Cowboy is OK-ish

Our cowboy is rollin' along. We had some health issues this week, but until they are confirmed as problems, which we hope they never will be, he won't let me post them.

Hey Cowboy Bill! Look over THERE!

(Fever, digestion problems, sore back, breathlessness and over-sleeping)

Hi Bill, how ya doin? Whassup, dawg?

WHAT WE ARE WAITING FOR AT THIS POINT:

We are waiting for a call saying he has a checkup scheduled at Wake Forest--the scan I keep kvetching about. But he likes NOT reminding anyone to set that scan.

No comment.

But, but, but.....(sound of placing duct tape over my own mouth).......

Pretty Much Nothing to Post!

The ole cowboy is telling me to just say that everything is fine.

Everything is fine.

There. Can't say I'm not a good wife!

Okay, here's the real scoop: No, just kidding. See, the problem with the blog has become this: Billy and I see his status in almost diametrically opposed ways. I see every little thing as a potential danger to him, and I want a doctor to look at every little thing in great detail. But HE ignores absolutely everything. So when I post about things I see going on, that seem scary to ME, he says I'm overblowing it, and that I should chill.

Chill.

Me. Chill.

Like that's EVER going to happen.

So, now that you know I can't post all the stuff I think is....word choice....."worthy of medical looking-into".....you can make what you want of my summary statement: All is well!

(I just asked him if he would mind if I noted that his scan is now one month late. He said that was okay to say. So I will add, without asking permission--forgiveness being easier to get hahahahaha!---that I OFFERED TO CALL AND SET UP THE SCAN AND HE SAID NO!)

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZIPPPPP! That's the sound of me b-e-i-n-g q-u-i-e-t which is not one of my gifts!

He has agreed to help out Appalachian State in an emergency this semester, teaching a course he hasn't taught since Univ. of Wisconsin, so he is frantically doing his prep this weekend. I'm running around as his squire, helping him find lost files, and create italics on his syllabus, and bringing him sandwiches and iced sweet tea, and making him home-made spaghetti, and reminding him that he's always nervous before a semester, and it will all be okay. He feels better, then, and thereafter, he says a lot of sweet things about me (told me today that I'm the best thing that ever happened to him? Whoa! I said, "Could you repeat that? About four times? I like the sound of that!") Hahaha, so I have HIM fooled as you can see. haha

Well, there you have it. A whole post that tells you really NOTHING AT ALL!

He is, though, seriously, feeling stabilized, so don't worry. A little trouble with nausea, and other things, and some other stuff, and a couple things besides that. That is all I can say!

Thank you for caring and stopping by and helping me love the brave boy through this big time in his life!

Love you,

Bethie

Bill is cruising along, with glitches

Yes. I missed posting on Sunday. I have proven myself utterly unreliable with the vow to post each Sunday. Forgive....

Update on Willy: Nothing new has happened at the chemo clinic. BUT. Nothing new has happened with Wake Forest setting up that 90-day scan, which is now wayyyyyyyyyy overdue. I say to Bill, "Don't you want me to call and set that up for you?" He says, "No. It's too much fun to act like nothing is wrong."

Eek.

Lately, his main troubles have been miscellaneous weirdnesses. He thinks he has swollen lymph nodes under one arm. I found them, when I was fake pushing him backwards (nice way to treat a cancer victim isn't it?) and I said, "Hey! What is THAT?" when I felt it. He checked, and thinks there's something there, too. But to remain calm (Who said, "I'd rather be happy than right?")(That person would not make a good cancer patient.), Bill has asked me not to talk about the lymph glands ANNNNNNNNNY more. So, that's his call! I'm actually less worried about them after googling for 8 thousand hours and finding out that when they feel like a big marshmallow, it's usually not bad. When they feel like gravel has gotten stuck under your skin, that's bad. His is marshmallow quality.

