A message from Amy & Andrea

Very sorry for the delay in getting this posting...Apparantly Dad's password for blogger was different, and it took a bit of hacking. 

We are very sorry and saddened to write that our father lost his battle with melanoma this past Sunday night.  He was at home, in peace and out of pain, and that is more than we could have hoped for. 

Thank you to everyone who supported Dad in his last months.  A celebration of his life will be held this Saturday, December 5th from 4pm to 7pm at 391 Terry Ave N, in Seattle. If you can't join us, please try to raise a glass where ever you are, and toast a life well lived.

Met w Dr Margolin today, status OK

I'm a guy that has been an excessive sweater all my life, and the most uncomfortable thing I'm experiencing right now is perspiration. The Doc says it's probably my body trying to find any way it can to pass fluids out and since the liver is a bit short circuited it's doing it through that method. It can also be steroid dosage, so we'll play with that a bit, plus play with the diuretic dosage. There is fluid retention in my abdomen and we may go in an remove some of it after the holidays. "Only takes a minute and a big needle" she says :-D




When I was in Jr. High I started building things. Plastic car and airplane models were a favorite, and I took wood shop, too. One project was building a model sailboat and then at the end of the year all the woodshop students met for a city-wide "Model Yacht Regatta", which I am proud to say I won (as if that lovely photo hadn't tipped you to that already). The next year ('59 I think) I went for larger scale and built a Soap Box Derby Racer. What a grand project – big slabs of wood and masonite and nuts and bolts – all a kid could want. The rules said the car was to be the product of the kids, with only safety related things being done by an adult. That suited me fine and the sleek Fred Flintstone lines clearly show no adult involvement in speedy “Day and Night Market #3”. What a surprise when I showed up at the start! A lot of sleek products came out of the backs of station wagons it occurred to me some of these cars were not “primarily” build by 13 and 14 year olds. Didn’t matter. It was swell fun, and even more fun running it down the dirt alley behind my house until it self-destructed ! .

Growing up in San Diego

What could have been better?  Between 6th grade and graduation from high school I never lived more than a few blocks from the beach in Point Loma.   And we southern Cal kids invented the skate board by taking our old steel clamp-on skates and nailing them to 2 foot lenghts of 2x4.  The steel wheels wore out on the concrete sidewalks in about a month, and they had absolutely no traction, but we took them everywhere anyway.

In junior high and high school the music was still holdover from swing - the Beatles didn't come on the scene until '63 or so.  It was the Kingston Trio, Limelighters, Peter, Paul and Mary and other folk groups that we listened to and I was interested in, which led me first to the ukulele (I had a cheap, plastic one as my first instrument and taught myself classics like "Five foot Two") and then to the guitar.  A few of us formed a folk group as an excuse to get together and goof off and that was great fun.  It also led to a ride home in a police car.  I was with my pals and had to take the bus home.  Got off the bus to walk the few blocks and was picked up for a curfew violation and got a ride in a black and white.  Very exciting, though not at the time ;-)
Somewhere when I was about 15 or 16 my interest in guitar moved to classical.  I heard an album by Laurindo Almeida and loved it and started teaching myself how to read music and saved for a classical guitar.  Never went back to folk after that.

Finally looking like a car

I have the suspension, wheels, engine firewall and radiator placed now. Turns out the radiator is too far forward and I have to move it, but lots of other tweaks in placement/alignment of the firewall and dash are still ahead. But it's getting closer to where I will be doing body work and not chassis work.




Have felt OK the last few days. Called the nurse about the left leg swelling and we upped the diuretic for the weekend. It has helped. Meet with Dr Margolin on Tues for a checkover and infusion of Zometa. Otherwise taking it easy and relaxing. Amy and Jane hung around and we watched Food Network last night and Andre leaves for her IronMan late Monday.



