The view from here

In this situation, the deal is that you drive down the road to bone marrow transplant, whether that's your destination or not. So we're on the road. On Wednesday, Vlad begins three days of intense tests at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center intended to get a detailed picture of his status and needs as a recipient. The worst of it, they say, would be another bone marrow biopsy, but at least that's the devil he knows.

He's taking three days off work, after being back for three weeks, missing days for a hurricane. During that time his boss got fired and they brought the new one in. They also have a new VP he's getting to know. ODS is pretty good people, as my dad would say, but I'm sure there's a limit, especially in this economy in freefall, and Vlad isn't happy about being out another three days. But he's going to work Saturdays to make up for it. I think he's doing fine at work, but you can understand his situation.

After this, I can only guess what will happen: We'll wait to see what his blood is going to do. If it doesn't behave, they'll try to match him. Then would come the transplant. I don't know how long, how easy or hard that would be. We just don't want to go there.

I signed up to be a bone marrow donor. They approved me initially despite my thalessemia. I was surprised. But I may get the boot once they see my blood sample.

I'm going to be with Vlad all three days at M.D. Anderson. I did something similar with my dad (pictured on top of Deer Mountain in Colorado in the '70s) when he was getting tested at M.D. Anderson before they did surgery to remove part of one of his lungs, where he had a cancerous tumor. It was several days of tests. You run from one doctor's office to another waiting and waiting.

Doctors in Dallas wouldn't do the surgery because Dad was already compromised by emphysema and taking out part of a lung would make breathing very difficult. But at M.D. Anderson, the surgeon took it on. At the time we were so happy that they would cut this bad thing out. But I remember the anesthesiologist kind of cringing in our pre-surgery meeting. He described the surgeon as a cowboy. I think he was trying to warn us. And things did pretty much go downhill from there. But that's another story.

I treasure one particular memory from that adventure. At the end of the second or third day of this process of being pushed and shoved around the hospital, we were spent. We're both scared to death worried if he's terminal or curable. Neither saying what we're thinking. After a few days of this act, life gets surreal.

We walked into a cardiologist's office. We're sitting in a consult room, waiting, waiting, waiting. Almost asleep. The door opens suddenly and we're startled. This nurse with a huge smile, bottle blonde hair and deep suntan comes in and practically shouts, "Well hello y'all! It's so good to see you! How are you today! You look so good! FanTAStic! Well, the doctor will be here any minute now, so y'all just sit here, OK? Great! Now, y'all take care, OK? All-righty!"

It was like an explosion of sickening phony creosote. Amid the surreal surroundings, she seemed hideously ridiculous. We looked at each other and immediately burst out laughing. We laughed for about five minutes. Our sides hurting. Tears coming down both our cheeks. It was a release of all the horror and pretense and bravery and fear. I was thankful for her entrance, but not for the reasons she would think.

A few things Ike took away

The Stingaree restaurant in Crystal Beach. The best seafood on Bolivar Peninsula. It's gone. UPDATE: Terry Turney was there and said it's still there, just heavily damaged.

Rollover Pass, aka "the cut," a popular fishing spot, is still there, but the bridge is damaged and the bait shop is gone. Terry and Linda's beachhouse. A birthday of mine in 2005.

The beachhouse and pickup in the miraculous Christmas snow of 2004.

This was one of our favorite spots along the Seawall. On a Sunday, we'd go down to Galveston and get some fresh seafood at Casey's or Fisherman's Wharf, and run by here for frozen pina coladas (the only time I drink them) and then head home. Something about the sound of the ocean and the briny air would clear our heads.

I believe this is the tail end of another gift shop below, which is next to this place. Where we were housed two gift shops. All the structures are gone, including the Balinese Room another few yards down.

Refugee camp

While we got our power restored Sunday evening, what we didn't expect is a side order of guilt. The power/water situation has made a city -- well a region, really -- of haves and have nots. If you have, and you were raised in a church, well, you have to share the riches. Vlad and I have hosted our friends Lana and John and their daughter, Anna, every night sharing our kitchen (they've supplied most of the food), air conditioning, refrigeration and a working stove. Occasionally, we've given them use of the washer/dryer. I don't know how they've stood the humidity and heat all this time.

