K in Littleton Hospital

Kristan's been intensely sick all last night and this morning. She had high blood pressure and low temperature this morning. Dad and Adele and I took her to Littleton Hospital ER around noon today, which is very conveniently close - about 5 minutes from the house. They're trying to figure out what's going on. Heart and lungs seem healthy. They suspect an infection somewhere, but haven't found it on the outside, so they'll be looking on the inside next, with X-Rays and an MRI.

Visitors

Dad and Adele arrived on the 7th. I'm taking some vacation while they're here. We're not quite as active as previous years. Maybe something about Dad just celebrating his 90th birthday...? :-) Nonetheless, we've been out for a nice 1 mile walk yesterday, and heading out for lunch and a short walk now. K was nauseas this morning, and feeling a little better now.

Wound Vac

In the seemingly never ending quest to get K's foot wounds to heal, she asked Kaiser about using a Wound Vac on her left foot, and they've set her up with one, about a week ago. It's a gadget that creates a low pressure area over the wound, directs drainage into an external canister, and physically pulls the tissues around the wound closer together, which should help the wound to heal.

LCROSS/NRO Launched!

We launched AV-020, an Atlas V carrying the NASA LCROSS/LRO payloads, this evening! This is an amazing mission, looking for water on the Moon in a smashing way! The LRO vehicle will be at the moon in about 4 days, and LCROSS will meet up with it in 5 days, and then again several months later, as the mission culminates in a very dynamic way. The ULA mission brochure is very informative. Also see more pics at SpaceFlightNow's AV-020 page. The NASA website has some good pics and a launch video on their home page, but you may have to search for them, after a few days go by.

Home again

Sigh. I got home from the graduation trip on Sunday evening, after an "interesting" (as in the curse, "May your life be interesting...") travel day. We had a nice quiet dinner and evening with our neighbors Ken and Freddie. Doesn't it figure, on Monday I was so nauseaus I had to stay home from work, just crashed in bed the whole day. No fever, just felt awful. I felt somewhat better Tuesday, so I'm back into the work routine...

Tyler Graduated!

Back to back graduations! Tyler graduated from Cal Poly on Saturday with an MSEE. We are all so proud of him. There were two ceremonies, one big one for the whole college at the stadium, and a much smaller one just for Electrical Engineering on the lawn by the Engineering West building. Both were delightful. Pictures are here.

D Graduated!

Dorothy graduated from high school on Thursday! Woo hoo! Our Miracle Girl! It was a most beautiful day, just a little breezy, and the ceremony went off really well. We were all just bursting with pride. Sumner's pictures are here... Tom's are here... Brighton's are here...

Generally better

K went in to see the Doc and nurse on Tuesday. It looks from the X-Ray that the infection didn't make it into the bone. These days, I don't trust those conclusions very much, but still it's good news. So, she has both feet on wound watch again, but at least we can hope that the left one is on the mend. She was free of nausea for several weeks, but it appears to be back again, although not quite so intense as it was earlier. We must've had a monster power surge earlier this week. Several circuit breakers tripped, outside and inside the house, but after resetting them, all seems well so far.

Mandy and I continue to get out on weekend and evening walks. Here's a pic of the field across from the light rail station, and an overhead showing where I shot it, just for fun. With the onset of Spring, it sprouted a carpet of lush green weeks. Mandy seems to really appreciate the freedom she gets, when I let her off leash here, although I do worry about coyotes, so I'm always scanning the area. We're still occasionally seeing the young foxes playing around their den in the evenings, as we drive by, on the way back from K's dialysis sessions.

Setback

K's left foot, which had been doing fine, and was off "wound status", developed a wound recently, and it's now turned quite serious. K saw the doc on Tuesday, and he did a lot of cutting to remove infected tissue, including scraping the bone. They're waiting for the results of the foot X-Ray, to determine if the infection has gotten into the bone, in which case I assume that additional and more serious surgery will be required. K's right foot wounds are continuing to look better, although they're still serious.

Happy Memorial Holiday!

Going through emails this morning. This link, forwarded from a long time friend, really caught me off guard. I'm still recovering from that tightness in my chest, and yes, I'm pretty sure it's not just a heart attack. Felt like I had to share it...

