Still waiting. Dum dee dum dum....ZZZZZZZZZZ.

Still waitin and waitin and waitin.

Will Tuesday get here before our lil QV (Queasy Vaquero) falls asleep in his cowpoke attire and tips right over?

As my good friend asked me today, "Would it not have been wise for some doctor somewhere to have asked to have had him seen during this long interim when he is so ill?"

"Would seem so to me," saideth me. I was watering my seedlings outside while we talked, which often makes me uncharacteristically laconic.

"His kidneys maybe could've gotten looked at during this waiting time, with those bad function scores?"

"Would seem so to me."

"His nutrition checked in case he needs supplements, with losing all that weight and still being unable to eat, and anemic, this long after the surgery?"

"WSSTM." Here I go from laconic to acronymical to emphasize the ongoing correctness of her serial observations.

"And to look into the wisdom of going this long without chemo?"

"WSSTM."

"WSSTM, too. WWHD?"she asked, the acronymical laconicity having become contagiously appropriate. (Along with my amusement at making up words like laconicity as I write this blog.)

"WWHD? WDYM?"

"I mean, what would House do?"

"ABT."

"ABT? You mean 'Anything but this'?" she asked.

"WSSTM."

"M, too," she agreed.

Doesn't it SSTY,too?

Our Lithping Robot

As briefly mentioned yestermorn, we have a lisping robot living in our kitchen.

More specifically, she is a robot, and she lisps. Cannot get the "s" sound right to save her mechanical life.

The home nurse people installed her and plugged her into our phone line. She sits on a countertop in a corner of the kitchen. She is wired to a square scale that sits on the floor. (Directly in front of my pots and pans cabinet, requiring me to keep my pots and pans in a large attractive BOX throughout the remaining tenure of the Lisping Robot. My housekeeping skills being poor to begin with, the pans-in-a-box look adds much to the scenery in our home.)

So every morning at 10 am, we, and several of our dogs, are catapulted into the air with shock when a LOUD VOICE in the kitchen suddenly yells out: GOOD MORNING! IT ITH TIME TO TAKE YOUR VITAL THYNTH! Oh, for a font option that would let me type those words in the size that the Lisping Robot speaks them at 10 am. You could read them from across the room.

So Bill hobbles out and steps on the scale, and finds out his weight. Then he is instructed to sit in a chair, during which time he applies medical gizmos to his arms, finger, mouth, etc. and finds out his oxygen levels, his heart beat speed, his temperature, and his blood pressure. Then Mademoiselle Robot asks him if he is especially tired today, if he wants his clinician to call, and a few other questions.

After all the information is in the possession of our Lisptress, she automatically dials the home health office and transmits the information to them, and they forward a copy to His Bladderious Curmudgeonry at Duke who, I suspect, uses his trash receptacle to forward this important information to the nearest landfill.

The thing is, she lisps.

What kind of casting agency would select a woman who lisps for the job of being the Voice of the Kitchen Robot?

Yet, there is something about a lisp that begins to endear itself. We have not only grown accustomed to her lisp, but we have come to strangely adore it.

"Playth the blood preth-er cuff on your arm and retht your arm ath inthructed by your clinician," she commands.

Oh, thay it again, PLEEEETH thay it again!

I suppose that the most important thing we have learned from our Robot is this: When you place two adults in a small house in the mountains and give them absolutely nothing to do but sit in a quasi-morose, mindbendingly boring silence, waiting for nothing more exciting than the next doctor appointment to transpire, said two adults will become so desperate for amusement that Lisping Robots will begin to seem compellingly fascinating, to such a degree that said Robots can even end up as the headline topic of an entire blog post.

Loving you from Robotworld,

Cowpuncher and Diamond Lil

Holding Pattern

Maybe we're feeling news-less because we are in the old holding pattern, waiting for the potentially Big News next Tuesday when we go to Duke and get test results and find out if the cowboy can start chemo. And stuff.

My daughter Sarah flew in from LA yesterday. She will be here a month. Today is her birthday! She helps me out with such things as the nefarious tasks upon which I have procrastinated into the kingdom of smithereens. Such as taking the dogs to the vet. Or taking the dogs to get grooming things done. Man, I hate doing those things! Sarah is a professional singer/songwriter and computer consultant. My son is a professional singer/songwriter, too. I was, too, way back when...

Anyway, back to Mister Buckaroo. I'll let you view Bill through Sarah's newly-arrived eyes:

"Oh my gosh, you are so SKINNY!" she said, after seeing the 50-pound-weight-loss pony boy lying in bed. "At least you aren't as white as you were in the hospital," she also noted.

