Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Missing Pantses

The cool white blood cell test did not reveal anything. My friend, Joe, who works in the Infectious Disease department at the V. A. Hospital in New Orleans, tells me that it's not necessarily a perfect test, and the fact that nothing was learned from it doesn't really mean anything. I guess it would have meant something if the little white blood cells did find an infection to fight.

Jerry did not make any real progress at all in the Physical Therapy department at M. D. Anderson, and therefore, could not stay. If you're not making progress, you can't stay. Because Nolie can't catch Jerry if he falls trying to walk, he is now in a Skilled Nursing Facility in Houston a few miles away from M. D. Anderson. Back in the day, we called it the Old Folks' Home. I guess today they call it Skilled Nursing Facility. Being Old School, I will continue to call it the Old Folks' Home, or OFH for short.

Since arriving at the OFH, Jerry has really made significant progress. He is in the next to the last room down the hall on his floor, and yesterday was able to not only get out of bed by himself, but was also able to walk all the way down the long, long hallway. By himself means with no help from people, only the help of a walker. He's kind of funny getting out of bed, because he "bounces" to get momentum to get to his feet. Whatever works. He is a Propulsion Engineer, after all. The original plan was for Jerry to stay in the OFH for twenty days, but since he's making such great progress, Nolie thinks she can take care of him at the RIBM as long as he can get out of bed by himself. He hasn't even had any official P. T. yet since he just checked in on Friday. Maybe it's something psychological about being in a hospital. After his stroke in 2005, he made dramatic improvement as soon as he checked out of the hospital, and into the rehab place. Jerry has his next appointment with Dr. Siefker on April 16th. Surgery is still scheduled for April 26th.

Nolie and I left the OFH last night at about 10:00 p.m. and Jerry was asleep wearing long sweat pants. When we arrived this morning at about 9:00 a.m., he was wearing his short pajama pants. Being the Drama Queen that Nolie is, she immediately launched an investigation and started questioning the staff. Apparently, at some point very early in the morning, Dad lost his pants. I've woken up before without pants, so I guess I just didn't think it was such a big deal. The Funny Lady (I can't remember her name, but she laughs more than the others at my jokes.) came to check on Dad this morning and he was not wearing clothes, so she helped him put on his shorts. When Nolie finally got around to asking Jerry about the missing pants, he said that he took them off because he didn't want to get them dirty. Makes sense to me.

The speech therapist just arrived, and this is usually funny, so I'm going to stop typing now and watch the show.