Last night they got their power back. We asked them to come back over anyway, to finish off the food, clear out their food from our fridge, etc. It was a good change of pace and the best of it was getting to know Anna better.

I've been taking bags of ice to work in our coolers, giving them to people still without power. And food; all the nonperishables we got for the duration of the Ike madness. They're slowly disappearing. It's taken the Chef Boyardee a full week to disappear.

The big thing now is laundry. People seem to have found the water and ice and gasoline. Now they're looking for laundromats or friends with power and appliances.

It's a surreal Houston/Galveston right now. Hard to get your bearings on what constitutes reality. It depends on what part of town you live in. On the west side of Houston, almost normal one block, total darkness the next. Galveston: you're out of luck till after Halloween. Woodlands: similar; the down side of living in a wooded paradise in tropical climes. East Houston and Port Arthur/Orange/Bridge City: a nightmare.

And Bolivar Peninsula: Much of it is off the map. If it gets electricity this year it will be a miracle.

Our friends Linda and Terry lost their place in Gilchrist on Bolivar. Post-Ike satellite maps show their place is a slab now. We have a lot of memories of that place. It's devastating to them. I'll talk about it at another time. It's too much of an open wound right now. But they made it through the storm in Beaumont. They spent a few days in Dallas with a friend, but have power again and are back in Beaumont.

Hurricane Ike photos

Poker after the lights died Friday night.

Saturday morning. We put the shelves on the ground ahead of time.

Bougainvillea on the balcony. It barely survived the sewer job months ago and found new life upstairs only to do battle with Ike.

Garage and driveway covered with leaves and shingles.

Anole looks shell-shocked. This looks like a little lizard I saved from Keezee's grasp awhile back. Note missing tail.

Unlucky neighbors, above and below.

Bill and Ginny Carole and her passion

Ginny and Buster in her room

Evan playing "Spore"Vlad grabbing Internet time

Smitty's in Lockhart
Serious Texas barbecue

U.S. Air Force convoy heading to Houston on the way home Sunday.

Pickup loaded with flats of Kirkland's water.

Eastbound with plywood.

My favorite road picture. (Click for larger version)

Human again

We got back tonight and found our lights, water and phone restored. We danced for five minutes straight. We invited our electricity-challenged friends over to share the A/C and stove and ice. It was a very decadent party. Their 18-month-old didn't want to leave, I think, because of our A/C.

We cannot believe our luck. Our luck in having gracious family to put us up at the last minute and be so much fun. Luck that we were among the first 340,000 (of 2 million in Harris County) to get their electricity restored. Luck that I-10 eastbound was not the congestion monster we expected.

Today in Lockhart, Evan scratched off his Mom's lottery ticket and won $20. She said he is lucky. So I asked him if I could rub his head for luck. He obliged. So, hey, Evan: Thanks!

I'm going to bed tonight feeling charmed. I want to get to work early Monday. Good night and good luck.

Send ice

We're OK. I'm writing this from my sister-in-law's kitchen in Lockhart, TX. Most of you know Carole. She put us up last night. This morning Bill came with the kids, Ginny and Evan. We're getting ready to go to lunch and then to Wal-mart. Our shopping list looks like we're going camping.

Back in Houston, we lost power at 8:15 p.m. Friday, hours before Ike hit. We lost water Saturday afternoon and land-line phone on Saturday evening. The heat and humidity inside the house, even with every window and door open, is beyond description.

We're back to feeling human again, and are going back primarily because I have to work. I got out of hurricane duty this weekend and must report to work Monday. I just hope the roads are clear enough. It will be an adventure.

I think there are showers at work. We have friends who had their water restored, so Vlad can probably shower over there. We have other friends who couldn't take any more and this morning called us and said they were leaving for Austin, regardless of the work and school consequences.

There's not much time. We'll be taking battery- and propane-fueled items back with ice, as well as a cooler full of ice for us and our friends. We need to clean out the uber-smelly fridge tonight. We hope to get there before dark.

Thanks for all the calls. If you've e-mailed, I probably haven't seen it. What little battery-power we have goes quickly.

Love to all.

Stress levels

We went to visit Conlon today and the news was good, but less than celebratory.

The good news: His numbers are perfect.

