What a Summer!!

What A Summer!!

We’re wondering what we will do next year to top this. We have had a fantastic summer. We have seen so much of this beautiful earth that we can’t believe we did it.

A couple of weeks after returning from San Francisco we made our way through the airport maze to Nashville, Tennessee with Denise’s HOSA student for national competition. We had a forensics team that placed 9th and our first aid / cpr team placed 5th. There were over 6,000 kids at this competition this year. It is really amazing to us that kids from a little high school in southeast Idaho can compete on the same level with medical charter schools and state programs that make Idaho look puny.

We were able to make a visit to the Nashville temple. It’s actually a half hour south of Nashville in Franklin. It is a very small cozy temple. The area around Nashville was also the location of some of the last battles of the civil war. We visited the Carter house where the battle of Franklin was fought. There were over 5,000 deaths and injuries at this battle; one of the last of the war. One of the outbuildings still bears hundreds of pock marks from the battle. The Carter family and many other local residents hid in the basement of the home during the battle. At one point cannon shot knocked over the chimney for the house.

After returning home we met with Dr. Dickson. He was excited about the scans and lack of tumor evidence. That day he started me on a new regimen of chemo for maintenance!! Yahoo!! The new program is Avastin, which I have been taking all along, once every three weeks and Tarceva an oral medication that I take once a day. The Avastin acts to deprive the cancer tumors of blood supply. Dr. Dickson told us they have learned that the tissue protecting the cancer cells are epithelial cells, the same kind that your skin is made of. The Tarceva attacks these epithelial cells. Unfortunately, it also messes with your skin. Especially in high nerve, rapid growth areas like the face, feet and hands. Dr. Dickson told me it would be like having acne all over again. That was just the first couple of weeks!! He gave me myocycline, a mild antibiotic to help with the facial inflammation. It didn’t seem to help that much. Maybe it did and I should be grateful. Since then between the myocycline and the Tarceva my skin has been pretty much a wreck. The skin on my hands and feet is so thin it always feels like I am walking on rocks. I have to wear gloves for any work with my hands or they are beat to a pulp.

The end of July we met with Dr. Dickson again. We asked how long this new regimen would last. He said “until we both walk in here pushing a walker”. That was a bit of a shock. This new program has different side effects but perhaps more irritating in terms of affecting things I do every day. Dr. Mckinlay told me I should not go outside at all without heavy duty sunscreen. Tarceva, Myocycline and Avastin make your skin very photosensitive. Just being outside for a few minutes feels like three hours of sun. Now we are midway into August, almost two months on the new routine. I am freezing. I can’t stay warm. We’re not sure if it’s the chemo or if something has messed with my thyroid. I am cold continually, wearing a sweater when it’s 90’ outside. A good hot car feels pretty good for the first five minutes then it starts to feel like sunburn… can’t win!!! Thyroid level is fine…. If this continues it is going to be a very long winter.

As soon as we got back the playhouse was the next priority. The kids were all going to be here the end of July for our little family reunion. We decided to have it at the house this year and do some outings to make it more fun. I did manage to get the playhouse completed. It was a big hit, mostly the sandbox underneath. Sophie, Josie and Trooper were in heaven. The tire swing was Caryse’s favorite. Sophie loves to be swinging and have someone “go under”. Meaning she wants you to push her far enough that you can run under.

During the reunion we spent one day at Ross Park and the Aquatic Center across the street. The zoo from an adult perspective was pretty much a waste of time. There were very few animals, very hot, all outside. They have a long way to go make it a real attraction. The aquatic center on the other hand was a tremendous hit. A big slide, a tube area where you sit on a tube with kids or without and it floats you around the river. The little kid area was fantastic, a large pool area about a hundred feet across with a large water activity center. Around the activity center the water is about eighteen inches deep gradually slopping up to no water at all. The littlest crawler can have a great time there. The kids were having a ball until a lady announced that a kid had thrown up in the water. They have to keep everyone out for an hour and “shock” the pool. That pretty much finished the trip for us.

Saturday we had Kristen come and take family pictures. She suggested the Moreland gravel pit / park. It worked out very well. She got some excellent pictures as well as the rest of the family. We noticed after screening all the whole family pictures that in the two best either Jason or Daniel’s face is partially hidden in both. It will take some Photoshop work to get one of them in the right place. Even Max had a good time he decided the lake looked pretty good for a swim. The wet dog riding back to the house was compounded by the fact that the breeze had moved all the trash on top of the water to the end where we took the pictures. So here’s Max out swimming in water that you wouldn’t want to stick you toe: It was quite the picture.

We thoroughly enjoyed having all the kids home for this little get together. LueAnn and Herm and Atha came to the house Saturday afternoon to visit with all for a while. Having them come see all the kids was a very nice treat.

