O-Dark-Thirty

  Moving is a nightmare, no matter how little you have. When you have a lot, it is a exponentially worse. Moving to Michigan, we brought two trucks of furniture and items. Things I thought we'd just keep with us in our final home. Let the kids worry about having a garage sale after we die. Yet plans change. Moving back to Texas we're doing it differently. I got rid of almost all my books. That broke my heart, but at least my good friend John managed to keep my large collection of Studies of the Future books together in a single library. (Thanks, John!) We've sold almost all our furniture, and given much of it away. We've given away (literally) pickup trucks full of items. We've boxed and packed and boxed some more. Our new local hero neighbor Sarah managed to sell a number of items for us. I sold or gave away a lot of my newly acquired tools. If it snows in the next two weeks I'm in trouble. We have two bedrooms that need to go with us. We have rooms full of box...

  Recovery from the TURP surgery is ongoing. Most of the pain is gone. The symptoms that forced the surgery are relieved (pun intended). Still, there are times I feel the soreness, so if you are three weeks after the surgery, don't be too surprised. Sometimes I sit down at the wrong angle and I feel a deep pain within my lower body. That's to be expected. We had some serious plumbing work done, after all. I am now allowed to lift more than ten pounds. Fabulous. I no longer need to sit around the house and feel utterly useless as we continue to prepare for the move back to Texas. However, I still find that my stamina is drained quickly. I don't think that is because of surgery, but a by-product of the cancer. The ADT (Androgen Deprivation Therapy) is now in full swing, right? I don't know if I can tell. For three days after the Lupron (?) shot I hurt. I mean, down to the bone, inside the body aching pain type of hurt. That pain disappeared. I still feel pain in my muscle...

  We've sold our beautiful, once-forever home and will be on the road to a new house in Texas within the month. My heart breaks that we must do this. I wanted years here. What I did get was two winters, two springs, almost two summers and one fall. Figures. Autumn is my favorite time of year here in Michigan. Still, I'll try to be thankful for what I did have. Too bad Covid hit when we got here. We have not been able to get to know the wonderful people here at the Lake. Just now, we're seeing how fabulous they are. Three ladies from the neighborhood are helping Darling pack up and one lovely lady brought us dinner. Pork chops, potatoes and salad. Oh, my. So this morning I received the shot that goes with my new oncology medicine. I don't know if this is the treatment that MD Anderson will concur with, but it's what we have right now. The PA gave me a shot in my belly fat. He said it would hurt. He told the absolute truth. It still hurts, hours later. MD Anderson acc...

  I have a doctor appointment at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. It will be a week or so after we've moved in to the new house back in Texas. Assuming all goes well with the move, of course. In the meantime, I'm taking exactly the treatment I swore I wouldn't take as the first step to beating this cancer. We do what we must. The moving saga continues, but that isn't for this blog post. Let's just focus here on the medicine and the trials and tribulations associated with getting good medical treatment in the USA. I'm recovering well from the surgery. At least I think I am. It's hard to avoid moving boxes and items around here, especially as we prepare to move. I'm still tired all the time. The current treatment doesn't seem to do much to mitigate that. I don't think I'm hurting as much as I did, but maybe I just don't recall. There might be some memory issues, too! I do have a bothersome rash on my side now, but that isn't relate...

  So let's get up to date. Darling go the medicine situation ironed out. DrC indeed submitted the prescription, neglecting to tell us it was at the pharmacy conveniently located in his private partnership. After finding another Dr, DrC transferred the prescription to our preferred pharmacy - you know, the one they had my put into the five page set of forms you fill out to be treated by their partnership. Our pharmacy said they couldn't fill it because it was filled at the private partnership. Had them cancel that one, resubmit it and - oh, wait - our pharmacy doesn't stock the medicine required.  Okay, another local pharmacy does have it, as long as we can get generic... Upshot, I took the first pill last night. We're moving forward with changing to a local oncologist. In the meantime, my favorite urologist had a twenty minute chat with the both of us concerning this treatment. The pills will block the receptors of the cancer cells and then next Wednesday or Thursday I ...

This is a complaining post, and I plan to name names, so if you don't want to hear me whine, just stop now. Move along. We had to move our services to our new home, most especially television and internet. Both of these fine companies were more than willing to set us up at our new home, but both have substantial charges for moving. Oh, it's just a few hundred dollars but I was a poor boy and that's still a lot of money to me, especially for accepting the continuation of a service I pay monthly for. DirecTV arranged to connect us at our new house on the Friday after we moved everything. That was their earliest appointment. Aside from charging us for the move, this was fine with us. The guy showed up when they said he would and he went to work. It was a hot day. The skies threatened rain, but never materialized. Just before the guy showed up we lost power to the house. Well, to be fair, everyone around us lost power too (over four hundred people according to the p...

One of Darling's crews finished the floors. Another contractor put blinds on the windows. Another crew finished the painting. Darling's wonderful brother fixed the plumbing (he is just an all-around handy-man). Fruit trees were planted in the back yard, two grapefruit trees, two tangerine trees, two flowering peach trees and one avocado tree. A new oak tree was planted in the front to replace the erased one, though the new one went on the other side of the driveway. We now comply with the HOA. Darling hired two guys, Juan and JD, to move boxes on Wednesday, June 27. Darling's fantastic brother showed up to help. Juan had a flat bed for his landscaping business, and he is a strong man. Yes, this is the same guy who planted the half-dozen trees in the back yard for Darling. JD didn't say much to me, just kept moving boxes. Sadly, the new house got pretty full with all the boxes, and the old house didn't look much emptier. That changed Thursday. Of our three mover...

I thought it was time for a quick update on moving from our current address to the smaller house. The new Living Room  Darling is handling all the contractors. It's a chore, and I (personally) would keep everything in a notebook which would never leave my side, but she handles it all in her head and on scraps of paper. I'm not that talented.    The floors are finished and they look absolutely lovely. It took a few more boxes of flooring than we planned, but Benito got those. I was disappointed in the customer service from  Floor Decor  since Benito's crew picked up the medium grade under-layer when Darling paid for the top grade. The store and store personnel refused to refund the difference in price (a few hundred dollars), claiming it was the crew's fault. I might address that issue with them when things calm down a little. Darling paid Benito already, even though the transition pieces are not yet installed. Normally I'd be nervous about ...

Often attributed to Prince Otto von Bismarck is a famous quote that goes something like this "A man who loves sausages and respects the law should not watch either being made." He probably didn't originate the saying, but he might have said it. Reading through some of his other quotes, which are confirmed, it does sound like something he might have remarked. Our new house is like that. The one-story is a nice enough house. Significantly smaller than where we live now, we will need to get rid of much of what we currently have. There is still some debate whether we keep the pool table and squeeze it into the new dining room as a somewhat acceptable table substitute or whether we let it go. I'm for keeping it. Darling waffles on the subject. Darling is getting tired. She should be. Getting the new house ready is hard work and she's been shouldering the entire burden of doing so. If there's a lesson to pass on for this I think it would be "Don't...