Unexpected loss

We heard from the daughter of an old friend on Saturday afternoon, that her Mom had passed away very suddenly and unexpectedly. K was pretty devastated to learn of it, because she had been holding onto the idea that they would eventually get back into being in contact on a regular basis, and even be visiting each other in person sometime.

Launching LDCM

The countdown for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) has begun, out at Vandenberg AFB on the California coast. Liftoff is planned for 10:02am Pacific Time. SpaceFlightNow has live video coverage of the launch countdown and flight. Check it out: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av035/status.html

Clement Park

Kind of a dull flat day. We're getting in a walk around Johnston Reservoir at Clement park, before round two of the weekend snow storms arrives. When we started, the lake was devoid of geese. Then a huge crowd descended on the frozen lake, just before we left. — with Mandy Hushing and Ken at Clement Park.

Chilly at City Park

Getting in a quick walk at city Park, before the rain and snow come pouring down. Brr, it's chilly here, with a light breeze, as we watch the clouds moving in overhead. The forecast is for maybe an inch of snow today.

Confused

The weather service is soooo confused. Forecast: Rain. Snow. No snow, just rain. And now... It's snowing!

Breakfast and a fireplace

A mini slice of heaven, is a spinach soufflé *and* a cinnamon crunch bagel, *and* a piping hot latté *and* eating it by the fire. Oh, *and* having it all paid for by a good friend. — at Panera Bread

The Annies

We've been watching the Animation Awards at AnnieAwards.org, scouring the background images for a sign of our neighbor's son Ryan and his daughter Inge in the audience. It's especially fun watching, when we know someone who gets to be a part of the event!

Conifer outing

We wandered around Conifer for a little while, and finally found a delightful place to have breakfast, DW's 285 Diner, before our walk. The waitress recommended walking at Meyer's Ranch, which turned out to be a great idea. A little cold, though. We'll remember heavier jackets, the next time we wander up to 8,000 feet, on an already chilly winter day.

Hmmm, sounds interesting

"Traditional SMBG using lancets can be painful and time-consuming; however, promising new technology may one day provide a solution to this problem. High-tech devices such as EyeSense (Grobostheim), which is now in development, may offer alternative procedures for patients to measure their glucose levels without using a lancet. This external meter will be able to determine a blood glucose reading via a small photometer implanted in the interstitial fluid below the conjunctiva of the eye. In studies, this method has been shown to perform as well as conventional blood glucose meters. It is anticipated to become available in 2013."

Quoted from the ADA Clinical Diabetes Journals website.

Sleep, glorious sleep

After five nights of not sleeping since she got home from the hospital last Thursday, K finally slept all day yesterday, and all night last night. I think she might be human again this morning. Just in time for two medical outings, this morning and afternoon.

Home! Not sleeping.

She's home. Yay! :-)

And falling right back into not getting to bed, until I leave for work. Boo. :-(

I'll settle for not having the hospital on my daily itinerary. :-/

Oh, yeah. Today is "Opposite Day!" Or, isn't it? So, don't have a happy day! Or do, if you're not participating. I'm so confused.

Coming home today!

Yay! Kristan says they are discharging her from Littleton Hospital this evening! Amy is picking her up. The good news is, with all this visibility of high WBC in the hospital, everyone's gotten it together to order the latest in the series of new anti-CML medications. This one is called Bosulif (Bosutinib) and should be arriving Friday.

Not coming home today

K was sleepy when I stopped by this morning, but became more interactive after I'd been there awhile. She had an awful low BG last night, caused by the insulin IV drip that didn't get stopped soon enough. This morning her BG was off the chart in the other direction. She's not coming home tonight, most likely. They want to continue investigating the sky high white cell count, difficult to control blood glucose, and low oxygen, all happening at the same time. The oncologist has been called. He was supposed to get her started on a new anti-leukemia drug after she came home from Life Care, but that still hasn't been done. Could be that, or an infection, or...? They've taken blood for a culture, but that takes time (days) to grow.

Neck's OK

The neck CT scan and hip X-ray were negative - yay - but they're keeping her overnight anyway, to address some other things, like her missed dialysis, high blood glucose, low oxygen saturation, and an off the chart white cell count. — at Littleton Adventist Hospital.

Not coming home tonight

Lorene just called to let me know she's with Kristan in the Littleton Hospital E.R. and they're going to keep her in Intensive Care overnight. I'm not sure of all the details. I know they want to get her dialyzed, since she missed her regular evening dialysis appointment. They also are treating a very high blood glucose with an insulin drip -- little do they know, how often it gets up there, and we deal with it, practically on a daily basis. Sigh. Will know more when I get there in a half hour.

Possible neck injury

K fell asleep many times while out of bed yesterday. One of those times, last night, she leaned slowly forward until she rolled off her seat and fell on her head. No one else was there to see it, but I'm assuming she rolled right over her head and onto her back or side, since she has abrasions on her shoulder and back, and the handles on the rattan cabinet across from where she was sitting are broken. Her neck is sore this morning, so I asked the caregiver to coordinate with her neck surgeon to see what he wants to do.

DVD update... really?