Walk

Walked to Panera Bread for lunch, with neighbors and their visiting family. Stopped at See's for a snack - Mmmm! Got rained on just a little, while walking back. Saw two gopher snakes, a young one sunbathing on a tiny ledge in a slate wall, who hid in a crevice when we approached, and a mostly grown one sunning in the middle of the concrete path by the creek, who slithered frantically into the creek.

Now the real storm has hit - thunder, lightning, downpour, flickering lights, the whole bit. Got soaked while rummaging around in the yard, looking for a missing downspout, but finally found it in a clever hiding place.

K's been doing better in general over the long term, although she's having a tough time today. She was going to meet us for lunch, but called it off due to intense nausea. We were hoping to get out for a movie this afternoon, maybe go see Transformers with our neighbors and their visitors, but it doesn't seem likely now.

Snake Hunter

What an awesome warm day! I walked Mandy along the Platte River, through the nature preserve. She stalked two snakes in the high grass, a quick squirmy little 3 foot Garter snake, and a bit larger and slower 5-6 foot gopher snake. She was doing the jump-hop thing that we see the foxes doing, when they're after a mouse or other small critter. She's a fearless wonder! I was especially proud, when she was really good about obeying my command to leave the snakes alone, after she'd had her moment of stalking fun.

K's feet continue to improve, but they're not healed. I'm amazed at how long it's taking. I would so love to see nice healthy skin where the open wounds have been for the past 18 months. Lately it's looking like a probability (more than a possibility!) that they will heal up, after all. Having the scooter, and getting her off her feet by having a helper here several times a week, both seem to be helping. Not to mention the nurse visits every day, to re-bandage the wounds. Whatever. It's working.

STSS Launched!

We successfully launched MV-341, a Delta II rocket carrying the STSS payload, this afternoon.

K had her worst low glucose in a long time, this morning - down to 35. It figures, it would happen the morning she had a medical appointment, but with Freddie's help, she pulled it together to make the appointment. Her feet are doing well enough, that they've got her down to just one appointment every two weeks. She saw the doc today, and he's very pleased with the progress of all the wounds. 

K and I had dinner at OSF with Freddie and Ken. On the way home, we stopped by the fox den that Ken and I discovered recently on one of our weekend walks. We spent a few minutes watching the 3 very young fox pups playing around their den, a few blocks from our house. They were having the time of their lives, pouncing around on each other. Two brown and one charcoal. Very fun to watch!

More White Stuff!

We went to bed last night, with a little rain spritzer going on outside, and woke up to a 2 inch thick wet layer of snow this morning. Most of it had melted off before I got home from work. Mandy and I went for a walk down Lee Gulch this afternoon, and it felt so comfortable that I was thinking about how Summer's just around the corner.

Day at the Zoo

Weird Spring weather! It rained on us at the Zoo this afternoon, after a half day of beautiful sunny weather. We had plenty of opportunity to enjoy the lions, hyenas, leopards, the new baby Giraffes, and the polar bears. K rented one of their scooters, and it sure was a zippy little thing! The harbor seal and sea lion show seemed like the event of the day, partially because waiting for it gave us the opportunity to have a nice hot lunch!

Sun Melts Snow!

It's sunny out there! What a beautiful day! Mandy went out on the deck to enjoy the sun. She seemed pretty happy, lying there with the sound of melting and dripping snow on all sides. In just a few hours, all the deck furniture was bone dry. Now, if it would only melt that 3-inch layer of heavy wet stuff out there on the driveway, I'd have it made...

Hey! It did! How cool is that? I *like* these Spring snows! The sun's been out all day, and the temperature got up into short sleeve comfort zone. Mandy and I took advantage of the nice afternoon, grabbed Ken, and went for a walk through the neighborhoods. 

Lots O'Snow!

We've been hunkered down in front of the fireplace and TV, as a Spring snowstorm moves through. The forecast is calling for an accumulation of 6-18 inches today and tomorrow. I heard one weathercaster say there's enough moisture in these clouds that if it were just a bit colder, we'd be getting around 4 feet like we did in the Spring of 2003. I'm happy to settle for a foot or so. This stuff is very wet, and quite a challenge to shovel. Mandy's not very excited about going out any farther than the side yard. I keep shoveling her a little spot on the lawn, but it keeps getting covered up. 

