Today is my baby's 18th birthday. My lil' Claire. Claire Marie. A legal adult. When she came home from the hospital she was just barely over five pounds. I felt like I was carrying a bag flour. She's still the "runt" of the family, so to speak, but so full of spunk, generosity, and initiative. Concentrated awesome, as I'd joked earlier.
For some reason this morning I was thinking of my late mother and her reaction to Claire's birth. She was upset that I called to let her know of the birth in the afternoon after the delivery as I was about to leave the hospital parking lot. I hadn't let her know "we were goin' in!" I didn't want to trouble her and it was a fast delivery. But mom wanted time to fret and pray. She wanted the anticipation of breaking the news that "Michelle is going into labor" to her friends. When Abby was weeks from being born, my mother reminded me: "Now you tell me when you're going in this time!"
Use of the verb "fret" reminds me of one of my favorite young Claire stories. When she had learned to talk, after several months we were trying to break her of the habit of always saying "I want" and replace it with something like "May I [...] please"
So one morning she was anxious about something. I have no recollection what it was, but something small was bothering her a bit. I'd said something like, "oh Claire, it'll work out. Don't fret". To which she replied, "But I want to fret..."
Enjoy this Jan 2001 photo of a five year old Claire in the hospital holding a newborn brother. Sorry to say I don't know which of the twins it was. It was really difficult back then.
]]>So far Michelle has been tolerating her current protocol well. We stayed at MGH almost a full day on the last visit so that Michelle could get a liter of IV fluids and a unit of red blood cells in addition to the medicines of the protocol. While the former were not strictly required, they definitely helped her become more like herself. She is losing hair on this regimen, but in hindsight, that's a pretty trouble free symptom to deal with. Late last week as I crashing on the couch — I am my father's son — she trimmed it short like she had a little over three years ago.
This past Tuesday evening Timothy finished The Lost Hero, a book I bought for him only two weeks ago. That's pretty astounding to me because as a paperback it's 576 pages. Granted he read it on a Kobo eReader, but still… that's a lot to read in two weeks for a ten year old. So last night I ordered him the next book in the series, The Son of Neptune, and put it on the Kobo.
Meanwhile Tuesday morning I ordered a short book that I tore through and loved. Called Strange Gods by Elizabeth Scalia, it looks deeper at that big Commandment: “Thou shalt not have strange gods before me”. While we haven't made a Golden Calf, we often do make idols out of an idea or cause, prosperity, technology, "coolness", sex, our plans, etc. and they can often take priority over God's will for us. Compared to Timothy's recent accomplishment, it's only 192 pages so I got through it in a handful of commutes to and from the office. It was very thought provoking. I enjoyed how she kept things relatable by frequent use of personal anecdotes to cement a concept she was making.
These past few days have been gorgeous. Not too hot or humid. Just sunny, dry, and around 80°F. Tuesday Michelle took the kids to Hampton Beach. I had to laugh when she asked for directions on how to get there. We live about a quarter mile away from Route 101. I told her, "Get on Route 101 heading east. Keep going until you hit ocean." That really is about it. She found $5 parking about a quarter mile away from the beach and they all had a great time.
Yesterday Michelle and I went to 7:30am Mass and stayed for coffee and snacks afterwards. She kept things closer to home and took the kids to the Milford pool. Claire spent several hours with Sr. Marcelle. I had a typical office day but did get time with some guys on the GPU driver team having lunch outdoors at Kimball Farms. There was a modest line for food, but the line for ice cream (with the gorgeous weather we were having) was just too long. Fate had no coffee shake in store for me after lunch.
Today marks another milestone in the "I'm getting old" meme. Tonight I'm taking Claire to see NHTI — New Hampshire Technical Institute — for an open house. It seems like just last year I was dropping Claire off here. I'll be working from home so that I can wrap up with enough time to get there. Also today Abby will be heading out for a performance in Dartmouth. She'll leave this morning and return Saturday morning.
