Thursday March 6 2008

Clearing Storm

Half Moon Mountain. It sits east of Pinedale at the base of the Wind Rivers, which are hidden by the dark clouds.This is the view from Boulder.

Hope it didn't confuse you but I switched pictures for today with yesterday, so I could stick a photo of the snow plow on yesterday's blog with its story.

Another beautiful morning, but it was about minus 15 degrees last night. The siding was really snap, crackle, popping when the sun hit it this morning. The wind is supposed to blow up to 30 mph tonight, so we will see if that happens. Got up to about 30 degrees this afternoon, lots of sunshine.

Showered and am doing laundry today. Got Sparky and Raven all brushed. Raven needs her toenails cut, but as soon as I mention it she sneaks away and disappears. I'll have to just take her by surprise one of these days and get it done. She is having trouble standing up on the linoleum if she gets in a hurry.

Am feeling pretty good, and have not been needing any pain pills. I often keep forgetting to take them so I guess that's a good thing. Not sure what I'll do today yet, so might come back if anything interesting happens. Kind of blogged out at the moment after the last couple of days.

- Nope nothing interesting, in fact had the nicest nap this afternoon. Debbie called before dinner and we talked for a while. You might have heard about the colonoscopy clinic in Vegas that was reusing syringes in their procedures. They closed 5 clinics. Both of them had been there, and Curtis has to go get tested for HIV or hepatitis. Debbie's was prior to the time they are checking, so hope she is o.k. This is just awful.

Jackie who lives on a farm in eastern Washington said a loud noise woke her up the other morning, and she later found out a meteorite had broken the sound barrier going over their place and landed in a nearby town. She didn't know more at the time. I have never experienced that, the sound anyway. Just seen what we call "shooting stars", sometimes they seem close... or not. Must have been something exciting to be that nearby anyway.

Our friend Ruth who is also an artist sent an email note today from Guatamala. She went to a painting workshop down there, and took her mom with her. Guess they are having a good time and seeing lots of new things.

Sally sent me this and thought you might like to see it too. Thanks Sally. (Think "Roseanne".) This is a video of the Cactus Cuties, very talented young ladies ranging in age from 8 to 13. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKCVS57j284

Wednesday March 5 2008

Another Snow Plow - Thanks Mark !!

Although got up pretty early, mostly rested today. Sleeping pretty good. It was quiet. Started some of the symptoms of the chemo on the way home last night including a little shoulder pain, but it was mild. The thing that doesn't seem to get much better is how much my eyes hurt after each treatment, like very bad eye strain, for several days afterwards. That was quite miserable last night and all day today. Lots of eye drops and cool cloths over my eyes. The thing is that this is when I want quiet time to read or watch TV or just mess with the computer and its very uncomfortable. So there's my whining. Watched an interesting movie anyway, "The Boy With The Green Hair". In all these years, even though I'm a movie buff, I've never watched that one for some reason, but really enjoyed it today. Perhaps a person just isn't ready for certain movies but later, sometimes much later, can delight in the story and performances.

Before lunch time I heard an engine again and went to check it out. Another snow plow was in the yard!! This time it was Mark with a big green dump truck and a pretty big plow. He and Joe visited for a while then he cleared out the big icy bumps in front of the garage door and enlarged a couple of areas for parking or getting turned around, as well as clearing out the lane and the road in from the county road again. Everyone is just taking such good care of us, it's hard to believe. Maybe they heard about Joe's truck and know we shouldn't park my car out by the mailbox so nothing happens to it. Someone mentioned that us being stranded or really snowed in with no transportation could be life threatening. That's a little dramatic, but basically true. We still would have the snow machines. Maybe I could trek to Pinedale with the sled to shop.

Today was warmer, partly cloudy with plenty of sun. It snowed all night last night and quit this morning. We got about 2 new inches - Joe said 1/2 an inch. Each time the dogs went out they needed to be rubbed off with their towel. They love that. Sandra called this morning and she said they had 5 inches, and they are only about eight miles from here. We had our usual good visit and discussed politics, conservations easements, solar panels, the airport, their cabin at South Pass, border control, the one North America or one world theory (neither of us think it can work because as Sandra said somebody's uncle is going to be sitting out in the shed making a bomb), and other various subjects. Cousin Maryanne called this afternoon and it was so nice to talk to her. They all seem to be doing fine.

Joe and the dogs went out to the mailbox and brought in today's mail. In a little while I'll pay the bills on line that have come in. Joe thinks the truck rustlers took his big tow chain and kept it, so we need to report that to the insurance adjuster. In order to do yesterday's blog right this morning, I googled a lot of the medical definitions in the CT scan report, and read up on them. Printed out a 10 page article on what seemed to be the best information about the liver lesions to understand that better. I haven't spent much time doing any research so far. I haven't been able to focus on that kind of thing for long and retain it anyway, but that is getting better now.

