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August 5, 2016
IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!
As you may know, since it is about a 150 mile round trip, we try to bunch our tasks during our trips into town so we don't have to go back and forth as much. Monday was one of those days.
We started out early because we had so much to do. We took Leanna with us as she was going to meet our daughter Lara to visit some residential care facilities in the Hillsboro/Forest Grove area. She's doing her homework for that day when she may make that move and Lara has volunteered to help her kids in the search. Dean and Bren have moved from Michigan to Seattle, but it's still a 10 hour round trip to get to his mother's place, so "Cousin Lara" has volunteered to help. As is the case when we plan one of these busy trips, we didn't have much time to spare, but we got delayed before we even got started. Leanna was ready and waiting for us when we got to her place, but she decided to take her dog out one last time before we left. Sure enough, the dog disappeared! We had to drive around the neighborhood searching for her and by the time she was located at a neighbor's house, we were 15 minutes behind schedule. I must have drove a little faster than usual to try to make up the lost time as Dave commented a few times about hanging on for dear life around some of the curves on Hwy. 53 We were just about at Forest Grove to meet Lara when we ran into road construction! We were a mile from our destination and we were stopped! A crew was driving metal stakes into a retaining wall with a jackhammer and they weren't going to stop to let anyone through until they absolutely had to! We had to wait about ten minutes in line before they finally let us continue. I think the law says they're allowed to block traffic for 10 minutes, and believe me; they took every bit of that! And of course, when you're running late, every minute seems like five! As it turned out, Lara had been delayed in traffic herself (different traffic jam), and so we all arrived at the same time - about 15 minutes behind schedule.
We left Leanna with Lara and we headed off for our first appointment. Dave had to go to the Knight Cancer Center at OHSU to get a blood draw so the oncologist can check his quarterly PSA. When we were three months ago, they had told us there would be no appointment necessary for this test; just to drop in to the infusion center sometime in August and get it done. Well - sure enough - when we got there, they told us we DID need an appointment! However, the receptionist was very understanding, especially when we told her we had driven 100 miles to get there. She told us to take a seat in the waiting room and she'd see what she could do - maybe squeeze us in within an hour or so. But no sooner than we sat down, they called Dave's name and he was in! We were in and out of there in 10 minutes with no appointment! Sometimes, I think this whole appointment idea is overblown! "First come, first served" works for me! Anyway, the result of the test was great. His PSA number was over 44 when he was first diagnosed with the Prostate Cancer a little more than a year ago. The number has been steadily dropping since beginning the radiation and hormone therapy. That number had dropped to less than 1 nine months ago; it was at .34 in January; down to .31 last spring and clear down to .16 on Tuesday! Those are "party" numbers and make the hassle of having to go through the quarterly infusion totally worth it! We didn't get the PSA number until Wednesday, so on Tuesday, it was business as usual and we just kept chipping chores off our list.
Next, we went into downtown Beaverton to buy a replacement hose for our built-in vacuum system. We used to have two of them, but one went to "vacuum hose heaven" last year. That meant I had to drag the upstairs hose downstairs each time I vacuumed. Not a terrible job, but certainly an inconvenience. It's like wrestling with a snake! Anyway, we thought we were going to have to drive out to east Portland to the vacuum store, but an internet search found one right there on the west side of Beaverton, just a couple miles from the clinic! Still, we were lucky because - as it turned out - that store was only open four hours a day, three days a week. We hit it on a day and time they were open! So we got a new hose for downstairs and I don't have to drag that thing up and down the stairs anymore! While we were there, Dave convinced the guy to adapt a scrap piece of hose into one that we can keep in the garage, so now we have three hoses and my car is going to be cleaner too!
Up to then, we had been working on a fairly tight schedule but now it got really tight! I had a doctor's appointment at the Providence/St. Vincent Medical Center in Beaverton so we went there next. We had an hour and a half before we had to meet Lara and Leanna, so Dave decided to drop me at the doctor's office and squeeze in one more errand. He wanted to take a brass bell to the metal polisher and to do that, he had to go all the way over to the other side of Portland and back in that hour and a half. Traffic in Portland is usually terrible - even at that time of day - and we weren't sure he could be back in time to connect with everyone. Especially since he hadn't driven a car since his accident and it was his first time behind the wheel in two months. Well, it all worked out. Traffic was unusually light and he was able to get back to Beaverton in time to meet up with all of us and head for the coast. When we got home, we were actually within two minutes of our plan for the day! That just doesn't happen!
My doctor's appointment was a follow-up from February. Last fall, during my examination, the doctor removed another small tumor in my bladder. I had been getting to my checkups with him every year and and after the discover of that tumor, it was back to every three to six months. Since he didn't find anything during this visit, I don't have to go back for nine months! Thank goodness.
We headed down to Des and Donna Kahrs' later that evening for a crab feed. Their son, Devin was home for the weekend and he had caught a bunch of crabs. We had fun cracking our own crab and eating it. I love crab and even though we live at the coast, we can't get enough of it They have some new crab pots they're dying to use, so we're going to join them in a couple of weeks when the crabbing is just a little bit better!
Dave started his Occupational Therapy on his wrist and is real vigilant about doing his exercises at home (Three times a day for a total of four hours a day - more time consuming than cancer!). In additional to his home sessions, he has to go into Tillamook for his bi-weekly sessions at the clinic. His therapist last night was very complimentary about the great progress he has made - even though she just saw him on Tuesday. She's probably very complimentary for every patient, but he was really eating it up and was very pleased with his own progress.
Leslie and Jason returned from LA on Tuesday. They had a great trip but as always, they're glad to be back home. We met Leslie on Wednesday night in North Plains (about half way for each of us) to exchange cars. It seems like I have done a lot of driving this week.
I have to tell you about our feral cat, Jerry. As you may remember, he usually shows up for breakfast and dinner and we don't see him much of him during the day. I get a little concerned when he doesn't show up, especially when I hear all this commotion outside after dark sounding like cat-fighting noises. But, he eventually makes it to the back door for something to eat, maybe with a scratch on his nose and a little worse for wear, but he seems to survive though it all. The other morning, he was eating something on the lawn and afterwards I investigated to see what he had caught but all I found was a chipmunk tail! He is good at keeping our chipmunk population down. Anyway, Dave decided to tack the tail to the fence like the farmers do with a coyote hide to keep the other coyotes away. But the next morning, the tail had disappeared! Something came along during the night and took it. We'll see if we get any other chipmunks any time soon!
Well, this has gone way too long, but that's because I let Dave write all the juicy partsI I won't say which it is, but one of us is WAAAY more long-winded than the other! I hope you are having a great summer because Christmas will be here before you know it!!
Next week, hazardous waste pickup, Orthopedist appointment (Dave), bone density test (me), a long-delayed visit from the plumber and an oil change. Let's see if Dave can make anything interesting out of that!
