Sunday, June 4
Shopping! We bought Don some shorts and pants at Eddie Bauer's
and used Mike and Ken's $75 Crate and Barrel gift certificate
to purchase some patio furniture. The table was available then
and there, but they said we'd have to come back for the benches.
I'm going to take Don to Stanford tomorrow for his blood work,
so maybe I'll pick them up then.
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Monday, June 5
Took Don to Stanford for his blood draw and plunked myself down
in the waiting room with my Vaio to work on Glyphic stuff. I'm
really glad Mark got me the Vaio. I don't feel nearly as guilty
about taking Don to his appointments if I can get some Glyphic
work done at the same time. It also seems to help set Don's mind
at ease, with is a great advantage.
I remained in the hematology waiting room after the draw while
Don went to Lane to look up some research. I soon finished with
my programming (compiles and links just fine), then picked Don
up at Lane and we headed home.
About half way home I remembered the patio benches. Darn. Well,
I guess we'll be back at Stanford soon enough anyway. At the
very latest, Don has an appointment with Dr. Peterson a week
from Friday.
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Tuesday, June 6
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Wednesday, June 7
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Thursday, June 8
My premonition that we'd be "back at Stanford soon enough"
turned out to be true, and sooner that I expected.
I went home to pick Don up to join the Glyphic team for lunch.
He is still not strong enough, in my estimation, to walk the
three-quarters of a mile to my office. As I drove him to lunch,
he mentioned that there was a sore spot in his leg. "It feels
like a muscle knot," he said. I went on alert. Could this be
a blood clot, something the doctors had warned us to look out
for with the tamoxifen?
Lunch was pleasant. Don got to meet Leslie, our new Chief Operating
Officer (and she got to meet him). The four of us played a game of
Fluxx while Don looked on. Brad asked him if he'd like to play, too,
and Mark said, tactfully, that he shouldn't feel pressured to play
quickly. But Don declined, saying he was feeling a little more
confused than usual today.
On the way out of Lucy's, I told Mark I was taking Don to the doctor
to have his leg looked at.
It turned out to be an all-afternoon project. We got in touch with
UCSF and spoke with Margaretta. She got in touch with Peterson's
nurse, Jenny. Jenny called us back and had me do
a kind of examination-by-proxy. I said I thought I saw some swelling
in his left calf and thought I felt a lump beneath the area where
Don said the soreness was. Jenny said she would consult with Dr.
Peterson, then get back to us with what to do. The situation was
complicated by the nurses' strike at Stanford. Around 4:00 PM,
I decided Don and I should head for Stanford and stay in touch via
cell phone. I had just left Jenny a message to that effect on her
voice mail (I hate Stanford's voice mail system; you never
know if the message is going to the person you think it's going
to, since the "voice" never identifies who or what department is
taking the message) when she called and said we should take Don to
the ultra-sound examining room at Stanford University Hospital.
We arrived in relatively quick order and Don was soon in the
examining room. After having to reboot the ultra-sound machine
once, the nurse-examiner looked at the entire length of the large
veins in his left leg. She found no blood clots and, after clearing
it with Dr. Peterson (whom we'll be seeing next Friday), she let
Don go.
On the way home, we picked up the benches for the patio furniture
at Crate and Barrel. It is so thoughtful of Stanford to locate their
shopping mall so close to their hospital.
That evening, we got a sneak-preview of the new Brendan Fraser
movie, a remake of Bedazzled. It had none of the cutting
satire of the original - it steered well clear of the critique
of contemporary Christianity that Cooke and Moore put in their
film - and there was one egregiously over-done homosexual character,
but I found the film enjoyable over-all. But then, Don and I would enjoy
watching Brendan Fraser drink water.
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Friday, June 9
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Saturday, June 10
Don and I went the the Magritte exhibit at the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art. I had called ahead to see if they had
wheelchairs available and they did, so as soon as we arrived
I went and got one. It was kind of a test run to see how well
Don would do at browsing through a museum in a wheelchair,
something we'll probably be doing a lot of on our trip to
Washington, D.C. I've already alerted Brian and Kent to see
if we can rent one for the week.
Don loved the exhibit. I got to see the original The Treachery
of Words (the picture of a pipe with Ceci n'est pas une
pipe written below it). We discussed Magritte's "self-portrait"
and the commentary on it, which said something to the effect that
Magritte expressed doubt about whether he could paint his own
portraint. The commentary suggested that Magritte's doubts were
concerning the particularity of a sef-portrait, that Magritte would
hesitate to paint anything that wasn't universal. I took it quite
another way, saying Magritte was faced (almost literally so) with
the problem of how to observe one's own face. "It's like Satchitananda
said at his talk," I said. "Everyone knows he has a face, but no one
has seen his own. How could Magritte use his own organs of perception
to see his own organs of perception?" It seemed to me the question
was more epistemological than aesthetic.
We had a light lunch in the museum café, then I left Don
sitting at a sidewalk table while I got the car. He was grateful
that I was willing to get the car, and wouldn't settle down to
lunch until we had worked out exactly where he would wait for me
and how I would find him. Although he was able to walk the two and
a half blocks to the museum, he was convinced he could not easily
have walked back. I agreed.
He was pretty quiet on the ride back home, but he expressed real
pleasure in being able to see the exhibit. I was also pleased.
Not only had we both enjoyed the painting, we had had some interesting
conversations about them. And it was a "proof of concept" for our
trip to the Smithsonian.
Shortly after we got home, Don had another bladder incident. He went
out to the compost bin and on the way back I noticed his trousers
had been splashed. I know he occasionally urinates in the compost
bin ("For nitrogen," he says; I've pretty much given up on that battle).
He went into the bedroom and took off his pants. His underwear was
soaked. It looked as though he hadn't been able to get them down in
time before his bladder let loose. He removed the underpants and
I brought him a hot, soapy washcloth. I let him do most of the clean-up,
figuring it was more dignified that way.
I remember telling Brian, when I was trying to describe Don's needs,
"We're not quite to rubber sheets yet, but we're into Depends." Maybe
Don should start wearing them regularly, but I don't know how to raise
the issue without offending his dignity. And maybe I should get rubber
sheets after all.
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