Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Two Unusual Days

Yesterday I spent 4 hours hooked up to an IV receiving 2 units of packed red blood cells. I was at the Infusion Clinic at Munson Medical Center. I was the only one there getting a blood transfusion - the others were either getting Remicade or Chemo of various types. But I won the longevity award. I was there from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

The best thing about the morning was that while I was away, the Merry Maids came!
Today when I got up, I felt better - I walked for 12 minutes straight on the treadmill, instead of my usual 5 minutes and then rest, then another 5 minutes, etc. I was able to do a lot of things around the house without feeling sick. But I hit the stamina wall around 1:30 after shopping at Glen's. Tomorrow I'm expecting to last until maybe 4 p.m., and I expect to improve every day.
Dick spent the day pruning and cutting brush all around the property. He worked really hard all morning and up until around 3:30 p.m. He even fell off a ladder while cutting a large branch off of one of the larger trees. Luckily he didn't hurt himself.
Today we were expecting Jana's co-worker John and his family to canoe to our dock so we could drive them back to their car. They called while putting in, and said we should expect them around 4 p.m.

We waited and waited. Dick went upstream with the camera so we could send pictures to Jana. After a while I went inside to check the message machine and sure enough, they had called. The gist of the message was - We have had quite an adventure - we have lost our canoe. We're walking toward your place on River Road - we're not quite sure where your place is... I jumped in the car to go pick them up, and sure enough, here they came - John and James - walking toward me still wearing their fluorescent orange life preservers.

We drove back, and hailed Dick, who was quite surprised to see them - "How did they get past me???" James stayed on the dock to keep an eye on the river just in case their canoe should come floating past. Dick and John loaded one of our canoes to go down to the railroad bridge to go in search of the lost craft. It was right there, kind of leaning on the railroad bridge. So John drove Marco back here, and Dick paddled the formerly lost canoe back to our place. Quite an adventure indeed. We had made previous plans to go out to dinner tonight with Dennis Cervino, and Dennis came just as Dick got here with John's canoe. We all had a pleasant conversation on the deck. John and James left, and we went to Giovanni's for dinner, and back here for coffee and more conversation.