, I am really ticked off. Sorry for the rant.

This is the last weekend (or so I hope) that I will be out of the city for a while. It has been many a weekend since I have had the luxury of sleeping in on a weekend in my own bed. As silly as this may seem to some, for me, it has become a big deal. I am looking forward to getting all of my work done today and then having the freedom to go back to my place, pack up the few items that I’ll be needing for the weekend and then heading up North until my return on Sunday afternoon. Abs and I have agreed that on Sunday night she and I will have some margaritas (she was asking about them yesterday, as it has been awhile since I have made them). Maybe I’ll make some Mexican for dinner to go along with them. Worse comes to worse, I’ll make nacho’s!
Other than that, not much is going on – I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

I am ready for a nap...it is too beautiful to be here in the lab...maybe I'll run away...

A week on Benadryl is starting to get to me. I started taking it last weekend when I got hives from being around shellfish (Aunt Beth’s crab cakes top be exact). Then last Thursday/Friday the poison ivy started. I kept on taking until I went to the doctors on Monday for the shots, and they told me to keep on taking it until I was finished with the steroids.



After work I need to go get some more – lucky me. I am thinking of taking out stock in it at this point.

I had great plans of going home early tonight and going to bed nice and early, like at about 8:00 pm, I kid you not. I also need to make the phone calls that I had needed to make yesterday and did not make because I did not leave the lab until after 7:00 pm last night. But, as the case maybe, my Grandmother is in town this week, so I have to go out to dinner with her and some other family members after work. I have to meet them at the restaurant at 5:30 pm, so I will be getting out of work “early”, but I will not be going home to my bed. I am hoping that I’ll be able to get into my bed by 10:00 pm at the latest, but we’ll see.

I had a meeting this morning nice and early and I actually made it here to work by 7:45am. The meeting (8:00 am) “Ending the Suffering and Death of People with Cancer by 2015” which was given by the director of the NCI. I was not too bad, but I really wish that there had been more useful information as to how all of this will be done. It is nice idea in theory, but I really cannot see insurance companies knowing that one of their subscribers has a high rate of developing cancer at some point and being will to still cover their care…the joys of being in science. It is not just about solving a problem or developing a treatment anymore, it is all about the politics…it can be a really sad world at times, you know.

After a bunch of phone calls yesterday I finally got an appointment at the doctors office for the ivy problem.
But as always there is something good and bad.
The good, I am no longer itchy! The bad, I'll be on steroids for the next 14 days...
Both the nurses and doctor agreed, it was one of the worse cases that they have seen in awhile...
Busy day here in the lab; I am once again going to try to sequence the samples...This is what, only the 8th or so time that I have tried. But before I left I redid the whole experiment from square 2 - I did not bother to re make the samples from scratch as from all accounts they were correct. If this does not work, it will be back to square 1. Helps all keep our fingers crossed that it does not come down to that!

Poison Ivy…it has brought me so much pain in the past and it now back…all over me. I now have to wear gloves at all times…ahhh! I just hope that I can get into the doctors office soon so that I can get some of those lovely cortisone shots that help cure it…how bad do I have you are wondering…lets just leave it that there are very few places left on my body where it is not living…
So, no one has seen any updates here for almost two weeks, so here is the long and the short of it all.
My grandfather is doing much better. He is at home and has restarted his che3mo and radiation – which now as brought up a lot of other problems, but there are they usual ones associated with chemo and radiation – vomiting, hair loss (he lost most of it before due to genetics), etc. I thank everyone from the bottom of my heart for all of the phone calls, e-mails and comments while I was away. It means so much to me, and helped me get through some really rough days.
Aunt Beth is doing well. I had a nice time with her and we did get a number of things done that she usually does not get to do. I missed my bed in Washington though.
The Kitten had a wonderful time over at Phil’s place and is still ticked off that he does not get wet food 2x’s a day at home like he did over at Phil’s. He is always ticked off as I will not pet and hold him due to the plant infection…I have been holding him in a towel and petting him that way – it is just not the same though.
Much to do here in the lab, I am looking forward to catching up with all of you soon!