He was lying there grinning. "Hi, Sarah!" His eyes looked big and round, and his smile looked tired, but always sweet. Like him.

"You look great being so thin!" she added. "Want mom to make you some dinner?"-- the latter question somewhat compromising the compliment.

He made a big face like, "Ohhhhh, don't talk about food."

And in a few minutes, he was asleep again, like he is most of the day.

In the next post, I hope to tell you about our ROBOT. Yes, we have a sort of Mrs. Robot machine living in our house, keeping tabs on Bill. Oh, it's not a person. It's really a machine.

And she has a lisp.

More soon! Don't go away!

Trying not to bum everyone out!

We were going to post something today, but it was another bad day.

I asked Bill if he, as I do, feels bad about how it seems like we are always putting up negative posts.

He does feel bad about that. I do, too!

So I told him to try to think of something positive to say. He thought for about 30 seconds, then he said, "Maybe tomorrow."

So.

Maybe tomorrow.

Love to you.

Will post something new here in a few hours...

Not THAT new...but at least an itty bitty Monday update!

Till then....

We're Boring

We accidentally skipped two days of posting, while we waited for Something to Happen so we'd have something to post about. And by Something, I don't mean Anything in Particular, I just mean Anything. At. All.

But here we are, with nothing new to report.

In un-new news: Bill feels about the same, but no worse! He is still pale, still losing weight every day, still has tachycardia. He still has equipment problems with his post-surgical gear, which problems keep him up a lot of the night. Still tired, can't eat much, sleeps all the time. Nothing new, as you can see.

We look forward very much (naiive hope-addicts that we are) to the Duke Day, because of the hope of getting more information. We plan to force His Obdurately Nonforthcomingness to give us the REAL facts--as in a prognosis--a best-case and worst-case spectrum prognosis.

At first I thought Bill wouldn't want to be present to hear the "worst-case" part of the guessing, but that ol' cowboy still has tricks up his cowboy sleeve. He surprises you! He DOES want to hear the whole truth. He says.

If he throws up his cowboy beans after hearing anything scary, he won't be allowed back in.

The only other kind of bad thing going on is that Bill's kidneys have now been malfunctioning for more than three months, which (according to my doctorate from the School of One Hour of Googling on the Subject) qualifies him as having Chronic Kidney Disease. His kidney function has been down since chemo, and right now his blood tests show that he is in Stage 3 of five possible stages of kidney-funk. Or whatever they call it. (Kidney Funk means I had to make up a name for it because I forgot the real name.) And if my guess is correct, it means that his kidneys might be causing most of his current symptoms by not Squirting out a Particular Thing (you can see I picked up all the medically accurate nephrological terms while I googled) which Thing is supposed to make his bone marrow make red blood cells. Thus, anemia. Thus no appetite, and small fevers, weight loss, whiteness, extreme fatigue, etc.

On one hand, it would be nice if all his current weirdnesses could be attributed to Kidney Funk and not to Something Worse. But at the same time, we both hope that Kidney Funk does not disqualify one for chemotherapy.

Well, now you've seen a quality of mine that Bill has put up with for lo, these many years: Even when I have absolutely nothing to say, I still talk.

Love to you!

The Great High Prince of Bladderdom Re-enters the Storyline

Yes. His Most Great High and Ever-Regal Master of All Bladderdashery has re-appeared in the storyline.

This noteworthy moment arose following a telephone call placed by the humble cowboy.

"What a coincidence," they said at the office of His Celestial Bladdersphere. "We were JUST mailing this information out to you this afternoon!"

Mmmm-hmmm. Sure you were.

So May 4th, the cowboy and Diamond Lil pack up the ponies and trot down the mountain again to Duke to give them one more chance to make us into believers.

On that day, they promise, Bill will gets "lots and lots of tests." And at 1 pm, we meet with His Humbuggian Harumphness to get those results.

One great thing that might come of it: Last time Bill got chemo, Duke's Mighty Surgeon of Majestic Unmentionables transferred Bill's entire care to the Oncologist at Boone. Files and all. Should that happen again, we would certainly see if we could, thereafter, STAY with our beloved Oncologist in Boone. Or at least figure out a way to have permanent access to her, for the day to day problems that are, at present, not really getting addressed.

Yesterday ended with Bill being unable to eat pretty much anything at all, due to dramatically increased nausea. Today, the home nurse comes to check on him.

Love to all...

Things Could Be Worse

Things could be worse. You could live in this cute little Icelandic farmhouse.

Or you could be a patient at Duke. (They STILL haven't called us back!)

This morning, his cowboyness woke up craving orange juice. Normally, in this house, we have enough orange juice to carry us through till the 22nd century. But of course TODAY, did we have any?

