In Memoriam

My smart, funny best friend of 20 years has left me for a little while.  He departed this life at about 5 PM today.  Rest in peace, Craig.  I'll see you soon my Sweet Bear.

Carrying On

Chaplain Patrick from Lutheran Senior Services Hospice suggested that I continue the blog in the same spirit as Craig has been blogging.  The problem I have with that is that Craig is the idea guy.  He has all the topics he wants to write about.  At the moment, he's engaged in other activities and isn't sharing his ideas with me. 

I can tell you that he is resting comfortably here at home.  There are no beeping machines or bright lights.  Well, the oxygen concentrator is a little noisy, but we've both grown pretty used to it.  He's in the living room at the moment, and the Rams game from 8/20 that he had set to record is playing.  Later, he and I will watch the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie together as we had planned.  And there is a lot more preseason football on the recorder.

Unlikely

From Diana again:

I'm sorry to say that it is highly unlikely that Craig will be blogging again. He has taken a turn for the worse and seems to be going downhill pretty rapidly. In addition, he has been unable to get his email due to a password problem, so he hasn't been able to get any emails people may have sent. You can post replies here and I can get them and pass them along, or, if you have my email address, you can email me.

Still Here

I don't have much to say today except that I'm still here. Just want everyone to know I'm here. Got a couple of things to do, so I'll sign off and do them. Sorry to be so brief and not to be posting a photo.

Still Here

Another quick post from Diana:
Craig did not post to his blog today because he had a very busy day. We had lots of visitors and once they all left, we went to the Apple store at the Galleria so that Craig could get a new Macbook Air. We hope this will solve the problem of his having to go up and down the stairs to his office. As you might imagine, he's pretty tired after all of that, but hopefully, he will have a restful night and be back to blogging tomorrow.

NFL: Part 1

The post for today was a little depressing. I'm going to write a little about NFL Preseason Football.

First of all I have to mention Steve Spagnuolo. I think he will be a great coach. Another thing to like about him is that people who stay true to their regional dialects also stay true to the people they're with. A Good thing.

The Rams won the Preseason Opener against the Indianapolis Colts. Maybe not the greatest achievement because Peyton Manning sat on the bench with neck problems. But they won and Sam Bradford looked terrific!

There were rule changes this year. For one thing the players kick off from the 35-yard line. Every kickoff goes into the end zone. Dumb.

For another, every play is reviewed. More penalties that way. Don't know why they did that.

Oh, well. It's Preseason. I have no control over the game. Sit. back, relax, and enjoy the the game.

Chill

As we prepared for bed I got very chilled. I put the white sweatshirt on over the usual night shirt. Still cold. I put on the black sweat pants. Got into bed sweating like crazy.

It's possible that Diana got up once or twice in the night to remark that I was sweating. I was comfortable and stayed that way until we got out of bed at the usual time, 

I feel normal now. 

Off Day

Every now and then I have a bad day. Yesterday was one such. When I got up I just stood around leaning over. That's not too bad, but a lot of what I said didn't make sense to Diana. She was concerned. It lasted into the evening. During dinner I told Diana she had forgotten the cloth napkins. Got up to get  the napkins from the cabinet behind me. She pointed out that I already had a napkin on the tale. on the table.

I seem to be OK today. We'll see how it goes.

South City: Part 1

We live in a suburb of St. Louis that cartographers call South St. Louis. None of the residents call it that. It was, is, and always will be South City. We love it here.

A while back I had a blog called South City Sights. Each day's entry consisted of a photo from the local area and a brief description.

One of the nicest parts of it is the River Des Peres Greenway. I'm not going to kid you. The River Des Peres is nothing more than a long open sewer. The walkway is something else. A lovely and a refreshing change from walking or riding on the streets and sidewalks. It extends in two different directions and affords hours of walking.

I can no longer walk the Greenway. Maybe I can do it in a wheelchair later this summer. I've thought that if we get an out-of-town visitor it would be fun to get a t-shirt with a photo of a yacht at a dock and label it Green Rivers Des Peres Greenway.

More photos and descriptions to come. Enjoy!

