Tuesday, September 1, 2009 9 p.m.
Dear Friends,
I’m really tired tonight, but wanted to update you on our day.
We dropped Shayley off at school this a.m. then headed straight to Duke where we arrived just in time for my 11 a.m. appointment. They called me in very shortly. The research nurse checked my blood pressure and it was only 85 over 65. I asked her to check it again, and it was the same. I was pretty sure from the look on her face that it was going to be a blank trip. She had gotten my hospital records from last week, and she tucked me into a room where the doctor joined us very shortly. He said that my white count was low (1.6—why so low? I don’t know). He also said that the clinical trial vaccine that I was to get today calls upon the white blood cells to cluster in any problem areas, and they therefore could cause inflammation in my intestines, so he would be hesitant to do this vaccine right now when I’m not entirely over the trouble that hospitalized me. FORTUNATELY, the stuff they’ve prepared from my own cells to put back in me will keep quite awhile (at first the research nurse has said there was a narrow window of time to put them back in.) SO, it felt like a wasted trip today, as we simply drove back home. But atleast, there’s still hope of doing the vaccine. I’m scheduled to go back on September 15.
It’s only Tuesday and it’s kind of been that kind of week. Yesterday I was trying to put some pictures onto a CD and my laptop locked up. I shut it down and tried again, and the same thing happened. Then Outlook—my email software—would not open. I tried all the usual things—shutting down and restarting, making sure all the latest updates were installed, etc., and still nothing. Finally I looked up possible solutions, and lo and behold MS had an “automatic fix.” Unfortunately, this fix didn’t mention ahead of time that it just clears out Outlook and restarts it—removing all of your emails, contacts, etc. So, after scrambling for awhile to try to recover that, I finally remembered that I had an extra harddrive that I’d saved everything to about 6 weeks ago, so I hadn’t lost too much. BUT, when I hooked up the extra hard drive and clicked “copy files to computer” it cautioned me that something was missing. So I retraced my steps and hit synchronize—so nothing would be missing—but guess what? That meant that it replaced the surviving files on the extra drive with the EMPTY ones on the computer. I fiddled and fiddled and still couldn’t figure anyway to recover my lost emails and contacts. This slight drama continued as I tried to export Charlie’s contacts to my computer unsuccessfully.
I was very frustrated by this loss of data, but I was not devastated as I might have been in times past. I can re-build the contact list over time. I can’t recover some of the emails, but at least I still have our recent “updates” on Charlie’s computer, and had backed up the previous ones on CD. —But, if you’ve emailed recently the date of anything I need to know, would you email me again? I hadn’t gotten around to putting commitments on my calendar yet—not quite being used to circulating yet.
In my cross-it-off-the-list mentality, it’s tempting to think that I’ve just wasted two days of my life. But I can’t think that. Yesterday, I got to see my two grandnephews for a little while; last night Shayley and I worked on spelling words and watched Green Acres and tonight she wanted to plan a survival food kit, which we did, and we watched America’s Funniest Videos, which she loves. Although 7/8’s of it was in the car, Charlie and I spent the day together today. And I felt inclined to take one of Shayley’s books in and give it to the research nurse who is shepherding us through this clinical trial. Charlie happened to mention to her that the photos were not “photo-shopped” to alter them—including the one with a bird sitting in his hands. We turned to that in the book, and since the picture was black and white the nurse asked what kind of bird it was. Charlie said a blue-bird. She said, “I knew it.” She lifted her hair back to reveal her earrings which were bluebirds. She went on to explain that her mom had died 16 years ago today and that her mom LOVED bluebirds. She had seen 5 bluebirds in her backyard this morning. We all looked at each other and knew it was a God-incidence.
All I can think is that things that seem a waste to us have some larger meaning in the universe—odd puzzle pieces that fit perfectly in the Grand Scheme of things. Most times I’d like to see the whole puzzle, so I can see how it fits. But alas, if we could see the whole puzzle, it would not be faith would it?
Thank you for continuing to pray for us and all of those around us fighting disease, awaiting test results, and praying for miracles.
With love,
Lydeana