Also he is having quite a bit of external bleeding from his abdominal area. He says his abdominal area seems swollen, and his big new thing is tremendous fatigue from doing things he could do just weeks ago. Last night, he even called out for help after lying down suddenly across his bed after coming upstairs, while I was on the porch. Only he said, "HALP" instead of "HELP" and the term "halp" is a comedic term in our house for when you're saying what the dog is thinking and we pretend that the dog can't pronounce "help" except as "halp" so I thought Bill was joking. Ooops! He wasn't. I had to check his heart, and pulse, and help him kind of stabilize. Not sure what that's all about. He has bells hanging on a string from the bed headboard, and I said, "Why didn't you ring the bells????" and he said, "I couldn't reach them with my foot." (He was lying across the bed, perpendicular to the way you're supposed to lie in bed.) Wish I could have seen him trying to ring the bells with his foot. He is silly, even though he is sick.

He still plans to go ahead with a semester at Appalachian State. Hmmmmmmm. Not sure that's really an excellent plan, but he is stubborn, and I DO put my two cents in, but I never get any gumballs. He just does his thing, no matter what I advise. Big sigh!

That's it for now. Unless something happens this week, I'll post again "next Sunday"--and I put "next Sunday" in quotation marks to indicate that neither I nor you actually think I will remember to post ON Sunday. If I moved the deadline to Monday, I'd probably post on Tuesday.

Thank you for always caring!

Much love,

Beth

Wednesday Magnesium Drip-a-thon

Thanks for checking on the cowboy.

He did need intravenous magnesium yesterday. So we sat at the old chemo saloon and he got dripped. I went out and refilled all the bird feeders outside the windows, as there were no seeds left, and lots of disappointed little birds checking for snacks. There was no volunteer at the place yesterday, so when that happens, they let me fill the bird feeders because I love it. Then little birds come and eat outside the one-way mirror that makes up the entire east wall, and it entertains all the drip-recipients a bit.

I don't know of any more scheduled appointments at the chemo place, but maybe he'll continue going by every couple of weeks to check the magnesium.

I was much more interested in his Blood Urea Nitrogen (BUN) score and its ratio to his Creatinine, which I figured out how to calculate using google research. If a ratio gets into a certain zone (I think I explained this on here, once, so skip this paragraph if you read that), it means you have kidney malfunction. Bill's score was getting worse every 2 weeks that they checked, but Little Miss Oncologist didn't notice that, and I wasn't about to TELL her after getting sent to the principal's office for talking last time.

BUT BOTTOM LINE: Miss Onco didn't even have his Creatinine and B.U.N. scores TESTED yesterday, and she wasn't there, so we couldn't request it.

Ugh.

Next event should be Wake Forest calling us with a scan time. HALP! RUN AWAY!

Bill DID get a call from Appalachian State U. this week, and he will be teaching again this upcoming semester. I thought it would have been ideal to have gotten a scan before accepting that job, and I also wish Bill might have just taken the semester off to recover from the last years of travail. But no.

I'll write again Sunday, just to keep the schedule going during down times.

Thank you always for caring.

Muchest love...

Sunday! I'm Blogging on Sunday!

Miraculously, I didn't forget to blog on time this week.

That's because I've invented a new way to torture myself, which torture has to do with why I would be typing the blog in a timely fashion. But more on that later.

Bill's next medical adventure is Wednesday, August 10th. (Our friend Jim G. was trying to invent a term for the day after the day after tomorrow, and he decided the term should be "tomorrow yonder." I fully agree with this idea.) Bill will have his blood tested and possibly get a magnesium drip tomorrow yonder.

Speaking of Jim G, Jim and his amazing family hosted Bill for 18 holes of golf Thursday, as part of a tournament to benefit Ashe County Memorial Hospital.

Bill golfed EIGHTEEN HOLES!!!!!

Bill said he pictured his days as a mere shredded scarecrow husk of a human (okay, that was MY non-melodramatic extended adjective) at Duke Hospital, and he thought of how far he'd come that he could golf 18 holes, when his chance of cancer remission was only 3%, and he's hit that 3%! (I don't know if he hit 3% of his golf balls correctly, however. But who cares about math.)

