Sunday and the living is easy!!!!!

Good morning Friends and Family,

Nan and I are lazin in our big bed at 11:30 am. Already today she has been up and about and I mean big time. We headed down about 6:30 this morning to our recliners where she sipped 16 oz of Lemon Herb Tea and I sipped my CostCo mocha special. Then we slept and watched food channel for awhile with the back door open to the deck, cook breezes, beautiful morning. Then Nan ordered an English Muffin with peanut butter and one of those yummy white peaches Mary was kind enough to bring yesterday. Nan peeled the peach and cut slices which she placed on the muffin. Then she ordered a glass of chocolate milk. This allowed her to take her Gleevec and Rapamune. She also took a 5 mg oxycodine. At 9:30 we headed back up to the upper level with access vis the stair chair supplied by Sharon and David. What we would do without that wonderful stair chair. I remember Nan and I taking the motorhome to Alameda and winding around on the narrow streets until we found the address where the used stair chair was at. The guy helped me load it as we totally blocked the street with the motorhome. The next day I unloaded it on the front driveway and assembled it. I thought I would give it a try out there and since it was not on the correct angle of a stairs it jammed. That meant I had to totally disassemble the gear box and chain drive. Finally I got the gears and chain unjammed, understood how it all worked, reassembled it and carried it into the house to install on the stairs, not an easy process since it weighted several hundred pounds. How exciting it was when I first gave it a try and it worked and it has worked ever since, up and down from top stair to lower floor level. Nan has gotten real good at working it and knows just where to stop it. It is also helpful when moving suitcases up and down the stairs. Keanna loves to ride with her grammy and Starr is always there to watch the action and to try to get in the way.

If we did not have the stair chair Nan would be in a hospital bed on the first level right in the middle of the living room, not nearly as nice as in her own bed with dozens of pillows, her own AC and bathroom. Nan is getting along right now with fairly frequent bouts of intense pain in her incision, in her lower back and also head aches from time to time. She is frequently on the edge of nausea but so far has not lost anything since we were driving home in the van. She has made so much progress I find it amazing. The TPN is allowing her to have basic nutrition, vitamins, pepcid and liquids so we do not have to be concerned continually regarding her falling backward healthwise. It appears that she is continuing to gain weight and that her PH is more where it should be. Her TPN has bicarbonate in it to offset the fact that her body cannot collect that needed part of nutrition from the food passing through.

Nan took a walk down the street this morning, it was such a perfect morning, just the right temperature with alight breeze and she decided that she could handle it so we got the walker out, piled the little TPN backpack on the seat and took off. She walked through the garage which means three steps down, out to the street and then toward the neighbors. She walked pass the neighbors house and then decided to turn around and head home. She walked shoulders up, firm steps and without getting winded or anything. I was so proud of her and it seemed very nice to have her making this kind of progress.

Nan is watching Rachel Ray making something we would never eat but still fun to watch how she does it. She is a little upset that she cannot fall asleep, pains keep hitting her and waking her up. I told her maybe she was catching up on her sleep, not sure if that could be a factor or not.

We've talked to Nikki today and she is feeling a little better, less congestion. This has been a tough year for her alergy wise, she and Steve live very near open fields that are often either crop dusted or plowed or otherwise worked and the dust comes right at them. Steve has created an incredible rear yard with extensive and carefully planned landscaping, many mature palm trees, yard lighting, pond with waterfall, garden area, childrens play area, it is all just beautiful and has a large patio with shaded cover, speakers, BBQ. Amazing what that guy can do and now Keanna enjoys helping him or at least being with him as he does his beautiful thing.

At some point today I will do a little work, make a couple appointments and keep trying to clean up my office, months without me has compounded the mess I left things in before I headed back east. Time to tidy up. Someone suggested that we remove the carpet from our office rooms and put down a hardwood or Pergo floor. I like the idea since there is lots of traffic through and it will be easier to clean. I also want to paint the walls, get rid of things we don't need and make some progress in getting it more attractive. Right now it is a world of dark blue walls, cables everywhere, wall to wall file cabinets and desks and boxes of toners, etc. When you are away for awhile you see things differently when you come back than when you left. I am a very bad collector, I keep thinking I might need it someday and so it stays around, my three car garage holds only Nan's van, the rest is piles of someday items, Christmas stuff, bikes, boxes of memories etc. Some of it must go!

Its 12 noon now and I've enjoyed this little time with Nan and with you too. The last 3 months and in a larger sense the last year has been blur, very little normal life and lots of crisis times yet we have survived, survived with a lot of help from our family, our friends, good medical help and most of all our Heavenly Father. We are grateful on all counts for this day.

With love,

tim and nan