K's foot wounds have been continuing to heal over the past few weeks. It's a very slow process, but we're very encouraged to see them looking better each time they're uncovered. I'm a little concerned about how this snowstorm is interfering with the regular routine. The nurses have missed both morning and evening visits today. Hopefully someone will be back tomorrow morning. They'll have to come later than usual, since K was feeling awful today with stomach pain, and skipped today's dialysis, so we have to get her to a make up dialysis tomorrow morning at 5:30am. Not the most fun thing to do on a Saturday morning. 

Happy Easter!

We had a quiet Easter weekend. I took Friday off, courtesy of some overtime worked earlier in the week. The paramedics arrived at K's dialysis center the same time we did. It's always scary to wonder what's going on when that happens. Mandy and I went for a few walks. There were some scattered rain showers, nothing like the snow that was forecast. I came down with something on Saturday that gave me major nausea and a gurgly stomach. Luckily it came and went quickly, and it didn't slow me down for a great dinner with Ken and Freddie at the White Chocolate Grill this evening. We had ice cream cake for dessert. Quite the extravaganza, in our own quiet way.

WGS Launched!

We launched AV-016, an Atlas V carrying the WGS communications satellite, last night.

K's had a nasty cough since last week. She's wracked with convulsions when a bout of coughing hits, which has been happening every time she tries to talk. She skipped dialysis because she couldn't face being stuck in the chair for 4 hours while having those intense coughing fits. Her doc diagnosed her with pneumonia early this week, and she's been taking a daily antibiotic, which seems to be helping.

Walk on the Platte

I took Mandy for a walk in the snow, while K was in her special Saturday evening dialysis session. We started at Aspen Grove at the Starbucks, and got a hot chocolate "for the road", then wandered along the Platte River for aways. We ended up at the Apple store for a half hour, ogling the 24 inch iMac and 17 inch MacBook, and learning about the clever 3-finger touchpad swipe.

K's home nurses, who are coming morning and evening to change her bandages, all seem to be in agreement that her foot wounds are looking better than they were.

Snow!

We got a pretty decent dump of Spring snow today. They closed the plant at 1pm. Thinking I'd beat the traffic, I jumped in my car at 12:30 and headed down the hill. I got about 100 feet, then sat in my car for a hour, not moving an inch, as the entire plant (apparently) spilled out of the parking lots into the main road, and slowly made their way over the slippery roads, and out the gate. I should've just stayed and worked late! K's dialysis center called to say they were canceling all Friday sessions, because there's more snow forecast, and she should expect to come in on Saturday at 5pm.

Scooter Outing

We got K out on a scooter outing around Littleton on Sunday! Our intended goal was the Old Littleton Deli, but they were closed on Sunday. We didn't have to settle much, by having a Mediterranean lunch at Damascus Grill. Mandy lounged around in the sun, peering in the glass doors from her perch just outside the front door. The scooter put forth an awesome performance (especially considering that we didn't think to charge the batteries the night before), covering the 4.5 miles over hill and dale with no difficulty. K was enthusiastic about getting out and feeling the wind on her face. The pic is on the trail around the Littleton Natural History Museum.

Week of 3/13

I spent much of St Paddy's Day trying to get AV-016 launched, without success. We're supposed to try again late next week. In the meantime, we have a Delta II launch scheduled for Monday night / Tuesday morning.

Dad told me on Saturday, that he'd taken a spill on the tennis court, and suffered a badly torn up left arm. He was going to see the doc on Monday, but I haven't heard how that went.

We had Sunday breakfast at IHOP with our friends Ken and Freddie. The adjacent pet store was closing, so after breakfast, we loaded up on a bunch of things for Mandy, like food and a reflective leash for night walks. Then we went up to Bel Mar for some shopping at Whole Foods. Ken and I took Mandy for a walk around the Bel Mar Mall, and I ended up getting some long overdue replacement walking shoes and boots at DSW. K picked up some great corned beef, and has been making me tasty sandwiches for lunch all week!

