Springtime

Hello, everyone!

All is well at our hospital-away-from-hospital, as Nancy's recovery proceeds and we admire the eruption of springtime in our neighborhood. The hills are rapidly browning around us, as they do each year when the rain stops. And on our walks with Sheba (the faithful german shepherd cancer patient), we've seen the annual cycle of wildflowers.

I can't speak for Nancy, but I do wonder...how many more of these cycles do I get to witness? The question brings me present, so a casual trip to the grocery store becomes a sun-drenched journey. This will probably be the last spring for Sheba, ancient at 14, who is doing great with her new bladder stent, but is also resting more and more, walking shorter distances. So I play more music (currently a lot of Acoustic Son and Kingsbury English -- thank you Ken and Carolyn), get out of the building for lunch each day at work, and let my worries dissolve in the beauty of our world.

Nancy's progress is steady and good. She's now off of the IV electrolytes, experiencing little nausea, getting her sense of taste back. She still goes to the clinic twice a week for blood chemistry check ups, and still takes a powerful array of drugs four times a day. I remember caring for a friend with AIDS more than twenty years ago, and the experience, the issues, the drugs are all similar. Thank god her prognosis is better. I can't tell you how heartened I feel as things get a little better each day.

We've also had the pleasure of guests in the house, Jennifer (a family friend) and Nicole (Nancy's niece) who have taken care of her all week. Tonight other family members are coming for dinner, so we get the joy of cooking and entertaining. Normalcy is a state of mind.

Her doctor has approved a trip for us up to our cabin near Mt. Lassen...the issue is distance from the nearest hospital, just in case she has some reaction or transplant issue pop up. His point of view is that we're fine as long as we (actually, I) keep awareness of travel time to the nearest hospital. Even as a mentally-oriented, somewhat paranoid person, that's an extreme practice for me. We're going to a friend's wedding in Palo Alto this afternoon (sitting in the back to avoid the crowd) and I'm checking Google for all hospital locations along the way. Ironically, the closest hospital to our destination is Stanford University Medical Center (an incredible place for cancer care) with El Camino, the beautiful interior architecture project Nancy completed last year, a close second.

Warm regards and love from sunny Fairfax,

-tdc