Deanna and Mike blog together

I can not even describe to you the emotions today. We arrived in Houston at 11:30 last night. We got to bed around 1:00 and honestly, had a restless night. My dear sweet husband got up and went down to the lobby and brought me breakfast in bed. How did I get so lucky? One thing that cancer has done has shown how the smallest of gestures speak the greatest of our love. I love him so much.



I struggled so much with the absolute anxiety about this place. It is huge. I told the shuttle van driver that it is like "Disney World of Cancer" - a city within a city. There are tons of buildings that make up this place. They have there own water, electricity, and police force. There is hotels, restaurants, construction, gift shops, library, art, water fountains, friendly people that work here, and even a Chick-fil-a (Dena!). But there are also a mind boggling number of people with cancer. Something is really wrong... young, old, male, female, .. We as a "people" are missing something somewhere. How is it that we can send people in outer space, smash atoms to create more elements, and yet this goes on without check really? What is it in the body that causes the first cell to turn cancerous? Is there something in the environment? Could it be plastic? Could it be processed food, fast food, corn syrup? I don't know, but when this is one (of many) cities that are created, and booming by all the construction I might add, we need to take notice.



So back to the day, Mike did a tube feeding this morning and then threw up. We think it is something in the two-cal formula that is making him feel so bad. We are going to meet with a nutritionist here on Thursday and hopefully get this figured out so he can gain weight.



We took the shuttle here from the hotel and found the main building and made our way to new patient in process. That was quick and we headed to our first appointment ahead of schedule. That was the last thing we got to on time. We saw Dr. Ho who had an incredible list of degrees and was really nice. It was really a "what have you done and where are you at" meeting. The appointment was at 2:00 and we left the office at 4:36. We were told to get to the lab since it closes at 4:30. We showed up at the lab and got an EKG and blood work. They got it on the first stick!! Then ---

(That was Deanna's writing. She is done for the evening, watching tv now.) Not true. I was writing it while waiting on Mike at the CT Clinic and then he was there and we had 15 minutes to catch the last shuttle!! _Deanna

My wife deserves breakfast in bed every day!

We faxed in our offer contract for the potential house before we left for our first appointment. It's funny, the last house we looked at was kind of a gut check. The house was attractively priced and was pretty much move in ready. It would have kept Elizabeth in the same middle school she just started. But it also had detractors by location. It would have put a four lane, high speed traffic road between Elizabeth and her friends and family. And it would have put her in a different high school from them as well in three years. After sleeping and praying on it, I decided the proximity to friends and family and keeping Elizabeth with her network through high school was more important than the price. We did not put in an offer on that house.

So I had a little list that went something like this: I need a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 3 car garage, single story, pool in back, in this neighborhood, and oh by the way it has to be below this price to fit in our budget. Guess what happens when you put that criteria into a real estate search engine? You get no matches, and you can almost hear the computer laughing at you.

But God apparently was listening, because a house with the exact criteria I listed popped up yesterday as a foreclosure. So despite the rush to get to Houston, we took the time to take a look. Now it's no beauty queen mind you...needs a lot of dings patched, some framing replaced, one interior door replaced, and a few other things...but I think God just dropped the right house right into our laps at just the right time. Isn't it neat how he does that? Well, we'll see how the negotiation goes and hopefully it will pass all the inspections and be easily fixed up.

MD Anderson is indeed a city within the city of Houston. Impressive and profoundly sad at the same time, that entire cities are built around this evil we call cancer.

I did some research into one of the ingredients in my liquid food called FOS (fructo-oligo-sacharide), and found out it causes severe intestinal distress in some people. Looks like I might be one of them. Makes you wonder why some idiot would put it in a food for people with compromised GI systems. It's an artificial sweetener...in a food tube liquid food that patients will never taste. Brilliant! Time to start looking for a new type of liquid food, I think.

After the EKG we went over to the CT area. Which requires you to ride a golf cart through a sky tube over the streets below to get to a different MD Anderson building. It was raining outside--God blessed me again. I love to watch the rain. In the CT room I saw a new gadget. It shines a green light on your arm and makes the veins visible beneath the skin so the IV insertion goes smoother. Only one stick!

The CT here had a new twisted requirement than other CTs I have had. Radioactive stuff was induced into my body in three different spots--one of which was not particularly comfortable and allowed 3 techs, two women and one man, to gain views of me that were embarrassing. All in the name of science, I suppose.

While we waited, Deanna chatted with other cancer fighters and I played my submarine game on the netbook, happily sinking a number of destroyers before a torpedo failure doomed me.

On the way out, while we waited for the shuttle, we met a security guard who had been a fillipino air force major! Then, after a quick stop at Krogers for some food, we retreated back to the hotel.

I think we have tomorrow off. I think we're going to a museum and to visit Deanna's cousin.

Oh, and we hear that Elizabeth had a good second day at school today.

God Bless,
-Mike