Hawaian Shores, April 2nd

Good evening from the Hearne Hideaway. Today was casual Thursday in our little corner of the hall, so David wore his Hawaiian shirt. He's having to take vacation days to stay with me so every once in a while we try to make it seem a little "festive". We've tried to convince ourselves that the wind blowing outside is coming off blue Hawaiian waters and that the gurgling sound made by my oxygen thingie (technical term) is the waves on the beach. We haven't quite gotten there yet, but - TOMORROW is another day, Scarlett.

We had a good visit with the oncologist today. He sat on the end of the bed for 45 minutes and patiently answered all the questions we had come up with since yesterday. The most important ones were first, of course:

1. How do we schedule this so I'm able to make it to College Station for Katie's graduation? We looked at a calendar and the treatment cycle and I will begin on April 22nd. That puts me going to College Station right before my second treatment and I should be feeling pretty good at that point.

2. Will my hair fall out? (Hey, this is important stuff!) Looks like I will be wig shopping so I'm going to have to decide what my new "look" should be. Short, long, platinum blonde, red, black? Maybe Katie can do a survey and post it so everyone can vote! I still get the last say, though. Sorry.

Mona Davis and Loorie Bennet just left after visiting an hour or so. It was GREAT to see people and hear about what's going on at home. What seems dull and mundane to you (and to me not long ago) is big news as far as we're concerned! You become isolated quickly when you're so focused on what is happening in this place. I'm afraid we probably bored them with all our hospital talk but they were polite enough to listen and gave great encouragement. PLEASE tell me to shut up when I start talking about things you don't want to know about or that I've told you 10 times already!

Observation #12 -Laughter really is the best medicine, and I am feeling much better now.

If you didn't get a demanding text message from me at 6:45 this morning it's because you're lucky enough not to be in my contact list! (Or you are my boss) I had been awakened at 4 am for the taking of vitals and the all important daily weigh-in. It's irritating to be weighed everyday anyway, but at least it's done in the dark where you can't read the results and you're so sleepy you don't care what the final number is. I may try that when I get home - stand on the scale in the dark, close one eye and don't put on my glasses. Hummm...looks like 5 pounds less than yesterday to me. Success! At 5 am I had my daily meeting with the radiologist and the portable xray machine. This very polite man comes in, puts a hard, cold board behind my back, centers his machine on my chest and tells me to smile. Actually, he says "take a deep breath and hold it". If I had a dollar for every time I've been told that in the past 3 weeks we'd owe a lot less money around here!

Anyway, the bottom line is I was awake and bored but didn't want to wake up David from his sound sleep. So if you weren't lucky enough to get the command this morning it was "I'm bored. Send me funny stuff." AND YOU DID! Thanks so much for all the funny emails and cartoons you passed on today. It made the day brighter and I enjoyed each and every one of them. Anything else you want to send is more than welcome. My home email address is rdhearne@swbell.net and is a better choice than the school email. That mailbox fills up so fast that it's hard to keep it running. I think Lesia (my sub) was kind of freaked out when things started hitting the computer this morning and she didn't know why it was happening. I forgot to include her in the text message - ooops. :) If you are interested in visiting, please email or call first, so you do not miss us out body surfing, conch collecting, or the like. :-) :-)

So that ends another day at the Hearne Hideaway. Aloha!

Rhonda