Kepler Launched!

We successfully launched the Kepler planet-finder satellite on a Delta II rocket tonight! Its mission is to search a nearby region of our galaxy for Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zone surrounding stars like our Sun. The habitable zone is the region around a star where the temperature permits water to be liquid on a planet’s surface. Liquid water is considered essential for the existence of life.

K's had major stomach problems this week, worse than ever. Could be a virus, or maybe a reaction to all the antibiotics she's been taking for her foot wounds over the past few months. Regardless of the reason, she's been really miserable. The good news is that her foot wounds, which are still quite serious, are continuing to heal.

Nice day

It's BEAUTIFUL here today! Went for a nice walk down to Blueberry's with Ken and Mandy this morning. Mandy had a tooth exam yesterday, and they pulled one, and she's still recovering from the anesthesia and trauma. We hurried home so I could take K to Dialysis - she was too nauseous all day yesterday, to go last night. On the way home from dropping her off, I stopped to check out the big empty building our local police dept is considering moving to. It's the Southbridge building, the same place the ground software folks were located back in the 1997 time frame. I remember going to a few meetings there. Judging from the looks of their telcom closet on the 1st floor, their existing Internet connection is awful, but hopefully they'll get something better, if they do move in there.

Clean Garage!

OMG... I can't believe the garage is cleared out and rearranged enough to accommodate K's car!

Thanks to Ken and Freddie -- it couldn't have been done without their help! Here are the before and after pictures. Actually, the before pile was even higher than the picture shows, since that one was taken many months ago.

TGIF

We got another half inch of snow last night, and it's been coming down very lightly all day. K seems quite a bit better today. She says several people at dialysis have been complaining about feeling particularly poorly the past few weeks. Maybe she picked up something and has been fighting it off over the past week. Mandy seems to have tuned into it, since she's perked up a bit in the past day or so.

Not the greatest day

K had a bad day today. She's severely nauseous for days on end. She didn't have the energy, or a stable enough stomach, to go to dialysis Monday night, so she called and found a slot available this morning. I dropped her off at just before 7, and picked up a latte and coffee cake on the way to work. It was weird not having Mandy in the car when leaving the dialysis center. Everything felt off kilter. When I got home after work, K was having a monster low blood sugar, down to 44 and feeling like she was dying. I got her some OJ, which she doesn't particularly like, but was the only juice available. We started watching that John Cusak movie, "1408" but the visiting nurse arrived to change her bandage, so I put the movie on hold for awhile, and finally just flipped to a regular channel when I started fixing dinner, chicken tiki masala and naan. Then here we are, hours later, just waking up on the couch, and realizing we're way late for bed. I was going to take Mandy out and head for bed, but realized we have an inch of snow, so first I went out to shovel the driveway, and uncover her special area on the neighbor's lawn. After I took her out, we had a cute moment, when I was trying to get all the blankets on the couch folded and put away, and she settled down on each one after I'd folded it, thinking I was setting up a soft spot just for her. I'd shoo her off, and pick up the next one, fold it and put it down, and then plop, there she was on top of the pile again.

Snow Coming

We had a really nice weekend, relatively warm and sunny. The last piece of ice at the bottom of the driveway disappeared today. Mandy and I got out for "destination" walks (to lunch) every day. The latest forecast calls for the possibility of snow today and the next few days. It was cooler and overcast today, but we didn't see any precipitation.

K's new scooter appears to be helping a lot with the wounds on the bottom of her feet. Unfortunately, there's a wound on the top of her right foot that's almost quadrupled in size over the past few weeks, so they're watching that one carefully. It seems like the new custom boot caused it, and probably exacerbates the problem every time she wears it, but it really helps with the bottom of her foot, so she's still trying to figure out how to make it work.

Successful launch!

We just finished launching MV338, a Delta II rocket carrying an NOAA weather satellite. See the writeup on spaceflightnow.com for details. We struggled to get this one launched, and finally got it off the ground on the third attempt. Since it was a 3:30am Mountain Time launch, the multiple retries made for an interesting week. I'm looking forward to sleeping in this morning! After I take out the trash, that is...