Saturday, May 22, 2010

Celebration of 45 Years of marriage

During the middle of May we celebrated our 45 anniversary on Vancouver Island in Victoria, BC and stayed at the WorldMark Resort. We first flew into Seattle where we were picked up by some friends who live south of Seattle and stayed with them a few days at their lovely home in Bonney Lake. They then drove their car and we all traveled over to Vancouver Island by ferry, leaving from Anacortes.












It was really green and beautiful in Victoria but a little rainy, windy and cold most of the time, normal for this time of the year, I guess. These pictures were taken while I walked early one morning near our Worldmark Resort.





Note that the sign "Welcome to Victoria" was provided by beautiful pink and white English Daisies. See the closeup below.









We went to the world famous Butchart gardens and certainly weren't disappointed. Wish I could transport just a small version of one or two of them to my yard in Heber. . . Sigh. . . Not the cloudy, gloomy weather though. Note the smokestack in the background of the above picture. There used to be a limestone quarry in the area. The Buchart family transformed the big hole left in the ground into the beautiful pool with fountain as you see.
More lovely garden areas. . .I wanted to put my bed underneath a tree and never leave.










The next picture shows a 'bear' formed of moss. We also saw other 'animals'--deer, boar, etc., formed likewise. Very creative.







Though Frank wasn't able to go everywhere in the garden, he and our good friend, Truman had an enjoyable day at the gardens.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

A light at the end of the tunnel for Jason!

We were so glad to be able to fly to Salt Lake City to see Jason receive his undergraduate degree in Architecture. Frank handled the trip well. The smile on Jason's face as he 'walked' was worth the trip. So many long days and nights away from his little family as he studied and worked on projects. . . Great job! Since he was accepted into the accelerated program for his master's degree, he will only have 15 more months to go, then he will be finished with school in August 2011.

Seeing Kristal and the two little girls was definitely an added bonus. They are a laugh a minute. Kandra and her family and Lance came also and we had a good visit. Check out Kandra's blog http://kandjowens.blogspot.com/for pictures and more details. Her little boy, Gavin, (20 months) thought he was at Disneyland when he got on the elevators at our hotel. He didn't want to get off but rather to keep pushing buttons, going up and down, down and up, around and around, over and over.

When we returned from our trip, we stopped in Mesa for another chemo treatment for Frank and a zometa infusion for his bones. Ugh! He decided to split up his Decadron dose from 40 mg all at once to 20 mg two days in a row so it isn't so hard on him. Don't know if it helps or just prolongs the misery. He has a bright red rash on both legs--don't know what that's from. The doctor wants to wait a week or so and see if it goes away on its own. (Maybe the augmentin which he took for a week??) Tomorrow we will go down to Mesa again for more chemo., then spend the night and fly to Seattle for the first part of a week long trip to celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary which was April 16. On that day he had to have a dose of chemo. We scheduled this trip during what we thought was an off week but with his eratic treatments due to low blood counts, fevers, etc. our schedule is off. However since flight and hotel reservations had been made, we told the doctor the chemo could wait a week. As we see it, if we have no quality of life and can't do anything but get treatments, then what's the point??

We will stay near Seattle a few days with friends we met a few years ago on a cruise and then the four of us will travel by car and ferry to Victoria on Vancouver Island, B.C. We've wanted to do this for a long time and are really looking forward to the trip. Hopefully I'll have some nice pictures to post when we get back.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Zippety Do Dah. . .what a wonderful day!

After a week of not so fun times, we felt like dancing as we left the doctor's office in Mesa today. As late as last night, Frank was still running a nocturnal fever and we were dreading going in to see the doctor for fear he would want to put him in the hospital "to find out what's going on" or something, not to mention give him another dose of chemo, which totally wipes him out and causes back and leg pain. Since we have plane tickets to Salt Lake City on Thursday, that would have been very sad and ruined our plans. Well, the doctor just said that his labs looked good and to wait until Frank finished the prescription to start chemo again. When we pressed him about the labs, we found that the IgG protein in his blood had gone down from about 2000 a month ago to 1068 this week. Hallelujah! Unbelievably, that is in the normal (great) range!!! In spite of the fact that he had only had two chemo treatments in the past 6 weeks (he should have had 11 in that time). . . The doctor said that it must be due to the chemo he got and I said "or the supplements I give him" :) The doctor said that he and I are a team. I'll accept that!

Sunday, May 2, 2010

So what's going on here really?

So... we came home from the Valley and like a good boy, Frank took his antibiotic, lalalala...He felt fine Friday night and all day Saturday, then that night his temperature spiked again. Not daring to ignore it, we called the doctor in Mesa, got the answering service of course and a doctor (not his regular one) called back, said we needed to change perscriptions, that Cipro wasn't strong enough. So after finding which pharmacy was open earliest Sunday morning (Walgreens in Show Low--45 min. away) we called the doctor back (got another different one) to give her the phone # so she could call in the rx; I made a trip there to pick up it up--Augmentin this time. Hopefully it will do the job. Frank still feels pretty good but will stay home from church to protect himself, mostly.

Just after I got back home, we had another 30 minute blizzard blanketing everything in white! Thirty minutes later it had all melted and the sun was out! Crazy Arizona weather.