He isn't feeling completely great, though. But nothing outstandingly terrible. He said to tell you he wishes he could get a bright yellow 2012 Fiat 500 car, but I told him my mom would get mad if we put that on the blog because it is not fiscally conservative to purchase cars that are not extremely used, saith she. So pretend I didn't say that. And don't tell my mom about the Fiat; she doesn't have internet.

The next time I post here will be to update you on the Wednesday blood tests. Also, Wake Forest hasn't called to set up that scan that we are dreading with our entire beings. We aren't calling them, either, so we might have to man-up and get that scheduled. Right now, though, it's fun to pretend: "WHAT scan?"

Here ends the information about Bill. If you read on, you will only discover the new form of self-torture that has caused me to blog on time this week.

I read that a person burns a lot more calories standing than sitting, so as part of a sudden state of panic I have entered as a result of a silly and obvious LIE the bathroom scale tried to tell me this morning, I am no longer sitting down except for two 5-minute intervals per day.

I have moved my laptop to the kitchen bar and am standing up alllllllllllll day long. I have used up my two 5-minute sit-downs, and I now wish to perish. This is the single worst idea I have ever had, and that is saying something.

Tip: Computer games are no longer fun.

Anyway, because I can't sit down, I have to keep DOING things, so I thought of the blog. Thus it is timely for once.

However, if you knew the amount of leg, back, front, side, skeletal, and psychological pain I am experiencing at this very moment as I type this, you would understand why Bill just yelled at me, "Beth! YOU ARE CRAZY. GO SIT DOWN RIGHT NOW! YOU'RE MAKING MY BACK HURT!"

He loves me, though.

Even though I am a little bit nuts.

And a little bit fat.

Okay, more than a little bit fat.

Okay, fat.

Okay, the end.

Till tomorrow yonder!

Isn't it Still Sunday Somewhere?

Am I late AGAIN posting the Sunday blog? Please define "Sunday"! (Nah, that didn't work. I'm just plain late again.)

Well, nothing much good or bad.

Bill felt MUCH better after his magnesium drip last week. He even hit some golf balls at a driving range, but couldn't make it all the way through without stopping and resting. Still, though!

He still has off and on abdominal pain, about 3 inches below his heart, and on the inside, he says. And his medical equipment is giving him so much trouble--breaking all the time. (Also, our icemaker already broke on our new refrigerator, and he is more upset about THAT than the rest of it. haha)

Yesterday, I went to the funeral for my sweet 2nd cousin Janey Robbins Campbell who died at only age 48 of lung cancer, and she never smoked or even drank (Southern Baptist!). My cousin and that part of my family--we all share the same great-grandparents, born and buried in this same little town--that's how we're related to Tom Robbins the author. Tom couldn't be there, as he lives out west. He is 78 now, even though Wikipedia shows him as several years younger. For that reason, he once said he'd found the fountain of youth: It was Wikipedia.

It was upsetting being at the funeral, even though Janey is with the Lord now. They showed video montages of Janey, and played beautiful songs she loved. She was so brave, and she held out till her little boy came to her bedside (he had been afraid, and couldn't go into her room for a long time), but he finally got his nerve up and went up to her face and told her, "Mommy, I love you." And that instant, literally, she breathed her last. She waited for him to say that, not just for her, but so he could always remember how much he meant to her, and his last precious words to her, and how she had loved him so much that she waited for that.

Life isn't for the timid. Fighting cancer and simultaneously assimilating the fact that others near you have lost their battle with it--it was all I could bear at this particular time. I had to come home early. I couldn't eat at the luncheon afterward. I was too sad.

But on a happier note, Bill has taken up Facebook, and is having the time of his life finding his old friends and catching up with everyone. He hopes to go to his 50th class reunion next spring.

He isn't sure he will be teaching this fall, starting to feel pretty sure he won't--there were cutbacks at the campus, but nothing for sure yet.

As my friend, Gayle, who is an Orthodox Jew (I don't know too many Orthodox Jews, so we have really great discussions) says: May the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob bless you!

Over and out.

B&B