Saturday, June 25, 2011

day +3: Countdown Mode

AHOY!
and hello from Hoosier Land.

Where am I this morning? You guessed it! Room SIX. 
I am still enjoying the Rockies triumph over the Yankees last night [insert fist pump and taunting dance here].  Even if we can't pull out another W, at least we won't get swept by the scum of the earth.

Anyway.
I didn't write yesterday because I was too busy playing at the zoo with all the nice animals and Kurtis' sister (Heather) and her baby (Aubrey), and thought that if I were to write a post last night, it would have turned out terribly as I was quite interested in the baseball game.  Knowing that we had a little while in the hospital today, I thought it would be fine for you to wait and find out what has happened.  I know that some of you were devastated and probably spent the majority of the night crying when nothing was posted, but don't fret! Here is the lowdown!

We are now at day "+3" and that means that Kurtis is three days out of his stem cell transplant.  This time last round he was in the hospital with nasty stuff going on in his body and a button attached to a pain pump.  So far, he is feeling much better, and even though his counts are starting to drop (they're supposed to) his mouth is still doing okay and he is still feeling pretty dang good.  This morning he thought he had a little bit of a fever, but by the time we got to the hospital, there was nothing, so that's great!  He is currently plugged into the iPad watching some stand up comedian and laughing to himself.  It's quite funny since I don't know what any of the jokes are (he's wearing headphones) and the whole clinic is pretty quiet until he goes into a laughing fit. 

We've started to look at heading home which is nice.  When I first arrived in the land of hoosier, I tried not to think about when we got to go home.  Countdowns that get shifted to things you really want can be super frustrating, so I just tried to take it one day at a time.  Now that Kurtis is doing well, we have a pretty good idea of when we'll get to head home if things continue to go as planned.  It's going to take us a good amount of time to get home probably, but we've decided that if Kurtis is feeling up to it, we can see a few things on the way home. 

Although we're excited to come back home, we feel kinda bad for Chauncey.  He has no idea that his time at camp are limited and he has made some great "friends" including a big doberman named Zena.  He gets insanely excited when he goes everyday and he's going to be seriously bummed out when he doesn't get to see his friends or his camp counselors on a daily basis.  Poor little buddy.  That is, however, not enough to cause us to relocate...not even close.

AND NOW [drumroll] the funny story time.  Yesterday, Heather and Aubrey and I went to the zoo.  When we were done, we drove over to the hospital which isn't very far away at all, in fact, we pass the zoo on a daily basis coming here.  I pulled into the parking garage and was about a half-turn away from parking when Kurtis texted me that he was done...so we went all the way back down the parking garage and pulled up to the window where you pay.  I handed this semi-grumpy looking woman my pink ticket that tells the computer in the booth how long I had been "parked".  I decided I could pay the dollar it was going to cost for the "under two hours" rate.  She took my ticket, scanned it, and looked back at me with raised eyebrows as if to say "why did you come in here to park for two minutes?"  and I looked at her with a nice smile as if to say "because driving around the parking garage is fun."  In front of us, the bar to exit was raised and we were free to drive back to the front of the hospital.

When you pull up to the front of the hospital, there is a little security guard guy with a radio attached to his shoulder.  This poor man's job is to stop every car that comes into the loop and make sure that they know they can't park.  If someone is here for the valet parking, he talks in his radio to the people twenty feet away to tell them that the "blue toyota corolla" is here for valet. 

---Just to be clear, this area is not big.  There is not enough room for a bunch of cars, and generally it isn't insanely busy.  It's a loop.  You give your car to valet or you drop off/pick up someone and that is all there is to it.   The purpose of this security guy radioing the people twenty feet for him are pretty much unknown seeing as: (a) twenty feet isn't that far, (b) there are no need for such descriptions of the cars seeing as there are usually like two cars and a taxi at a time and (c) there are approximately seven people working the valet station at any given time.  I appreciate your attempt to help the job market and the economy IU medical center, however, it doesn't seem like it is very necessary. ---

Anyway, we pulled up and told the guard (he should have a better name, so I am making one up) *ahem* so we told CAPTAIN FERGON the GUARD OF THE AUTOMATIC DOORS AND PARKING AREA that we were picking someone up and began to circle.  For the next ten or so minutes, circle we did.  We passed good ol' Captain Fergon a multitude of times which actually made our trips around the oval thing sort of awkward for him.  Especially when we were the only car left.  For about half our circles, there was a Jimmy Johns delivery driver who parked in a place people who are not delivering food can't park...and he stood outside his car, with a sandwich, and watched us circle.  We circled fifteen times.  I am now good at left turns.  I will be back next year.  I will win the Indy 500 using my turbo-infused Subaru.  BOOM.

I miss the security guard who instantly knew that white Subaru from Colorado (made evident by two Rockies magnets and a sticker on the back) knows the rules and I didn't have to roll down my window and talk to.

I know. Not that funny.  But sort of funny.  And when you're living in Indiana, sort of funny is REALLY funny.

ALSO (since you didn't get a post yesterday, I'm really just making this worth your time) through this blog, I am able to see "stats" which tell me how many hits we've had (over 3,000!), when people are looking at it, what browsers people are using  (43% of you use Internet Explorer) and where the hits are coming from.  We've gone international with hits from eight countries outside of the United States!  Some of them I know that it is someone who we know reading our blog, but for other places (Denmark?) I have no idea who might be checking us out.  When I thought about that, I thought about the fact that there are probably a lot of people reading in the US who we don't know either.  So, hi.  Hello to those people we don't know and if you're dealing with cancer, or this HD chemo, I hope that me writing about what we're doing helps :)  And if you're just curious, that's okay too! Welcome!

Okay, I'm done now.
It looks like the day might actually be nice, and yesterday they were finally filling up the pool at the hotel so I better get my work for school so I can play outside later.

Sending love to all!
GO ROCKIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Liz

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