Nopers.

So I put the puppies in the SUV and drove to the bottom of the hill and got him some.

He drank a whole serving! He normally hates orange juice. Hooray for the awakening of healthy cravings!

As for bad news, he has a fever today and his heart is still racing. Also, an equipment attachment malfunctioned at 5 am, which he found upsetting, but I won't go into details on the amount of work required to fix that situation. And how much he didn't feel like dealing with it at 5 am.

And I am beginning to worry more each week about the fact that he isn't getting chemo, while it has been a whole month since his surgery. I try not to imagine his cancer finding itself on an uninhibited month-long shopping spree in his body, with nothing to take its credit card away, and no rips being given by his doctor.

[Yes, Monty B., a pox on the devil-may-care Blue Dont-Give-A Devil attitude his aptly sobriqueted doctor is evidencing.]

But as for better news, our boy seems much stronger. Like when he gets up and walks to the kitchen, he isn't wobbling and bobbling and grabbing on to every door post. SOME door posts, yeah, but not ALL of them.

Love to you, and if nothing else, Happy Not Living in Iceland Day!

Sunday

It's been a quiet day at the Getting-Closer-To-Okay-Corral, and quiet is good.

The cowboy feels about the same, but no worse! That's progress.

He has only eaten the equivalent of about five bites of food all day and had to take medicine to stop the resulting queasiness, but he kept it all down. Yay!

He's on the couch (this is an improvement over being always in bed) and watching a golf game.

So I just now said to him, "Hey, Billy, what would you want to say on your blog? I'll type it for you."

So he said this: "Nothing new, really. A lot of lethargy, a lot of sleepiness, uhhhh, life punctuated by naps, uhhhh, washed out but still feeling better."

Then he added this:

"I feel well enough that I care that the Phillies lost today."

Well there you go. You can take the cowboy out of the baseball game, but you can't take the baseball game out of the cowboy.

And before you spend one second of your valuable time trying to figure out whether the previous sentence actually made sense or not: it didn't. It just sounded good. Actually, it didn't even sound that good, but I'm too lazy to erase it.

Torrents of love to you. Hope you're having a lazy Sunday, too.

Inside our house...

This is a picture I drew of the inside of my kitchen.

But I digress.

Today, Bill and I are both full of apologies to you. We are apologizing because we now have to pull back quite a bit on our communication with everyone, starting today.

I will continue to post progress, probably daily, on this blog, but we both have to bid a love-full but necessary adieu to everyone--just for now...

Bill and I are both having a very difficult time, physically and emotionally, right now, and we both need to rest. Just like the saying that one can't be too rich or too thin, there should be a saying that you can't have too much love in your life.

I don't agree with the "too rich or too thin" part, but it simply IS true that you can't have too much love in your life!

And because of you, we have SO much love in our lives right now, when it means the MOST.

The only trouble we're having is that we have found that we are not keeping up with all the communications we are receiving, and we feel like we are letting you down.

In other words, on one hand, we are thrilled out of our minds that so many people care so much about Mister Billy!

But we are FALLING DOWN ON THE JOB at doing our part to respond to your beautifulness!

We are failing to return the phone calls we wish we could return, and failing to write back to emails or to respond to cards--we're not even keeping up with replying to offers of food and kindnesses like that! You see? We are being TERRIBLE!

So this morning, we decided to just let everyone know that we are taking a break from communicating--and simultaneously, we are apologizing like crazy...

We both KNOW that you will completely understand, but still, we hope that this doesn't offend anyone even in the tiniest way.

Meanwhile.......

In today's health news, Bill isn't having such a great day. Duke never did call us back. And Bill still has tachycardia, is losing weight, is pale as the North Pole, and had quite high blood pressure today. He feels a tiny bit stronger, he thinks, but still has to take medicine to keep from throwing up after he eats, and he almost faints when he walks, and--you know--it's getting so old.

But we do understand that healing from surgery takes a LONG time--and all his problems could be related just to anemia which could be resulting from his kidneys not being at their peak, due to the lingering effects of chemo and of surgery and complications and such.

So we aren't feeling doomed.

Just a little bit adrift, medically, and mind-warped that Duke never called back about the follow-up appointment which was due this past week at the latest. Please think TWICE before encouraging anyone you know to EVER go to Duke for hospitalization of any kind.

So forgive us--and we know you already do--but we can't come out and play right now.

I pray to heaven that you haven't felt ignored by us--that would be tragic, because you have been angelic--and we need your love and your prayers, but we can't (hey, let's really mix up the metaphors) return the tennis ball right now.

More tomorrow, here on the blog.

We love you. That's the thing. We love you so much.