"Copy and Paste" Is Your Friend

We're now a good 72 hours plus into the Throw-up Zone, and Dad still feels pretty good and hasn't lost his cookies. Today he felt good enough to get dressed and go to the Olive Garden for lunch. For anyone who is actually from Italy, or of Italian ancestry, please do not hold this against us. It is close, and even mediocre food is good with Gorgonzola on it. Mom did say that her Cosmopolitan was just as good as the Cosmos at Carmine's in New York.

Dad does, in fact, respond more slowly than usual, and sometimes has to think for which word he wants to use. Mom had told me this before, but I wasn't sure how much of that information had been processed through the Nolie Drama Enhancement Filter. Mom compared it to the scene in Look Whose Talking where Kirstie Alley got the epidural and Bruce Willis, the fetus, got all loopy. Last night he was trying to think of Mom's oncologist's name, Dr. Deur, and went to the kitchen and pointed to a bottle of scotch. I knew what he meant, but Mom didn't catch on quite as quickly.

Dad's chemotherapy is administered every other Friday, for three rounds. The Fridays that he isn't receiving chemo. he has blood work done, which means he has appointments every Friday. Mom's biggest challenge with this is whether to have the future chemo. treatments administered in Arlington, or get to Houston every Friday. My feeling is this: Always take your dry cleaning to the actual plant, not a satellite drop-off location, because the more times your clothes are loaded and unloaded onto or off of a truck, the more opportunity there is for your favorite suit to go missing. This is also why if you ever have to choose, it is infinitely more important to own a washer and dryer than a dishwasher. Socks that go missing from the dryer at home will eventually turn up. Socks that go missing at a laundromat are gone forever, and if they're Ralph Lauren socks, that's $18. My college math professor, Dr. Bob, has a solution for the dishes, but Nolie says it's not appropriate for all audiences. If you would like to know Dr. Bob's solution, e-mail me separately.

Mom is afraid to drive from Arlington to Houston, and says that she can't do it. Here is something I've learned about my Mom over the years. She can do anything she decides that she wants to do, and she's much tougher than she believes she is. When Raider (Kingdom: Anamilia, Class: Mammalia, Species: Canine) died Dad and I were the crying idiots and Mom was the one in the back yard with a shovel.

We gained access to My.MDAnderson.org today, which is way cool. We can log on to see Dad's next appointment, get directions to clinics, and it even has links to explanations of different procedures that may be scheduled. We can e-mail any member of our medical team, and even view billing info. etc. Not only can we view scheduled appointments, we can schedule and re-schedule too. They are so on the ball here. The best part of gaining access was that we had to call M. D. Anderson to have them e-mail us a temporary password. It wasn't one of those easy temporary passwords like Socket15 either. It was one of those random ones like z974kqkk1powie6. Nolie actually started to write down the temporary password--on a piece of paper--with a pencil--so she could go to the site and type the temporary password in. I recognized this as a teachable moment, and seized the opportunity to teach my Mother about the joys and wonders of "copy & paste."

The Missing Visa Card Panic is still not resolved, for those of you tracking this particular saga. A new Visa card was to be overnighted via UPS three days ago. It still has not arrived, and today we learned that the reason is because the ZIP code on the telephone in our guest room is wrong. The phone says 77080, and the letterhead on the Manager's Welcome Letter says 77030. Apparently, UPS couldn't figure it out, which is OK, I guess. I don't know how to run an overnight delivery company, and I'm sure there's quite a lot more to it than most people realize. I learned the hard way once about the importance of proof reading carefully, so I can't really fault anyone for the mistake.

Supper tonight at the RIBM was tacos. Here is a picture of Dad making his tacos.

There's a link to some pictures I took today in the "links" section, or you can view them by clicking here.