Naturally when you get to where I am you think about where you've been. A really vivid recollection as a kid is being in the back seat of my grandfather's jeep singing "Don't Step on my Blue Suede Shoes". I assume Jim was with me. My grand-dad was a mail carrier in rural Mississippi in the 50's so it was a real treat to ride around with him, and I guess I have to admit that Elvis may have been an important part of my life-long love of music! We would have been living in El Paso, Texas, then. My mom and dad met at a USO dance in Los Angeles during WWII. My dad joined the Army December 8, 1941 and worked as an airplane mechanic at Van Nuys Army Air Base. He stayed in the Army after the war and was eventually working at White Sands Proving Grounds firing the earliest of US missiles like the Nike Ajax around the southwest desert while Jim, Dave and I grew up in El Paso. Being in the Army didn't pay much so my mom worked and we had a long string of Mexican maids that would come take care of us and cook. And that leads to perhaps another passion of mine - food. I started learning how to cook Mexican food under these excellent tutors as soon as I could reach the stovetop. The summer of 1957 was a turning point for us. My dad was offered a job at Convair in San Diego to work on the next level of missiles and he accepted the job. It was monumentally exciting. He went out and purchased a brand-new 1957 Chevy Two-Ten station wagon and drove it off the showroom floor. So before 6th grade started for me we had traded west Texas desert for the surf and palm trees of Ocean Beach, California.......

 

Things OK, Alfa coming right along

It's difficult to get the wonderful detail of the Alfa across.  Here are four pictures showing where I'm at now.  The Engine is finished for the most part and is ready to be installed in the chassis.  Front and rear axles and suspensions are finished.  The brake shoes are done (they are the silver things on the round plate - just got painted yesterday.  The main project right now is to assemble the main elements of the car except for the body panels.  That will allow me to move into the next step of fine tuning where the dash, firewall, seats, etc fit.  Lot of detail to do there.  All that so I can put attention into fitting the body, doors, bonnet, etc.  With almost 2000 parts in this kit it is very detailed, and all of them need some sort of tweaking or tuning before they meet muster.  A perfect thing for me to be doing and I'm enjoying it a lot.

Feeling OK, some pain in the side increase.  My hospice nurse, Temma, is coming by this afternoon for her weekly checkup.  Leg swelling is still an issue and I feel quite boated and tight in the abdomen.  Also beginning to get a rash on my ankle. Had another small dizzy spell a couple days ago, so have officially stopped driving and I'm very careful on the dock, always with my cane.  Don't know how this is going to end but drowing is not part of the agenda ;')  Started off a nice, sunny, cool day here in Seattle and at this moment I'm enjoying having Julia Child's dvd's on.  They were the gift for renewing Public TV.  What classics!

Decent couple of days, getting away from all the other social sites.

Before we go on, Blogger removed the spell check from these postings. I apologize in advance for more errors than usual. The meeting with hospice on Wed was fine, and then I met with my ongoing hospice nurse on Friday. It’s shown positive results even! Right now Tamma’s (the nurse) job is to keep on top of my meds – make sure I have the right quantities on hand and we’re clear on dosage time and amount. She took care of a quantity imbalance by ordering some more, and then we addressed the issue of bowels. This is part of the journey no one really wants to talk about, but getting plugged up is a real issue with such large quantities of pain killers in my system. Temma put together a plan using regular, over the counter stuff, and yesterday I had relief! Yea. And what was also good is I found the hospice nurses really are as quick to respond as they said they would be. This a.m. I called again to discuss continuing approaches to the colon issue and she (one of the on-call’s anyway) called back within 30 minutes with an answer, so now I hope to keep that under control and I’m pretty confident that my questions will get answers quickly.


Had a bunch of people drop in and say hi and had dinner with my ex-brother in law. Tonight (Sun) I’m having dinner with Rick and Joyce before they leave for Italy. They will be gone two weeks and during some of that time Andrea will house/cat sit so she’ll be next door until she goes down to Cozumel for her IronMan Triathlon race.



Before we go on, Blogger removed the spell check from these postings and I apologize in advance for more errors than usual. I'm also as confused as anyone why some of you can post comments here and others cannot. As always, feel free to email me any time with your feedback and questions and I promise I'll get back to you. I went on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Classmated, etc and am not going to respond to input from them any more. Too much to keep up with so this blog, my personal email and occasional posts to the MPIP bulletinboard are my links to the world now.