The so-so news: The bone marrow "looks like it's in recovery," which means he's still recovering and maybe the biopsy was premature. Conlon wants another one in six weeks. What they see looks good, but his marrow hasn't settled down from all the chemo yet. Most of the cells are very young and the truth is not out there at the moment.

The scary news: If he goes into "2nd remission leukemia," which I think is a relapse that goes back into remission (really not sure what that means), they'd be talking bone marrow transplant possibilities. In any case, there would be no more chemo, even if he relapses. Conlon said more chemo would not help. The bone marrow option would only happen if the leukemia comes back, but they want Vlad to be ready if that happens. It's standard procedure.

Sidenote: Conlon said bone marrow transplants are controversial at the moment; with some hemotologists saying they pose too high a risk for leukemia patients. There's a 10% mortality rate for b.m. transplants, which I guess may be higher than the leukemia it's trying to cure. Conlon didn't say which way he goes, but I think he wants to keep all the doors open, which is the way to go, to my mind.

Maintenance: He'll need to go in to see Conlon every six weeks for at least a year. He also needs to get set up with the bone marrow people, be evaluated and, if it gets that far, matched. The only blood-family member he has in the U.S. is Alex, and maybe they'd test relatives first, I'm not sure. Conlon's office will send paperwork to bone marrow people, either at MDAnderson or Methodist, depending on insurance.

Vlad is reeling. It's a bad day here. It's too much reality and the idea of going back for more and more tests is just testing his limits. We talked about it over lunch after the appointment. Our discussion led to our postponed joint 50th birthday plan to go to Italy in 2008. We decided we'll postpone it yet another year. We talked of little cruises maybe.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Ike is bearing down on Freeport, southwest of Houston, which is the worst possible place for us. It puts us on the "dirty side" of the hurricane, which means we get the worst of the surge, winds and rain. Locals have finally decided to freak out. It took me more than an hour to get home from Sugar Land, where Conlon is. Normally it's a 20-minute drive.

We bought our water, gasoline, ice and food ahead of time.

Now I understand I'm working the hurricane from a hotel room in Conroe starting tomorrow. Can't wait for the that trip north in I-45 with all the evacuees. And Alex just called to warn us to board up our windows. I wasn't very nice. I just really don't need one more thing to stress about. Sorry, Alex. I really don't think we need to.

I just don't have room for all this in my head.

UPDATE: I don't have to work this weekend in Conroe or anywhere.

Losing my sense of humor

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH

September 07, 2008
Ike, an intense hurricane, bound for Gulf. Updated.
1 p.m. UPDATE: This afternoon's model runs have started to come out and the hominally favored solution is a strike on the upper Texas coast. Be advised that computer models have five-day errors that regularly exceed 400 miles, so it's not time to panic. But within the next five to six days Texas could be facing a serious hurricane.

Pictures!

Labor Day cookout. Alex and Vlad; Vlad looks better than this. It's a bad photo.

Me, Alex and my friend Carol.

Lana, Alex, John and Anna.

New car in Fort Worth
Gee with Samantha, left, and Sarah in front of the new-to-Mom Cadillac DeVille DHS

She's a real Texan now with her Caddy.

Vlad plays paparazzo with the girls.

There are more chapters

Vlad had his bone marrow biopsy last week. He requested pathology results asap, so Conlon responded this week and told him he has too many young cells in his blood and that, although this is normal post-chemo, it still concerns him so he will do another bone marrow biopsy in two months.

Conlon never gives us good news, with the exception of the "remission." And now I'm wondering what that actually meant. He will never get anyone's hopes up. Perhaps he did it once and has sworn off optimism after a bad experience. But he's no drama addict either, thank God. The bottom line is, his best is a guess.

On Sept. 11 we'll have a sit-down with Conlon on the full results. I need to read up on what's typical at this stage so I'll have decent questions.

Like many things in life, there's no tidy ending with this situation. I hate being a grownup sometimes. I'm sure Vlad does, too; he goes back to work Monday.

While we were spared by Gustav, Ike is looking slightly annoying. They don't know where it's really going yet. But talk about drama addicts: weathercasters are the worst, at least during hurricane season. Also on the stress front, the Chronicle is having yet another round of buyouts/layoffs. I believe it's 6% of the workforce. I considered a buyout briefly, but it's probably not a good idea. Now if I get laid off, that's another blog.