Groceries

One of the good things going on is that I can still do grocery shopping with Diana. I use the cane to get to our car. She drives to the grocery story of our choice, Schnucks, and then pulls close enough for me to get out. While I go into the store to get a motorized cart she parks in a handicapped parking space. We just got our handicap tag this week.

Once in the store I try to keep out of the way of other shoppers. Perhaps the most difficult area of the store is the dairy aisle. For a long time we have been aware of Cheese Paralysis. The store has an excellent selection of cheeses. It's so good, in fact, that people just stand there contemplating their choices. I guess that's a good thing.

Once we have navigated that we can cart the groceries to the car and return home.

Comments tutorial

From Diana:

Several people have emailed their comments saying that they couldn't use the comments function on the blog.  I'm not sure why, although Blogger is occasionally flaky.  Just in case it's because posting a comment takes several steps, this is a brief tutorial.

To post comments to Blogger, select "Comments" at the bottom of the blog post, then select a profile.  I would suggest Name/URL  or anonymous.

If you selected Name/URL, you can just type in your name.  You don't have to use an URL.  Then click on the "Continue" button.

Type in your comment and click on the "Post Comment" button.

You will then have to type in the Captcha phrase that shows up and again click on the "Post Comment" button.

If any of the buttons or Captcha phrases don't show up, your browser may not support them.  You might try another browser or make sure you've updated to the latest version.  Or you might try waiting a few hours and try again, since, as mentioned, Blogger can sometimes be flaky.

Correction

I misread the NFL preseason schedule. Games have already been played. Time to go upstairs and do some more scheduling

Football

Today I will start a series of occasional posts on football. By that I mean American football, NFL football.

Tomorrow we will have the first preseason game: The Baltimore Ravens at the Philadelphia Eagles. The Colts will play the Rams later in the day.

I like watching football. One of the things I like is that I have no control over the outcome of the game. I am free to sit there, watch, and enjoy.

When we moved to the St. Louis area the nearest NFL team was the Kansas City Chiefs. I bought a Chiefs sweatshirt. Sometime prior to our moving here they had move the St. Louis Cardinals to Arizona. Not a good thing. A few years later they moved the Los Angeles Rams to St. Louis, something I suppose the Californians didn't appreciate either.

In 2000 the Rams won Super Bowl XXXIV against the Tennessee Titans. Dick Vermeil was the coach and Kurt Warner was the quarterback replacing the injured Trent Green. Ironically, Warner later transferred to the Arizona Cardinals who won a Super Bowl in 2008. Quite a player.

So forgive me if I don't pay much attention to cancer for a while.

Double Dactyl

After writing yesterday's post (a rhyme which I've known for a long time) I learned that it's a double dactyl. I had to do something silly because yesterday was not at all a good day. In the late afternoon I took a dose of liquid morphine. Almost immediately I go a strong chill. Diana claims it was coincidence. I'm not sure. I put on a sweatshirt and kept it on the rest of the day. This tossed the rest of Diana's day into turmoil. Neither of us slept well but I think I got more sleep than she did. I coughed a lot. The hospice worker has since given me a nebulizer med which will probably address that kind of problem.

So I took a day  off with a higgeldy piggeldy.

Not a bad tradeoff.

trivia

Higgledy piggeldy
Benjamin Harrison
Twenty-third President was
And as such
Served between Clevelands
And save for that trivial idiosynyracy
Didn't do much

(That's the best I can come up with today. Apparently the best Ben could do too.)

Current Status

When I started this blog I had no idea how long I would be able to continue it. I did my first post on July 19th. It's been about 25 days. Not bad at all.

I don't feel like I'm on top of the world but I have felt worse. Let's say I've had worse hangovers. And this week was good in that I gained a pound.

I haven't increased the dosage of any of my meds. I can't walk quickly. I am using my cane to get around when I take Kibbitz to the back yard. We have a borrowed wheelchair that I haven't used yet but that might happen soon. The outdoor temperatures have backed off the three-digit figures. We might, just might, be able to go on a walk (ride) with the All Dogs Meetup group before long.

The most important thing remains: meeting Diana is the best thing that ever happened to me.

Small Mysteries, Round 1

Here's one of those days when there are no new cancer issues so I will write about something else.