Tuesday March 4 2008

Horses Near Boulder This Morning

He has lots of horses right now.

ANOTHER LONG ONE:

Charm called about 7:30 and said it had been snowing hard at her house and very overcast, but had begun to lift and she could see some blue sky to the west. We had no snow here, only overcast and blue sky to the south, so we decided to go ahead and make our trip. I left in time to stop and take a few pictures of the stormy sky and others of Roger's horses with their heads hanging over the fence waiting for the boss to come with the tractor and some hay.

We met at Boulder about 9. The roads and the trip to Jackson were just about like most of the others. Parts of the road dry and some were icy and snow packed. The wind started blowing hard around Cora and all the way to the Rim, then settled down. It made the visibility poor and driving slow. We followed a snowplow and the wind blew great clouds up from the blade but not back at us, rather up the hill off the right side of the road. Wish I had a photo of that. Again more fresh snow had fallen and was noticeably deeper, with the berms alongside the road higher yet. The fresh snow was still on the evergreens and even though dark and stormy as we went further north, the drive was beautiful. It was pretty gloomy in Jackson.

Because driving was slow, we were right on time for the 11 a.m. appointment, not early as sometimes. All the chairs were full today. Some of the patients were familiar and some I hadn't seen before, but I met an oriental lady next to me who Paige introduced as Princess. She said it was the translation of her birth name. Everything went more quickly today, with the blood tests coming right back as good and the chemo drip was soon begun.

Paige did her usual checkup for the records. And I asked the questions I could think of. First, whether they had increased the dose of my chemo cocktail and Paige look at me a little funny and asked why. I told her I had felt a setback of pain and taking more time to get over the treatment last week. She said they had increased it by 30 ml but seemed to think that was small enough that I shouldn't have felt anything. But I did. I just wonder why they didn't tell me that. Last week they increased the steroid they give me by 1/2 a pill to 2 and 1/2. When I asked why, she said it was so I would feel better after the treatment.

Mainly I wanted to ask Judy Bayse after the fact (because she was in the checkup with me) what Dr. Ward had meant last week by saying "They don't mention it" when I asked him twice whether the pancreatic tumor had shown on the CT scans. Right away they let me read the report of the scans and asked if I'd like a copy. I said Yes, could I please have one. I'll edit and shorten it and put it at the bottom of this post for those who had the questions about this, and about the larger lesions on the liver since the last scans. It does answer those questions pretty well. Just skip it if you don't want all the details. I also asked about eating milk and sugar, or anything else I should be doing or not doing. Paige said just do everything or anything in moderation, that they had no evidence that anything was harmful, but to have plenty of fiber and whole grains, fruit and vegetables. She also said a runny nose was typical.

So Charm and I visited while we were waiting. After getting finished we went over to the Sweetwater Deli for lunch. I had a chicken salad stuffed avocado and Charm had her usual soup and salad. There was delicious honey wheat bread too. We didn't need to stop anywhere, and decided not to go to galleries or shopping, but just to come on home so we weren't too late getting back. The wind was still blowing, more so after we got out of the canyon. There was a lot of drifted snow blown over the highway which can get very icy. The picture below shows what that looks like, and the snowplow had been here not too long before:

Blowing Snow on Highway

(we are on the wrong side of the road momentarily)

We stopped for gas in Pinedale. We stopped for a few minutes at the airport. There was a man there who Charm said was the helicopter pilot. I didn't know there was one there, but he drove his truck over to one of the hangers and Charm said the helicopter was parked in there. Then Charm got her car at Boulder. Later she called and said that she rode the snow machine up to Boulder Lake in a terrible windy whiteout, but didn't have any trouble getting home. My way was windy too, and let up about East Fork as it often does. Richie Road was good until I got to the fork that goes up to the feed ground and there was a drift there I had to plow through, then the rest of the way was fine with only small encroaching drifts on the windward side of the lane. Got home about 4:30, a little earlier than usual.

Joe asked how our road was and I said fine. But no wonder since he said Bill had been in with the county snow plow again and cleaned it out. I couldn't believe how good they are being to us by making sure the road is o.k. We had leftovers for dinner and I was ready to relax. For the first time this year we ate dinner without turning on the lights. I'm always so glad for the longer days. By sunset the sky was clearing and there was a lovely sunset to the west. But the sky to the east was the ugliest yellow gray I've ever seen, very ominous and unusual looking. When I let the dogs out about 10:30 it was snowing and looked like it had been for a while.