The meeting with hospice on Wed was fine, and then I met with my ongoing hospice nurse on Friday. It’s shown positive results already! Right now Tamma’s (the nurse) job is to keep on top of my meds – make sure I have the right quantities on hand and we’re clear on dosage time and amount. She took care of a quantity imbalance by ordering some more, and then we addressed the issue of bowels. This is part of the journey no one really wants to talk about, but getting plugged up is a real issue with such large quantities of pain killers in my system. Temma put together a plan using regular, over the counter stuff, and yesterday I had relief! Yea. And what was also good is I found the hospice nurses really are as quick to respond as they said they would be. This a.m. I called again to discuss continuing approaches to the colon issue and she (one of the on-call’s anyway) called back within 30 minutes with an answer, so now I hope to keep that under control and I’m pretty confident that my questions will get answers quickly. From here on Temma will drop by weekly unless I need her more often. The nure also put a package of meds of the "just in case and to have handy" variety and shipped it to me. Standard operating procedure for hospice, I guess, and insures they have what they might need in case of emergency.



The social worker came with Temma, too. At this point I don't feel strong need of her services, but you can't ever be sure. They can also provide a chaplain but most of you know this service is not a high priorty for me. That said there is a famous saying that there are "No athiests in fox-holes" and I certainly appreciate all the prayers being said on my behalf. Had a bunch of people drop in and say hi and had dinner with my ex-brother in law. Tonight (Sun) I’m having dinner with Rick and Joyce before they leave for Italy. They will be gone two weeks and during some of that time Andrea will house/cat sit so she’ll be next door until she goes down to Cozumel for her IronMan Triathlon race.



Laundry is a place I 'm going to need help with and Amy was a big help with that and changing my sheets, etc. Plus she took my ironing and John tossed that in with his stuff and it all got professionally done so all my shirts came back looking like I still work for a living ;-) At any rate, I think I may have to discontinue my current housekeeper and Amy and An are going to work something out with housekeeping, laundry and ironing using her crew for pick up & delivery, plus Amy's crew is two people and they can blast thru my place quickly.



Also giving thought to using some blog space here for modest reminisce. I spend a lot of time in bed with memories going through my head. When you start cataloging all the changes the last 63 years have undergone I may share some of the most vivid ones. Won’t be the Great American Novel (or Julie and Julia), just some things I remember that might be amusing and that even my kids haven’t heard (tho I doubt that).

A week of challenge...but what's new about that?

The road continues to get bumpier but that shouldn't be a surprise, should it?  I had two days or so of realtive comfort, and them started getting some swelling in my left leg and ankle. Then Sunday I started getting pain right at the edge of my ribcage on the right.  By Monday night it was pretty uncomfortable to take a deep breath, but I already had a Tues follow up so we waited and went over it all w Dr Margolin on Tues a.m.  After looking at everything we think the side pain is because of all the stuff in the liver that is getting irritated by the bloating, etc.  As in the past, all we can do is try to relieve it, so we bumped up the morphine dose again and added something for a diuretic to keep the swelling at bay.  Now I'm at 45mg of slow release with the 15mg fast plus steroid.  Plus somethimg for the consitpation (yuck), that has yet to work.

Getting things going with hospice and have a meeting at my place tomorrow (Wed) a.m.  Hoping I can get some help with household duties like laundry and cleaning maybe, and I now they can do lots of other stuff, too.  I have a cleaning person every other week, but combining duties would make things better, I think.  I do have home nursing available if I need it and they may be able to guide my on that when the time comes.  Should be an interesting meeting! 

My model car is turning out to be a godsend, because it gives me something to do and think about that I enjoy.  Fishing is out (two of my buddies are hitting the rivers for steelhead as I write this), because I can't wade, but goofing off with my Alfa is perfect.  I'm going to start painting the chassis in the next day or two and will post more pics.