One of my college summer jobs was working in a warehouse in West Milton. There wasn't much work... or much pay. For whatever reason, maybe because everyone else was doing it, I decided to start chewing tobacco. I thought it was de rigeur to spit the tobacco juice. One of the seasoned veterans told me that wasn't a good thing to do, that I needed the saliva, and that I would be better off swallowing. That stuck with me.

During the summer I have been watching  St. Louis Cardinals baseball. For a while I used to watch the game until  one of the players spit. Not tobacco, just saliva. That didn't last long because someone on the team usually spits onto the ground within 15 minutes of game start. 

An exception is one of the best Cardinal players, Albert Pujols. I like to watch him trot around the bases blowing bubble gum. Most of the rest of the players spit on the ground. If anyone knows why please share the reason with me. 

It doesn't happen in other sports. You never see a tennis player or a golfer spitting. You rarely see an NFL player spitting but I suspect that has more to do with their not wanting spit hanging off their face masks.

I have seen complaints on various discussion lists about tobacco spit on the ground. Thing is, it will disappear with the next good rain. What won't disappear is chewing gum. A very few merchants will clean chewing gum off their sidewalks. I would be willing to bet, though, that you can't walk 50 yards without seeing deposits of chewing gum.

It's a Small Mystery.

Meds

Before the cancer arrived I took a variety of pills each day. Herbals, such as ginkgo biloba. That has changed. We returned home from Barnes-Jewish with a very large selection of ethical drugs.

Some of the list has changed. For example you can only take an antibiotic for so long without some severe side effects. Another that has gone by the way is a Lidocaine patch. That is a transdermal patch to relieve pain in the bones. Didn't seem to be that effective.

The primary drug I take, the one I take most frequently, is morphine. I am on a 15mg dose. I take two of those every four hours. It is effective. Sometimes I take a 55mg oral dose of liquid morphine. Fast acting.

Morphine brings digestive problems with it. I take four Senna for that, two in the morning, two in the evening. Twice a day I take a 30mg dose of lactulose. I also drink lots of water. Another drug for indigestion is nexium.

Dexamethasone is a helpful drug. One of the first effects of my cancer was that it killed my appetite. Dexamethasone restored it.

At lunch time and dinner time I take gabapentin. Tylenol is another pain reliever and liquid Maalox helps with indigestion.

I still take herbals. Here are there presumed effects:

Ginkgo biloba. Most people take this to increase blood circulation to the brain. I have found by trying it that it diminishes the tinnitus I picked up in the Army (while photographing the launching of Honest John rockets).

Saw palmetto. Treats benign prostatic hyperplasia.

Milk thistle. As a liver tonic.

Aspirin. Not an herbal. I've taken it for many years as a blood anticoagulant.

I must mention that in my entire life I have never taken an illegal drug with the exception of marijuana. The last time I did that was in the late 1970s. I got a batch that was so potent that if I toked one I went semi-conscious for the rest of the day.

One drug that I got at BJC that has nothing to do with cancer is tamsulosin (brand name Flomax). Prostate problems arrive with advanced age and that stuff really helps.

As you can imagine it is not easy to keep track of all this stuff but I do it.

Ginny's Dogs

This entry isn't about cancer. Every now and then I like to dwell on pleasant memories. Today it's about my Aunt Ginny's dogs.

Mamie was Ginny's first dog. She was mostly cocker spaniel. Ginny loved the dog but she didn't do the usual cocker things with her like having her tail docked or her fur trimmed. Mostly Mamie lay around being a pile of fur. (One time Ginny did have Mamie's fur trimmed. Later in the day my grandmother saw her and tried to shoo her away because she didn't recognize her.)

To give you some time perspective Mamie was named after President Dwight Eisenhower's wife which puts this narrative in the early 1950s.

We lived in West Milton, Ohio, a small village north of Dayton. West Milton extended perhaps three miles from one end to the other. Mamie had Visitor Dog Syndrome. There were no leash laws and she could go pretty much wherever she wanted to go. My family lived near the south end of town and we were never surprised to see Mamie show up.

One of the bad things about not being leashed. Like most dogs I've known Mamie was terrified of fireworks. One July 4th she ran far and hard. Sometime during that trip she got hit by a car. It broke her jaw but she survived.