SHORTENED VERSION OF CT SCAN REPORT: My comments in italics.

There are extensive diffuse degenerative changes in the lower thoracic and lumbar spine (details of what and where) consistent with degenerative change. No findings to suggest lytic or blastic metastatic changes to the lumbar spine. Prominent spurring to both iliac (pelvic) wings, possible prior trauma (my guess probably from when they did bone grafting from my pelvis to my broken elbow, as well has my numerous horse wrecks and crash landings.) (from reading on the Internet this is relevant because this cancer would/could probably metastasize to this area but there is no evidence of that now.)

There is what appears to be scarring in my lower left lung - (not sure from when, perhaps when I had pneumonia 5 or 6 times 20 to 25 years or so ago because these same scars were there in the early October scans, so not from the lung collapse. Otherwise apparently o.k. there. )

The spleen is normal. The adrenals are unremarkable. The kidneys are stable. Hydrodense areas scattered throughout the right kidney consistent with small cortical cysts are stable. (Medical lingo here is about changes due to the surgery which sounds o.k., bile duct bypass looks o.k., also where they took out the gall bladder is o.k. I guess I have quite a few clips or staples in there. )

There are multiple lesions scattered throughout the liver varying in size from less than 1 cm to larger than 2.5 cm which were not present on October 13, (and there were small lesions on the liver then so these are new or bigger) consistent with extensive diffuse metastatic disease to the liver. There is a stable appearing cyst in the right lobe of the liver which measures 3.5 cm. Some degenerative changes related to the superior iliac wings (which was the lower level of the scans.).

(Here - the biggest question I and some of you had confusion about after the Dr. Ward appointment is answered:) The overall prominence and bulk of the mass in the head of the pancreas is no longer apparent, and the soft tissue mass related to the transverse descending duodenal junction is not apparent.

Monday March 3 2008

On The Way to Boulder

Joe went to town early this morning for his blood test. The dogs got to ride along. He asked if I wanted to go, but I'm ready to relax and be home today. I suppose he might stop at the repair shop to check on his truck. He's worried about it sitting outside and the weather blowing in through the broken out window. Our insurance agent called right at 9 a.m. and said that their adjuster would go to Troys tomorrow and assess the damage and take photos. Then he will call us within 24 hours. It will pay for the repair less our deductible.

Another beautiful sunny day and should get fairly warm again. I can hardly keep from just looking out the window at how beautiful it is. Maybe a good day for a walk this afternoon. Tomorrow is the next chemo appointment. Charm and I will meet at Boulder and go up to Jackson together. A storm is supposed to be coming in tonight but hopefully it will just be some snow showers on Tuesday. Wind isn't on the forecast.

As usual funny things are going on with the PC. I've given up on trying to use Office Outlook, the fancy new email program, and am not happy to have bought the software and not have it just work. I'm sure its just settings I don't know how to set ..... or unset as the case may be. So tried Outlook Express again. Remember that it wouldn't import the address book either, or didn't show the files. Well..... now it does. I have no idea why, but I've so gladly quit the awful Hughes.net email program, and am using Outlook Express. What a relief to be able just to click a name and send a message. Have not been able to do that since I got the new computer and gone through all the repairs etc. Of course all the messages saved in Hughes.net want to download into Outlook Express and I'll have to deal with them. But since I've been in my purging mode, have made decisions that I don't need ALL those emails to be saved. To know which few I do want to save will take skimming through all of them though. Still a tiny bit of my "Monk-ness" rearing its compulsive head.

Later this afternoon Jerry came over with his dump truck with a plow on it and cleared our road out again. It's perfect timing for going out tomorrow and also just to keep those drifts from piling up and closing in. Said he was coming over this way anyway. He came in and had a cup of coffee and visited with us. It was good to see him, he's a nice guy. Guess the Jensen and Richie cows will be coming over in a couple of weeks now to have their calves and feed out the hay that is here. Can spring be far off now?

We've talked about earth shadow before, check this one out!

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080301.html

Sunday March 2 2008

ANOTHER DAY WITH A BIG SURPRISE

(usually the title font is red, but BROWN HAPPENS!!)

.

This morning Gina fixed us a nice breakfast, including those yummy fresh orange rolls, and I spread up the bed and packed my bag into the car. Called Joe to see how the weather was at home and he said it had quit blowing about 30 minutes ago. He asked me to call again about the time I got to the East Fork Bridge and he'd be watching for me. At Ridley's (ex-Falers) stopped for some groceries, and started on home. Sunny and clear, but the wind was still blowing a ground blizzard across the road in town and most of the way home. There wasn't a white out, so fairly good driving. By the time I got to the big "S" curves there was more snow that had stayed on the road and it was very white, perhaps could have been quite icy. Called Joe again. Got to our turnoff and was concentrating on how big or whether there were drifts that would be very deep. Had gotten the mail yesterday so didn't stop at the mailbox. I just kept driving on into the house. There were drifts, but none very deep.

