Hiatus

I realize it has been longer than a month since my last post.

Please forgive the extended hiatus. It was unintentional. No real good reason for the lay-off. There may be a lot of reasons, but none of them are real good.

The fact of the matter is I have had a pretty rough month or so.

It started with getting news that a man I played flag football with on Sunday mornings died at work. I did not know him exceptionally well, only the few hours each Sunday during the fall and winter when a handful of guys (and some girls, too) would meet at a grassy park and throw the football around. All told, I may have had a total of 180 hours with him, but he left an impression on me. I had talked with Amy about the group of guys I played flag football with and we had agreed it would be nice to have Curtis and his family over for dinner or lunch or something some time. But I never got around to asking him. His death really did hit me hard. It might be because he had a family (a son and two daughters). It might be because he was young and in shape (he was like Brett Favre at quarterback, throwing fastballs into double coverage and making broken plays somehow fixed; plus, he was a beast at linebacker). Or it might be because I don't have a lot of close male friends in this area, and he was one of the few I respected.

Shortly after the news of Curtis' death, Reese got sick. Like REAL sick. It was a Sunday night and Reese went to bed without too much hassle. She woke up before midnight coughing, so I went to her room and lay down on her floor to comfort her. Her coughing stopped and she was asleep in less than 10 minutes, but Ripken woke up and was whining. I left Reese's room and took the dog downstairs and let him out in the backyard, but he was still whinny. I was frustrated, so I just left the backdoor open and sat down on the couch and flipped on the TV to pass the time until Ripken chilled out. Reese would intermittently cough and whine for a few seconds, but would be quiet quickly thereafter and remain asleep (or at least silent) for 10 to 15 minutes before coughing again. Ripken had just settled down and had stopped whining and I was getting ready to bring him back up to bed (he sleeps in our room) when Reese started to cough again. Then I heard splashing. Then she started to really cry. I rushed up to her room as Amy was waking up from the crying. Reese had thrown up all over her floor (she has slept in her bed twice since we converted it from the crib, so she sleeps on her floor. Amy and I think she sleeps on the floor because she is a very active sleeper, rolling around a lot, and she fell off the bed the first night after we converted it.) The vomit was in her lap. The vomit was in her hair. The vomit was on the carpet. The vomit was on her blankets. I snatched Reese up and carried her to the guest bathroom and set her down in the bathtub. I stripped her and turned on the water. Amy came in and took over with the bath as I tackled the mess in the bedroom. We have a SpotVac that we used for accidents from the dog, but it was enlisted for a different dirty job that night. I started a load of laundry and continued my efforts in her room. Amy finished Reese's bath and got her new pajamas and took her into our bed. Then Reese vomited again. I stripped our bed and Amy took Reese into the guest bedroom. I was just finishing up cleaning Reese's room when she vomited in the guest bed. Amy had an important meeting at work first thing Monday morning and she needed to get to bed (it was approaching 2 a.m.), so she got some sheets, tossed them on our bed and tried to sleep. I got a bowl from the kitchen, a bunch of towels and had Reese in the guest bed. She threw up a couple more times, but she was done by 5:30 or so. She had diarrhea in the morning, but was relatively fine the rest of the day (I was a walking zombie, though). Reese was a little warm and obviously tired, but overall she recovered quickly. But when we put her to sleep Monday night, she threw up again. This time it wasn't as bad, and we didn't need to clean everything because she was on a bunch of towels, blankets and other easily washable sheets.

It was also that week that she was sick that a friend of mine had died from a form of brain cancer called Glioblatoma multiforme. That news hit me harder than the news of Curtis's death because I had worked with her at Disneyland. Catou, which is a German form of Catherine, was young and beautiful and successful and athletic, but she had been suffering and battling this cancer for two years. Her parents would send out email updates regarding her fight, but the last few updates seemed to show that the end was near as Catou would be awake and alert less and less and her appetite was going away. I am thankful to her parents for the updates, but it was also sometimes hard to read. But every update added that Catou was in good spirits and not in pain. Still, it was incredibly sad to hear that parents were about to bury their daughter, and maybe that is another reason her death hit me so hard.

The next week, I came down with a nasty cold which zapped whatever remaining strength if I was a zombie before, I don't know how to describe what I was with that cold. A lot of orange juice later, and the cold subsided, but on Monday I woke up with the worst back pain I had felt since 2000. Most of you probably know, but for those of you who do not, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer on May 1, 2000. But I did not go to the doctor because of any "cancer-related issues," whatever the hell that means. I went to the doctor because I had incredible back pain. I had the back pain for about a month. I did not do anything significant that would have caused the back pain - I was not moving furniture, I was not lifting boxes of books, I was not tipping cows over in the middle of the night. My back pain was unbelievable. I could not stand, I could not sit, I could not lie down. I was taking 15 to 20 anti-inflammatories a day, and yet the back pain persisted. Why did I wait so long to go to the doctor? Well, I was 24 at the time and wildly optimistic and reasoned I pulled a muscle. Second, I did not have a whole lot of money. And third, and most important, the magazine I was working for did not give me insurance. Yet. I received insurance and went into the doctor the next day. The doctor took an x-ray of my chest to see if he could see anything wrong with my back. He instantly saw a tumor in my chest pushing on my lungs and saw my lymph nodes were swollen and pressing on my spinal column. Not fun. So when I had major back pain again, my mind thought of cancer. The death of my good friend due to brain cancer probably had a major reason I thought of my past issue because I have had back pain in the past and never thought about cancer. My back pain this time was so severe, Amy came home for lunch, saw me efforting to do regular house work and called in to her supervisor and to say she had to stay home with me. I went to the doctor's office that afternoon, and then went to the hospital the next morning for a blood test (Amy had to stay home Tuesday morning for that, as well). The blood test came back perfect, so that was a relief. But I have been going to a chiropractor and message therapist weekly ever since.

Halloween was OK, except that it was on Monday night. Not that Monday night Halloween is anything horrible. But the San Diego Chargers were playing that night, and I really wanted to watch the game. It was hard to pay attention when the doorbell kept ringing every 30 seconds, but seeing Reese hand out candy and then ending with, "Ba-bye. Thank you." She was not scared or timid even if the costumes were more mature and bloody. She was happy and excited to meet the trick-or-treaters at the door.

Reese's two-year birthday was low-key, just the three of us at home. We used Skype to talk with grandparents as she opened some presents. I made a cake to look like Sesame Street's new central character Elmo. I wasn't too sure it actually looked like Elmo, but when I showed it to Reese, she immediately said, "Elmo!" That was all of the confirmation any chef could ask for! Two days later, we flew done to Long Beach. Saturday was her birthday party at my sister's house, complete with a Sesame Street bounce house. A handful of my closest friends and their families came to help celebrate, and I think everyone had a blast. The next morning, Amy and I drove up to Santa Barbara to have lunch with one of Amy's friends. We then drove up the California coast to spend four days and three nights in the Carmel/Monterrey/Big Sur area for our fifth wedding anniversary. We drove back Wednesday morning, and hit some hellish traffic on the way back. What should have been about a six hour drive back was about a nine hour drive back. Actually, it was more of a four hour drive and then a four hour crawl. Santa Barbara is only about five total exits on the freeway, and it took us an hour to go from one end to the other. Thanksgiving was back at my sister's house with all of my family and my brother-in-law's family. The next day we went to my other sister's house and let the cousins play together one last time. The weather was phenomenal - bright, clear, sunny. The weather - and the way Reese played with her cousins - made it difficult to leave the next morning, but we had a plane to catch. Arriving in Portland, the weather certainly made it feel like November and autumn, but it didn't feel like home.