Another Update and Quigley

Last week I hit the ground running after returning from Northern California. Tuesday my mother had her PET scan — that’s Positron Emission Topography.  She got a radioactive tag molecule infused into her blood that accumulated in the tissues and emitted positrons that the device picked up and rendered into a picture of what’s going on in her body… no other cancer besides the tumor they already found which is very good news.

[Quigley is standing beside me as I type this, staring at me…

Quigley Nose2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[He’s been overly ignored lately, and isn’t taking to it too well — digging holes in the back yard, trying to start fights, stealing stuff out of the recycle bin… last week he stole the electric bill off the table while I was trying to listen to Bible class and started chewing it up. I found him before the bill was rendered totally unusable, but did have to tape it up a bit.]

Wednesday, the day after the PET scan, I went across town to pick up my new glasses; Thursday there was another doctor’s appointment (radiation oncologist) where we found out about the PET scan. Friday, first rehab appointment and then saw the orthopedic surgeon. That was also the day the car started acting up… lurching and bumping along, spewing smoke and a strong exhaust smell, acting like it might stall out at any moment. So we had to leave it off at the service center. Its fate will be revealed tomorrow…

I’m going over to my mother’s house twice a day now, morning and evening to help her with her rehab exercises and do the watering. More appointments are laid out for this coming week. Some days there are two of them. On Wed we’ll find out whether she’ll be starting radiation Thursday, which means appointments Thurs and Friday… This is busier than I thought it would be, but it’s all working out and she’s getting better. Moving better, though we learned at the rehab evaluation that she’s lost an amazing amount of strength in her legs, particularly the “involved leg” as they call it on the exercise sheet.

When I broke my arm I was astonished at how fast muscles atrophy. But I also know they come back and hers seem to be, ever so slowly, though not fast enough to suit her (she’s the woman who said she never feels bad longer than five days so was expecting a complete recovery from the surgery by day five). We also saw the x-rays of the titanium rod they put into her leg and it’s quite a bit bigger than I imagined. It really is like rebar, but without the rings. She won’t have to worry about breaking that bone, that’s for sure!

In the middle of all this, I have been acquiring things I want to blog about… finish up Lone Survivor, write about One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which I just finished, and now The Black Swan, which I just started. I read 14 pages of it and ended up dog-earing nearly every one of them. Fascinating book about… well, randomness and knowledge. Here’s a quote:

“The first leg of the triplet (of opacity) is the pathology of thinking that the world in which we live is more understandable, more explainable and therefore more predictable than it actually is.”

But that’s for later. First I want to finish the others.

And then of course there is Sky, which I’ve worked on minimally. I read through material while waiting in the radiation oncologist’s office Thursday, but beyond that, not much. Or maybe God is preparing me in ways I have no idea about. I hope to slide a bit more in next week.

At least I’ve done THIS post now, so I will go have strawberries and ice cream, then go to bed…

0 thoughts on “Another Update and Quigley

  1. Pingback: The Black Swan « Writing from the Edge 2

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