As I was putting the groceries away, Joe asked if I'd seen his truck. I guess he looked out there when he was putting my car away and couldn't see it. I just was astounded as I realized I really didn't notice it sitting out there by the mailbox. I came in and looked with the spotting scope, but there's a very large pile of snow and couldn't tell if the truck might be hidden behind it. I could not see it.

So Joe said he'd go out there and look and took the dogs with him in the car. Gradually I got all the stuff put away, started unpacking my bags, and doing other things. He was gone a long time and I wondered if he had gotten stuck or drove into the ditch. And me with no way to go look, I just waited.

Well, guess what! Someone had stolen the truck. He finally came back and since there was fresh snow he could see where his truck had made a u-turn out of its parking spot and headed toward the river. He drove down to Mack Flat and there was his truck sitting in the middle of the road with the engine running. Someone had broken out the back window, tried to hack into the driver side door, pried out the ignition with the tire iron, and hot wired it to get it started. They had gone through everything and thrown it all over the cab, but didn't take anything he knew of. Well as usual those rules we know don't apply to him and he moved the truck to the side of the road, probably messed up some of the evidence. He was trying to bring it home but the engine stalled. Joe said he tried to hot wire it, but couldn't make it work. It still had 3/4 of a tank of gas even after running for as long as maybe 8 or 9 hours.

We called 9-1-1 and he met the deputies down there. They came pretty quickly - by now it was after 11 a.m. The gist of the story is that someone had called 9-1-1 about midnight and they were stuck. No one would go to get them out because the wind was blowing and it was storming so bad. The had driven off the road into the deep snow. They think maybe about 3 a.m. is when they took Joe's truck and drove it down their to pull their vehicle out with. This hot wiring thing is not easy to do according to the deputies - apparently on the newer vehicles - but I thought every teenager knew how to do that. Then they just left it there running. I think the deputy said that they called the sheriffs dept. to say they had gotten out.

By now there were three sheriff trucks and three deputies, including a detective. They pieced the trail of clues together and figured the same truck ran off the road and into Nick's fence down around the corner past the intersection, and on out the Muddy Speedway. There were beer bottles everywhere along the way. In the meantime I called the insurance agent, but couldn't get her and no 800 number to call. Joe and the deputies were back and forth between here and the truck several times.

They got the dispatch to send out a tow truck which quickly came and took Joe's truck into Troy's in town where they would fix it there except for the paint job which would be done somewhere else. By this time it was 5 p.m. So hopefully our insurance agent will call us in the morning and we will give them the report number and our insurance will pay for the damage. I guess it could be worse. They said it will take about two weeks. And now my car will have to sit out on the road in case we get another storm bad enough to get it snowed in here. I am to the point that I was resigned to having to snow machine anyway. This is so discouraging, and one more thing in that list of bad stuff that keeps happening lately.

Photos Up and Down Pine Street

Gina's House from the Front

Episcopal Church

Halliburton Hilton - Oil Field Workers Stay Here

One of the New Banks

Marilyn Street - I hear it is named after the same
Marilyn who received my painting yesterday.

A Really Really Old Building
(Betty spotted the guy walking with bare legs - well its spring!)
Usually looking this direction you can see the mountains sticking up
with Mt. Bonneville dead ahead.


Pine Creek From the Bridge
It Runs Through the Middle of Town

The New School Bus Barn

The Lodge at Pinedale and Sinclair Station

The movie theater is down the street to the right.

Two Rivers Fly Fishing Emporium

The Wrangler Cafe - Also Old

Duck "Crick "- Near Gina's

Deer Near the Post Office

New BLM Offices

Baymont Motel

Where Gina's Photos are Hung

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Miscellaneous Photos of Pinedale - It's snowing, if you can click the photo bigger you will see the flakes. It's been warm and there's been a lot of thawing lately, so puddles and bare pavement. Only a couple of weeks ago there were huge piles of snow pushed into the middle of the street. These images kind of remind me of Northern Exposure or Talkeetna. These are all from the middle of town to the western edge. Some other time I'll take photos on the east end of the street.

Saturday March 1 2008

TWO SURPRISE DAY

Yesterday morning I went into town about 9:30 to go to the Cowbelles luncheon and the Cattleman's Banquet. Charm and Jim, and Gina and Bob invited me to go along with them, and I was the guest of Charm and Jim. Thank you again, dear friends. I have always wanted to go all these years and never have, so when they invited me I said "YES!'' It was a wonderful enjoyable day.