Ginny used to drive to the local soft-serve ice cream shop and buy an ice cream cone. She'd wedge it in the back seat and Mamie would eat it. Good thing that Mamie wasn't lactose intolerant.

Ginny's other dog was Stella John. Not sure of her breed; she was one of those little fluff dogs.

Stella John had a thing for bugs. If a flying bug got into the house she would chase it until she got it. Ginny worked this into a routine. If she saw a bug she would say "Buggies!" and Stella John went into action. Ginny worked on the dialog until all she had to say was, "Hon, I think I see one" and Stella John was off and going.

The dogs enriched our lives and I hope we enriched theirs.

Less Heat

The highest temperature I see in the forecast for the coming week is 95. And there are temperatures cooler than that. Yay!

I don't expect to be out and about much but still it will be nice. I am waiting in dread for my electrical bill. The A/C has been going nearly nonstop for the past few weeks.

As for me, I'm a bit wobbly today. I will use my cane when I go outside with the dog. Inside I will just try to be careful.

I am weak. Can't lift the 40-pound dog. Doesn't look that heavy, does she?

So what I have to do is accept. And I do.

Today is a hospice visit. I enjoy those sessions. My hospice worker is very understanding and helpful.

That's a good thing

Flower Mountain

A few years ago we had a small brick patio installed in the back yard just behind our sun room. The workers piled the dirt next to the patio excavation. Diana took charge of planting native wildflowers on Flower Mountain. She planted a good stand of echinacea. They're lovely when they're in bloom. We do not chop these down when they're done blooming; rather we let them stand until the small birds in the area start eating the seeds. Yesterday we got our first glimpse of a finch eating the seeds. There will be more. I will try to get a photo of this later on. Not an easy shot but I think I can do it once it gets a bit cooler outside. The outside temperature is not quite as high as it has been. The weather bunnies predict 90 degrees.

Upstairs/Downstairs

I have a solution to the stair-climbing dilemma. I will use my old laptop computer (the iBook G4) upstairs to do some of the things that keep me going up and down. I was not able to set up a network as I envisioned it but I did get a couple of things done. I can now send and receive e-mail from upstairs. I can also play my favorite card game, Australian Patience, from the laptop. If Australian Patience seems like a waste of time remember that it's on my bucket list.

Thanks to all who offered alternate solutions. I think I will be OK now.

Snoozing

Forgive me. I've usually posted by this time but today i got caught up in a nap marathon. I have an idea for the stairs dilemma. I will work on that this afternoon and will do a post later today.

Pax

Not Easy

One of the things I face several times a day is going up and down the stairs to the basement to work on my computer. It is a slog.

The lighting isn't good. On the left you can see three small white dots. These are motion sensor lights that help illuminate the steps. There is a handrail on the left. Tried to install a rail on the right but the are no wood studs to attach it to.

I know that someday we will have to rearrange things so my computer is upstairs. That distresses me because I won't be able to move my computer desk. I'll include photos of that in a forthcoming blog. I built the computer desk by placing a door on top of a couple of filing cabinets. Nice, but I will lose it. 

One time I fell while I was trying to make my way downstairs. Probably trying to carry too much with me on the way. I landed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. Fortunately I didn't break anything.

Not sure how soon I will move the computer upstairs but if anyone has any suggestions I would like to see them.

Manor Grove Village

Now and then I have to choose a blog topic that brings back some pleasant memories. One such is a condo in Wilton Manors, Florida: Manor Grove Village. I lived on the second floor of a three-bedroom unit. The condo came with swimming pool, tennis courts, royal palms, thousands of singing frogs, and a flock of raucous parrots that used to land in a palm tree just off my patio. Visitors sometimes asked who the parrots belonged to. Easy answer: themselves. 

Farley the Cat lived there, too. He helped me discover one of the less-desirable features about the condo. There was a air-conditioner vent in the bathroom. Every now and then I would take the vent off to clean inside. One time Farley managed to jump from the bathroom sink and through the vent. Gone. I went into the attic and discovered that there were no building firewalls from one end of the building to the other. Duly noted. We moved on to other locations

Years later I read an article that the building that the building burned to the ground from one end to the other. 

A cautionary tale