On the nerdier front: over the past few nights I watched a four part Dr. Who: The Curse of Fenric. I'd never watched episodes with Sylvester McCoy as The Doctor and was interested in seeing some episodes with Ace as his companion. The story was so-so, and I guess I was a little let down how little the TARDIS, or any technology for that matter, played in this story arc. These four episodes are available via Netflix streaming. In the next day or so I should get the DVD for Doctor Who: Dragonfire, where Ace is first introduced to The Doctor.
]]>So what's been happening?
Well, a little over three weeks ago Michelle started another clinical trial based on an inhibitor known as GDC-0068. The previous one was not effective. Our hope for this one is that it's quite similar to the first trial we did in the spring last year. That one was effective but not tolerated. This protocol is closer to that one. So far it's been well tolerated. Primary side effect has been an occasional upset lower stomach, quieted by Immodium.
Shortly after school let out, my nephew & godson Will came out to spend a week with us. The kids loved spending time with him. Little did I know he also snuck a birthday present for me on his flight.
At the end of June I had a birthday. I got some really thoughtful presents. Timothy got me a Google Play gift card. Will brought me some barbecue sauce from a favorite restaurant of mine near River Grove. Claire knit me a "Kobo Cozy" to hold the eBook reader that Timothy and I share. She and Michelle also got me a t-shirt that says "Always give 100%, unless donating blood". They also got me a USAF decal to affix to the back of my Android Kindle tablet.
The younger four children spent 2 weeks in the midwest. They flew out in early July from Manchester airport to Chicago Midway. They spent a few days staying with my sister and brother-in-law in River Grove, spent about nine days at my dad's large house in southwest Michigan, and wrapped things up with a couple more days in River Grove. From the stories I've heard since their return, they had a great time.
Near the end of their time away, Michelle and Claire also took some time off. They spent three days with friends up in Freedom, NH. Shopping, boating, ice cream, hanging out, etc. I think Michelle really needed it. It can be a bit much to go from a busy house to an empty house for any length of time.
Little did I realize what a hectic day last Tuesday would be for Michelle. She would visit a neurologist in Manchester, pick up her sister at Manchester airport, go to see her local oncologist in Nashua, and then pick up the children at Manchester airport. Had I known I would've taken the day off. Michelle has really enjoyed having her sister close. They can catch up, talk about parenting issues, share college concerns, etc.
This past weekend was rather slow. We had a longer-than-expected visit at Massachusetts General Hospital last Friday. I took the day off figuring we'd have a quick visit and then take the kids to the town pool. But we didn't get home until after 3pm and the kids were really apathetic about swimming. I wrongly figured we could just go over the weekend. It turns out though that the Milford Rotary used this entire weekend to sponsor a local area swim meet so the pool was unavailable all weekend.
On the plus side I did replace the SSD in my MacBook over the weekend. What a difference it made! The old one was failing in a mode that made the laptop randomly dog slow due to failing data blocks. I did my research to avoid a similar condition months from now.
Also on the geek front, I've been enjoying a Google Chromebook I bought in early June. It's only powered by a dual core ARM CPU, but between the lightweight OS and the fact that it's using flash memory instead of a hard drive, it feels pretty snappy. It's also pretty easy to give it an option to run Ubuntu on it at the same time, which really adds to its awesomeness.
As boring as it sounds, I'm also studying C++. Well, in theory I already knew C++, but I learned it in my early grad school days around 1989-1990. It was brand new then and nobody programmed it on PCs. There was little compiler support and it was barely out of the research labs. I then went into a world heavily dominated by embedded computing, not desktop or server computing. So even though C++ was picking up support, it was all but banned from embedded usage as too "heavy". Now that I've been back in writing C/C++ on powerful hardware, I'm finding out just how much the language has evolved since my grad school days. My original language reference was a few hundred pages, while now it's over 1300 pages. So I picked up some of the more recommended titles and I've been digging into them in my spare time. I'm seriously impressed by all that one can do with it now.
So today is the start of another work week. Michelle will teach her Step class today. She has a couple more days with her sister. They may hit a beach tomorrow. This week is her "week off" of cancer medicines — time for the body to bounce back and recover. If this trial shows promise, it'll be a continuous loop of three weeks on, one week off. I pray that we do get to continue on this clinical trial. Hopping from one protocol to the next hoping to find a targeted therapy that hits the target is emotionally trying.
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