Successfully completed updating the firmware in our DVD players. No big deal... using these nice simple instructions. Simple. Yeah, right. I'm so glad I didn't turn them into nice looking bricks. I guess it's cool that they can be updated... but WHY do we NEED to? Yeah, I know. I'm just not all that supportive of the process.

Exercise for all

Ken and I drove K's car to Morrison to give it a bit of a workout, had breakfast at The Blue Cow, and walked from one end of town to the other, through Morrison Park, and back. So the car got some exercise, and so did we all. Pretty day. Bear Creek was frozen over with a thick layer, but with small holes here and there, through which the fast moving bubbly creek was visible. Pretty neat.

City Center Walk

K's foot looks much better today. Ken and I drove to Racine's for breakfast, then took a very short walk around the Denver Library, Art Museum, and City Center park. It was darned cold, not much above zero degrees F. Mandy almost made it all the way around - she got to within a hundred feet of the car, before drawing up short with frozen toes. We've never been so glad, to get back to a toasty warm car.

Freakin' cold!

I wore just a long sleeved dress shirt, and a down vest, into work this morning, with a single digit outside temperature. My coworkers were asking pointed questions, like whether or not I had a warm jacket in the car, in case I got stranded somewhere. Haha, of course I do...!

Now it's zero degrees out there (thirty-two below freezing!), and heading down to minus seven, says the forecast. Glad to be inside with a working furnace! K had a fun evening out with Amy after her extra dialysis today. Even with all that excitement, it seems like there's a chance she'll be heading to bed well before dawn, which would mean a second night of sleep for her this week. Here's hoping...

New wound

Life is not at its best right now. K hasn't slept at night for the past week, so she's not been functioning well. This morning she showed me a new wound on her heel that will need attention. Her morning caregiver didn't show up Tuesday AM, or call to explain, which is worrisome, since she's had medical issues of her own in the past month, but I'm more focused on getting care for K. Home Helpers is doing a good job with providing replacements on short notice. Last night I stopped at Tokyo Joe's for a Yakitori Bowl (good!), and wondering if I shouldn't have (bad). I went to bed with a headache, and woke up with it much worse, then after I started moving around, realized I was also really nauseous. Ugh. Might be food poisoning, but coworkers are also talking about various illnesses ravaging the country right now, and wondering if they should quarantine me in my office. The good news is that K got a new prosthetic at IPOP on Tuesday, and afterwards was a walking maniac in Marczyk's, her favorite deli/grocery/specialty store on 17th near downtown Denver.

Happy New Year!

We had an early New Year's morning for a new reason -- DaVita messed up K's dialysis schedule last night, so I had to take her in for an early morning slot today. She likes her new old fashioned telephone handset that plugs into the iPhone!

My New Year's morning got a little better after dropping off K. Our neighbors Ken and Freddie brought homemade biscuits (cranberry-orange, blueberry-lemon) up to the house, I made some fresh strong coffee, and we all watched the Rose Parade in HD. They left just as it was time to go pickup Kristan from dialysis at noon. Surprise, she had a really low blood glucose coming off dialysis. It took an extra 45 minutes to deal with that (sugar sugar sugar). She's better now, but still sleepy from being up all night.

Sleep, glorious sleep

We finally had a decent night's sleep last night, hooray!

No Christmas for us, yet

Mandy and I are still waiting to celebrate a "Christmas Day" with K. She didn't sleep the night before, and was wiped out on the actual day, and slept through most of it. I spent probably 3-4 hours sitting with her, just trying to get her to wake up enough to take her medications.

Coming Home!

Lots of excitement for us: Today is go-home day for Kristan! She has a full day today. She's already in her Friday afternoon dialysis session. By the time she gets out of that, I should be on my way to Life Care, to help her pack up, and to give her a ride home.

Room at the Inn!

Good news: Life Care (with prompting from K) was able to ask more (should've been obvious!) questions of the Littleton DaVita people, and they found her a slot at the dialysis center much closer to home. It's more like her old night slot from a few years ago, going from 5 to 10pm. It'll make for some late nights on MWF, but at least the drive is only 10 minutes each way.

No room at the Inn

Nuts. The Life Care case manager says there's no room at the Littleton DaVita Dialysis Center any more, so K can't come back. The DaVita in Aurora, where she's going now, is a half hour drive each way, plus traffic, which is usually awful on I-225 in the afternoon.

K Coming Home!

In the care conference today, everyone committed to getting K home after dialysis on Friday! There are LOTS of things to do and plan, to make this happen!

Sore wrist

K visited at home last evening, and got to enjoy the Christmas lights and decorations that Jen put up for us. Time flew by, and it seemed like no time, before she was headed back to Life Care. Her left wrist was swollen and she says it has been really hurting. Seems likely it's sprained or broken. She doesn't remember any event that would've caused it. They took an X-ray yesterday, but I haven't heard about the results yet. -- updated 12/11: The X-ray was negative for a fracture, the nurse says.

And on a good note

K was awake and pretty darned perky when I visited her last night. On top of that, my cold symptoms are easing. We'll take that good note, and run with it for awhile.