Chicago

The Chicago trip summary, in a nutshell, is that the trip didn't result in any major changes, yet. They're interested in doing the kidney/pancreas transplant she wants, but first they want to know more about why she needs oxygen. Kaiser had done a few tests last year, to try to understand it, and then sort of gave up, and fell back on just making sure she has it all the time. So we're hoping U of Chicago will push on Kaiser to get a better answer, that will allow her onto the transplant candidates list.

The trip itself was a bit of an adventure. Our outbound flight held for a long time, then eventually diverted to Indianapolis, due to thunderstorms camped out over O'Hare. It was entertaining, listening to the controller negotiating with all the holding flights, about the possibility of taking a longer route that might eventually result in an earlier landing time. He didn't have many takers - most of us didn't have enough gas. It was so moist at Indy, that the plane's air conditioning was putting out a sheet of fog above the windows. Very eerie. We arrived at O'Hare several hours late, but all the logistics still worked out, to pick up oxygen at the airport, and have a bunch of extra tanks waiting at the hotel. We enjoyed an awesome, albeit very late, dinner at the top-rated Rosebud steak house the first night, had a so-so dinner at Vivere on Wednesday. The highlight of the trip, at least for me, was poking around the neighborhood on 57th street in the Hyde Park area near the University of Chicago, before we left. We had lunch at a noodle house there, and bought sandwiches for the plane at a local market. We came across an airport shuttle while walking, and jumped aboard for a long ride to O'Hare in stop-n-go traffic, with a chatty and informative, very delightful shuttle driver.

I took some pictures on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Nothing spectacular, more just documenting that we really went on this whirlwind trip.

Speedog

Mandy got away from K yesterday, when the leash didn't clip on where she thought it did. She ran down the street so fast that she had to swing wide and almost didn't make the corner. She had lots of fun playing keep-away with K and our neighbor Bill down the street, who joined in the chase. She finally settled down and came back to K. Then today, I was walking up the hill with Ken from his house. K decided to let Mandy run down the hill to meet me. What a speed demon! And then foolish me, I tried to send her back up the hill to K. Instead she headed to her favorite grassy knoll, down the street from me. She took off down the hill so fast, you'd of thought a firetruck was behind her, and disappeared around the corner. I was a bit worried, but I wasn't up for chasing her, so I just headed up the hill for home (if you love something, let it go...?). Moments later, she reappeared around the corner, practically setting the street on fire, and zoomed into the garage! Simple pleasures...

Sustenance

Someone recently asked what sustains us these days. One thing that really helps is the new dog. We love our pooch Mandy, and the different activities she brings to our lives. She's dragging one or both of us out every morning and evening for walks around the neighborhood, and of course she gets K out a few times during the days as well. She's been to a lot of places with us in the car, sometimes going with us to restaurants that have patios, and sometimes staying in the car, on those cloudy cool days when we feel it's safe. We finished the beginner dog training final exam with a flourish - for whatever reason, Mandy did everything asked of her. K's jaw dropped as I led Mandy through her paces, or was it the other way around? Yeah, maybe it was me being led... We've had a few very fun outings to the REI flagship store by confluence park, and gone for walks around there. And K's been exploring the local dog parks with her, having visited a half dozen parks all around the metro area by now. She's ever so slowly beginning to own everything in the house. I see tonight that those chairs K had designated as off limits are now in the Mandy domain too. Of course she owned *us* the day we met her. :-)

K and I are planning on traveling to University of Chicago Medical Center later this month. She'll have medical tests and interviews, so she can be considered for a combined kidney/pancreas transplant. She's not officially on a transplant list, since she's still stuck on the heart stress test part, and they feel they need an angiogram to figure out what's going on there. The concern is that the dye for the angiogram may well shut down her kidneys for good. They're waiting as long as possible for her dialysis preparations to be complete, so if they do kill her kidneys, she'll be ready to go on dialysis right away. Once they figure out what's going on with her heart, they'll either try to fix that, or call it good enough, and press forward to getting her approved for transplant surgery. In the meantime, Kaiser has approved her to go talk to the U of Chicago folks. It's very nice that Kaiser is making all the complicated arrangements for her to have oxygen at all times during the trip, since that's one of the reasons we've avoided air travel for the past 18 months.