On Monday we followed Sara and Dan back to Rathdrum so we could attend the court hearing where they were granted final custody of Corbin. The whole thing was a little anti-climactic for us. We had only been involved in the process from arms length. But it was a very happy occasion. The judge noted that this was one of the few cases where an adoption was completed in less than a year. Denise and I enjoyed the day with them and a small open house that evening for their ward members and friends.

That Tuesday, we headed home by way of Glacier National Park and Yellowstone. What a beautiful site Glacier is. We live amongst some of the greatest miracles of creation on the earth. The pictures we took of Glacier hardly do justice to the beauty and majesty that is there. We got out of the mountains into western Montana; rolling hills, lots of grass, more beautiful country in a different way. It was easy to tell when we went through the reservation. What our government has done to Native tribes is a travesty. If there were one example of why the government cannot run healthcare this should be one glaring example. We continued down through Yellowstone. We didn’t stop to see any of the sites in Yellowstone partly because we’d already seen them and we were on a schedule to get to Bar J Chuckwagon that evening. The Tetons were likewise amazing. There is such majesty, complexity and simplicity in the Lord’s works of creation. They are amazing wherever we see them.

We were so glad to get home. It had been a wonderful week. The Bar J was fun and entertaining as usual. It is always good to get back home too. Even though this was the end of summer, the last few days before Denise heads back to school. Jason and Arwen were in California to her sisters wedding. We tried to get a handle on the yard again, the weeds seem to just take over in the night.

Just like another work day school started again. I had already returned to work from a two week absence. We were getting used to our regular routine again. On the 15th I was checking equipment on one of the ambulances. I had taken a bag of splints from their compartment which allowed a stair chair to roll to the edge of the compartment. That usually didn’t happen so I reached in and pushed it back to where it was. That caused the top of the chair to come forward and hit me in the head. Being the man that I am I thought there must have been a mistake, it shouldn’t have done that, so I pushed it in again a little harder this time. It responded back in relation to the added force I had applied in my push and hit my head again!! Imagine my surprise, then anger at being bested by simple physics. Rather than be embarrassed by my stupidity I took it out on the chair: it gave no response at all to my beating.

The next Tuesday I noticed a sore spot on might right thigh when I walked. By Friday night I could not walk on it without severe pain. I finally went to the clinic to ask for some pain pills stronger that Tylenol. The P.A., Denise and I talked and decided that, as we had talked earlier with Dr. Mckinlay, this was most likely a broken blood vessel that would get better. A prescription was written for Lortab and we went home. By late Saturday night the pain was not even being touched by the Lortab so we went to the ER. Dr. Call took one look at me and ordered an ultrasound. It didn’t take long to find out that I had a blood clot from my ankle to the top of my hip. Dr. Call sent me home with some Percocet and instruction to be back on Monday at 1p.m. to see Dr, Sheily. In hindsight, we wondered why he didn’t start some heparin immediately and keep me in the hospital?? Sometimes even we who circulate in the medical community get caught wondering why somebody dropped the ball.

Monday I was scheduled for surgery at 1p.m.. When we arrived at the hospital they put me in ICU. Apparently there were a few other people concerned that this was really serious. It was a crazy day in the OR so we ended going in at 7p.m. Dr. Shelley only did about half of the clot area. They don’t do much with clots below the knee. If they break off they’re not big enough to cause life threatening problems. They go in behind the knee, above the calf and thread a catheter into the vein. While administering TPA they insert a rod into the catheter and turn it to chew up the clot. He told us that when they clean out the clot a lot of blood products still hit the kidneys and they have to be careful not to overwhelm them. I went back to surgery the next morning at seven. This was where the fun began (if having clots and being in the hospital weren’t fun enough). Despite the use of TPA the clots were reforming as fast as he was tearing them apart. He finally stopped trying and sent me back to ICU while he tried to figure out what was happening. They came to the conclusion that the Avastin was the likely culprit. We found out later that thirty percent of those taking Avastin have problems with a higher incidence of blood clots. I don’t know that they changed anything at that point but at seven that night I went back to the OR and Dr. Shelley was able to get the rest of the clot taken care of. You will have to talk to Denise about me and morphine. Tuesday I got pretty loaded up on morphine, I guess I was the life of the party.

After getting home Wednesday afternoon the recovery ordeal started. My discharge instruction were to continue on my Coumadin at 3.5-4 and take 100mg of Lovenox(heparin) twice a day by injection into the abdomen. This stuff is a treat. After a couple of injections your stomach looks like you’ve been attacked with a ball bat; big ugly bruises. The road back to health has been pretty quick. I used a walker the first couple of days to take some pressure of my right leg. The drugs were a treat too: some crazy dreams. One night I looked at our closet. It was deeper and bigger than before was full of tires and dark dress pants all intermixed. I started telling Denise then realized I was dreaming and made some comment. A little while later, I jumped to the side of the bed. Denise asked what I was doing? I told her Evangaline was climbing out the window and I had to stop her. She told me to come back to bed. It’s now Thursday night and I have put in a couple of pretty good work days without to much pain. Tomorrow I return to work at the FD