Marilyn was chosen Cattlewoman of the Year at the Cowbelles luncheon. She was surprised. She and Doc are our neighbors, by the way. The Cowbelles always give the Cattlewoman of the Year a piece of artwork, and this year they asked me if I would provide the artwork. I was very pleased to be asked and especially since it was for Marilyn. Congratulations to Marilyn. This was the first surprise and I didn't want to give it away.

This is a photo of the painting. The title is Sorting Cattle and its a 12 x 18 Oil. This was taken from reference photos looking northwest from our yard as the neighbors worked their cattle.

This is the Cowbelles Brand Quilt. My friend Deanne, who you've heard me mention, designs a new quilt every year and it is raffled off at the Cattleman's Annual Banquet. Deanne is a quilt artist. There is a group that helps her quilt. There are over 150 local brands appliqued ? onto the quilt.

Above is a closeup for some of the detail.

So started off the day early, took in the recycling in first thing, then went over to Melita's for a while. She had left a tray at our house that she brought some of her beautiful rolls on to the group of artist friends that came over about three months ago. I had saved some paper doilies for her that I never use, and she uses them all the time, so took those too. She was in the midst of baking hundreds of rolls for the luncheon and banquet, and I watched her pop them in and out of the oven and slide them onto cooling racks. Melita is a bread artist. She showed me her big new computer, and a beautiful large black thin screen monitor. Also they are finishing up a new big swan decoy. Hank carves them and Melita paints them. This one she had brush strokes looking like the feathers, pretty neat.

Then to Rendezvous Pointe where the luncheon was to be held. The Cowbelles were in their meeting. Two of the ladies came out to choose the painting they liked from five I brought. The luncheon was the best ever beef and noodles, with an airy cream pie with strawberries for dessert. The crust was just amazing.

Afterwards headed over to Gina's house and then we went out for a while to try some photography mostly on Pine Street. I'll put them into a photo essay or stick one or two into the blog every so often. It had started to snow so we didn't have the best light, but they give a feeling of Pinedale in winter. We went into the Baymont Motel where a lot of Gina's photos, both contemporary and historical were displayed up and down the halls. We walked through and she told me what they all were. That was very interesting because the old ones were of her parents , family and grandparents ranching in the olden days.

By the time we were ready to go, the wind had come up strong, and although the temperature wasn't frigid, it was chilly. It blew all night and half of Sunday. The banquet started about 5:30 and there were lots of the ranching community, neighbors and other folks we all knew. People were dressed all styles from their cowboy or cowgirl outfits or beautiful beaded or woven dressy coture with their fancy jewelery. Many I seldom see, so it was fun to just say hi and visit. Dinner was the best prime rib I've ever eaten in my life, with all the trimmings and also perhaps the best brownie for dessert as well. They had a good cowboy poet for entertainment, who was also quite a comedian. I got the biggest kick out of Jim who really enjoyed the poet. There were several presentations, as there were at the Cowbelles, such as lifetimes members, and very interesting to me were a lot of the family ranches who had been in existance for 100 years or more were honored by WY State Historic Preservation Office, WY Dept. of Agriculture, WY Stock Growers Assn., WY Wool Growers Assn, and WY Rural Electric Assn. They are called Centennial Farms and Ranches. http://www.wyoshpo.org/ Jim Magagna and Milward Simpson made the presentations - plaques and certificates and large metal signs to post at their ranch. Jim is a "neighbor" south of us and I got to know him pretty well while we were in the mountains for all those years. He ran sheep there, and you might remember it was his place where Judi and I went and recorded the graffiti on the walls of his sheep shearing shed a few years ago.

The second big surprise of the evening was that Bob was nominated and received the Friend of Agriculture Award. The rest of us at the table knew about it, but Bob didn't. He was surprised. (I think) it's the biggest honor that they present He received a large framed and matted photo of Horse Creek that was taken from her airplane by Rita, and corsages for he and Gina with a big bouquet of flowers. (I was supposed to take a few pictures, and spaced that out. But if you go to Gina's blog she might put a couple of them on hers.

The evening ended with the Sundowners coutnr y western band playing and lots of people dancing. Cowboys love to dance and their are really good too.

Gina had invited me to spend the night so I did. It was nice not to have to drive home so late. Don't even know what time we left the party and soon went to bed with a cup of hot tea and the electric blanket turned on getting all warm and cozy. Read and dozed and rested and listened to the wind blow - wondering whether the road was getting drifted in.