Aunts with no Uncles...

Sounds like a charity or something doesn't it?

So today, beautiful weather, yesterday beautiful weather... well at least at my house. Summer seems to be awakening a bit, but if it were to get no warmer than it has been... that'd be fine with me.

I've been working (with the assistance and guidance) of my next door neighbor for the past three days getting the garage's soffits, fascias wrapped in aluminum... gutters go on Sunday. Anyway the school year is winding down and I can remember from when (I was going to say when I was a kid... but... never mind) I was in school that this time of the year was a total blow-off. A couple of weeks to go and then the summer off. Is it just me, or are the summer vacations shorter than back in the day? So with the ending of the school year comes teacher appreciation. This year, there was enough money in the school's coffer to buy a new (used) fridge for the lounge.

Why am I telling you all this? Cuz...

Hey, you're reading it, not me...

ANYway, the point of all this is this... I know... thank God... right? We needed to empty out the van so as to get the fridge in it so that it could be driven to the school and placed into its resting place there. In order to empty the van, certain things needed to come out... like Ana's car seat and Rachael's booster seat. Julie told Jake to take them into the yard. So that's what he did, placed them right on the back lawn. They stayed there overnight.

Today was a 1/2 day for the kids at school, and since Emmah needed to get her assignments in, she decided to go to school today. That meant that I lost my baby sitter. Now I was going to have to split time working outside with my neighbor and stepping in to make sure that no homicides were in the process of being committed. I "warned" my neighbor that I was going to have to check in on them and that I'd have to pick up the kids from school and that once I picked them up, my baby-sitters would be back and I'd be free for the rest of the afternoon.

So the time comes when I have to load up #5 and #6 into the truck... I toss in the seats and secure Ana's and buckle her, then I buckle Lyndsey... and we're off. I get the three from school and drop them off back home keeping #5 & #6 with me for the ride. We're almost to Emmah's school when there's a shriek from behind me and Ana's in a panic.

Now imagine if you will what it must be like (all you two eyed people) to drive with one eye. I know, you're probably thinking... man, I don't know how he does it. Now think about driving with one eye and having to turn around and see what is terrorizing Ana while in motion.

Impossible... right?

What was it... it was the attack of the killer ant. Yup... that's right... a teeny tiny little ant on her leg. By her reaction, you'd think it was eating her flesh. So somehow I managed to save Ana AND stay on the road. Now I roll into the school lot and Lyndsey mutters from the back (the back back) that "I wish I could sit in the middle, then I could feel the air." I asked if she wanted to move up... she did. I moved her. Right about this time Ana lets out another shriek. Now the mom along side of me and the mom behind me are wondering what's going on... they both have smirks. If they only knew. Yes, it was another ant. Then Lyndsey goes off. I'm trying to figure out if the ants are falling from the sky through the open moon roof. Then I realize what's going on.

If you take one car seat infested with food crumbs and such... leave it to sit in the grass overnight... and then take said seat and put it in the truck... chances are good that there might be some ants (without uncles) and said ants might be inclined to wander. That's exactly what happened cuz when I got home and got them out of their seats and the seats out of the car... there were about 20 or so ants wandering around.

No doubt looking for the uncles.

KEIYTAP

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAKE!!!

Jake is doubled four today...
the BIG 8

Sucky... that's the word of the day

Beaten and battered, down but not out, we have arrived at the threshold of plan 'C' in hopes of getting Emmah's stem cells. I suppose the irony (if there is any) is that we don't have a real plan for them once we get them other than tossing them in the deep freeze. Several of the therapy options require stem cells and because most of those require those cells to be her own we now have to go in and get them.

That's right, we have to go into the marrow and dislodge them from their cozy environment and bag 'em up. See, the cells are there, they just didn't want to be pushed out into the blood stream to be harvested peripherally, so now we need to go in there and yank their tiny little covers off and suck 'em out.

If you're late in tuning in here and don't feel like reading in the archives, her CD34 count stood @ 5 yesterday... they wanted it to be 20. Even so, they said (yesterday) that if we came back in today and it was still 5 or better they would go ahead and do the procedure.

It was only 3.4 today... in a word sucky.

Stem cell extraction may come as soon as next week, but the doctor wants to look at her most recent BMA report/results to see if it's worth while to even go in. He said that in over 20 years of doing this, he's only seen one patient that they weren't able to extract enough from the marrow. As battered as Emmah's marrow is, pray that the report sez that her marrow is enough intact to support an extraction. It will allow us to open more doors if we have her cells.

See... SUCKY!

KEIYTAP

Tomorrow for sure... unless...

Unless her CD34 goes down.

Another early am drive, another bag of platelets and another low CD34 count... only 5 today. So we will be going in tomorrow and as long as that 5 doesn't become something less than itself, we will harvest.

This sure is sucky...

KEIYTAP

Come in Saturday...

No wait... come in... can you come in now?

So as previously mentioned, we were supposed to go in Saturday (yesterday) for them to run labs and check the CD34. As also stated, we'd have go to the ER since even doctors apparently get a day off... some nerve. Then someone thought better of it since the ER is/would be chocked full of the panic driven hordes of SWINE FLU victims... oh wait it's referred to as H1N1 now. Why don't they just call it swine... is it offensive to the pigs? Anyway, someone thought it best to not send someone with a compromised immune system (someone say like Emmah) to sit around in the den of disease.

So we headed on in Friday afternoon for them to draw the labs and make a determination based on these counts how (and where) we'd be spending this weekend. If the CD34 was 5 or higher they would want us back Saturday. If it wasn't that high, then see you Monday... so it's see you Monday... it was 2.38 Friday afternoon. We will be making (yet again) another early morn trip into the city Monday and the numbers we see will be the tell tale. I think the crops will be ready to take to market... finally!

KEIYTAP