The Saga Continues

Since arriving home I have neglected to do any serious blogging. I had a severe reaction to my medication in Texas and decided to forgo the treatment. It took a good four weeks for me to get over the medication and only now am I feeling my strength return and my diet get back to normal.

Lately I can feel a little more energy and I can feel that I am beginning to get my feet back under me. Who knows how long it will last. I go back in a week for an MRI and then later in the week follow that up with a visit with my radiologist. We will see how all of that goes.

I just got back from the local office here where I live and decided that it was time to write some more in my blog, so that is what I am doing.

First, I have a class reunion coming up in July and I am looking forward to attending it. There should be a good number of people there that I know and will relate to. It should be a lot of fun. It is on Saturday, July 30th. I am looking forward to meeting with lots of "old" friends with whom I can catch up on things. In order to get there we will leave our church convention in Pennsylvania early and fly to LA where my son will pick us up and drive us up to Tehachapi for the reunion. There were about 80 in my graduating class and I think there are about 60 left. It will be interesting to see how many show up.

Prior to the reunion we will attend the General Convention of our church in Johnstown, PA. It has been at the branch of the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown for years now. They have an awesome climate and facility and it should go well for all of us. I could not do the Melodies of Praise this year and neither could Rick Sconyers. Therefore they decided to try a different venue for it with Len Griehs leading the meeting.

Prior to the General Convention we will do some other things that are fun. The weekend prior to our convention here in Portland we will all go to a Dodger game against the Mariners in Seattle. That should be a lot of fun. There should be about 10 of us there. The time for that event is coming up soon.

I have another adventure going on at the moment too. It is with TiVo and it is causing me a mess of problems. I probably just need to go with the flow and buy a "box" that will fix everything.

Meanwhile, things continue as they continue and we are taking one day at a time.

Rom 12:3-8

3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. 4 Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. 7 If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; 8 if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully. 

NIV

Time Flies - But we are still here!

Hello to all.

I don't know how time flies so much, but it sure does.

I have been in Texas for less than a week now. We arrived on Tuesday and saw the doctors on Wednesday. Since then we have seen the doctor every day, including today, and things are going well (I think!), except that the results of the MRI are confusing or misleading or somethings.

We took the MRI on Thursday and saw the results on Friday. They did not look good unless we are looking at the wrong thing. The mass was 2 cm larger than mid-November, so we do not know if it grew from mid-November to surgery time in mid-December OR if it grew during radiation in spite of the chemotherapy, which seems unlikely. So, I intend to ask the doctor when I see him this week.

I have started a new round of medication and there is more "getting used to" the new medications. Many are slowly building tolerances to the new dosages. One of the pills is PB (forget translating that one), and it calls for upping the dosage to 4 pills, 3 times a day. There is another pill that calls for doing the same thing, but it is for 2 pills/2 times a day.

Then there is a bunch of other pills that call for one here or there. I hope I haven't missed any of those times, but I think I probably have.

Meanwhile I discontinued a bunch of my other pills except for my Kepra and for my steroid (which is the same as my previous steroid).

I am feeling about the same as when I did when we began our journey. I actually got up feeling very good today. I took a nap this afternoon and now we are working down the afternoon and evening.

The rest of the trip went very well. We had a nice week in Southern California from Saturday to Thursday (after staying Wednesday thru Friday nights with my Dad in Tehachapi. Monday, (after staying the weekend with Stephen), we went to spend Tuesday night with Nannette, and then on Tuesday we drove to Cerritos for lunch with my old jogging buddy, Gary McHatton, and then a nice meeting with my old staff at Hawaiian. The entire "old staff" was still there with the exception of Nina Berk who had arranged to be away for her anniversary. She left a nice letter for me. I don't think there were any other new folk, except one was missing - ?? my brain is not working well so I can't remember her name.

Then on Thursday afternoon we went for a meeting at Wittmann after school. There were very few people there. About 7 in all. So, we made good plans. We checked out of the hotel in the morning and that left us 4 hours to drive to Indio on our way to Phoenix. I helped Kent to set up for the convention on Friday evening and then Saturday morning. The convention went great and I guess we missed a great day on Sunday. Then we drove here to Austin and spent a nice evening with my cousin Sherry on Monday.

That is all there is to report, except that I know you will all find something else I should have said.

by grace,
Wade