Tuesday

Well I woke up at 5:30 this am for the blood draw with the dang head cold. I have 3 white blood cells left, Patton, Joshua Chamberlain (fix bayonets-right wheel-charge) and Ghost 4-6 (Ia Drang), and they will kill 100s before they are overwhelmed, but in the end it is futile and I will have a cold.

Yesterday was another busy day. Made some changes to this Blog thing -

• Made comments open, no account necessary, easy to make comments now so don't be shy but be anonymous if you must
• Got photos to work. Yippee

Nutrition

I had my usual large breakfast and was pondering the emails of the few women that wrote, maybe you shouldn't be eating all that cholesterol, eat healthy. This is tricky right now because I cannot eat a lot of healthy food because of the microbial thing - no salad, no fresh fruit or vegs uncooked, no broccoli too gassy. And I am planning on this fight getting worse, maybe with some weight loss. I left a voicemail for the dietitian to get me an appointment and I will come up with a game plan with her. I am considering the rope-adope strategy used by Ali before Foreman in Zaire, or maybe the Russian prolonged winter that stopped Napoleon and Hitler.

Another really big event of the day - went and got a Starbucks. There are 2 Starbucks in the hospital, and since nobody ever gave me the definitive No, I went and got a mocha, it was fantastic after a week of nurse station coffee. I watched their method to see I wasn't getting microbed to death, and nuked it when I got it back here, and it was great.

The Secret Snack List

So I go for my after-breakfast walk and I come back to sanctuary (no pink hepa msk), and I am trying to get Charter to stop locking me out of my webspace so I can post pics there for the blog, and I am stretching and hand-pumping these 8 lb weights while I chart with the tech, got my shirt off, gut hanging out like 8 pounds more than it did 2 weeks ago. A knock comes at the door, and thinking it is vital sign time I say come in. This cute young lady comes in, big smiles, I am the nutritionist and I hear you would like some between meal snacks! I had to laugh. Here I am trying to work off some of the meals, and she is offering me between meal snacks! Oh No. Run Away. This stems from some off the cuff comment I made to a nurse like 7 days ago.

So I tell her well, I have kinda got it wired, I order extra stuff with each meal and I have stashes of gelatin, crackers, chips, cookies. She tells me as a chemo patient, I can order even multiple trays and they will send it! She hands me this list and says this is the Write-In List! Ice cream. candy. grilled cheese sandwiches. popsicles. Oreos, lorna doones, and fig newtons. Cheeses and meats! I have found the mother lode! Write anything in on a menu and we will send it right up. Gotta talk to the dietitian!

Another one of the art therapy volunteers came by yesterday, these people are great, they will hang with you and paint and make any kind of mess you want just about. When you get weird diseases you pull out all the guns and delve into the eastern things as well, I learned that from Steven Seagal, so we had a nice visit. She connected me with Guest Services (Concierge?) and we pressured them to get some movies going in the empty-nightly Freidenrich Auditorium. Jim S may bring a surf movie and we'll sneak in there and try it anyway.

On my afternoon walk I found this private dining room on the third floor, the Bing Dining Room, that takes reservations for lunch and has a nice rooftop garden dining area. I think it is reserved for Staff for breakfast and dinner, but would be nice for lunch.

It was finally nice out yesterday, and my dirty windows were bugging me, so I snuck into the garden outside my room and gave them a quick wash, much better. Hope that's not how I got this cold, don't think so. I scrubbed after.

Had a great visit from Nick B, he watched me eat my roast beef and baked potato and corn etc, telling me how Dyan has him on this Oprah diet where he had to cut back from 3 pieces of fruit for breakfast to 2! Honey, don't eat that apple, that's bad for you, you don't want to get like Fiore!

Here is a picture of the jade thingy we made for the window. It represents the flow of light in and out of the psyche, the Tao of rock. Looks nice too, and creates a little tension as a rock will fall off every now and then and crash to the floor, so it has dynamism.