Major Milestone

Today, Paul reached the halfway mark -- 21 out of 42 treatments. This means that the blue dot has been "officially" adhered to the badge.

Here is Paul (making one of his silly faces) proudly displaying the badge.

And here is a close-up of the badge, blue dot and all.

It Almost Didn't Happen Again!

For those of you who have been following our story, please refer to my post of April 6 entitled "The Treatment that Almost Didn't Happen". Well, it almost didn't happen again!

I was getting ready to post a somewhat bitter tale of how Paul's 20th treatment was cancelled today. However, we got a call at 6:30 PM to come in for a 7:45 PM slot. His original treatment was scheduled for 9 AM this morning but we got a call at 6:45 AM cancelling it because the equipment was "down". I spent the rest of today grumbling. However, the second shift tech, Mark, saved the day by calling with an evening opening. They were still having some minor problems and the treatment took a little longer but it was completed successfully. BTW, one advantage of going in the evening is that the parking is much easier. Loma Linda has a real parking problem.

20 down, 22 to go!

Moving Along

Wednesday night Paul had his 18th treatment. His appointments, for the past few weeks, have been AM appointments. On Wednesday, however, he was "bumped" to an 8:30 PM slot for some reason. We think it may have had to do with several anesthesia cases needing to be done in his treatment room in the morning. The treatment room is called a gantry. Paul is assigned to gantry #1 (there are four rooms), which happens to be the gantry in which children are treated. They use anesthesia when treating a young child in order to put the child to sleep for the duration of the treatment. It would be way too scary for the child if s/he was awake during the treatment. The anesthesiologists only work in the morning so whenever a child needs to be treated, the entire schedule gets moved around.

Not much else is new. Yesterday we visited the March Air Force museum which is adjacent to March Air Force Base in Riverside CA. Paul enjoyed it very much. Sorry, we forgot our camera so there are no pictures to post but we may go back. Next time we'll remember the camera.

15 Down, 27 to Go

That's 35.7% but, again, who's counting? So far, there are minimal to no side effects -- nothing that a Flomax a day can't handle.

We've done some sightseeing. Here is a picture taken from the San Bernardino mountains.



The road up the mountain is a steep, winding road, similar to the Pacific Coast Highway, if anyone has experienced that road. We didn't make it all the way up as I chickened out just before the top and made Paul turn around.

Here is a picture of the Mission Inn Hotel in Riverside CA. It is an historic hotel dating back to the early 1900's, not far from San Bernardino. We took a drive the other day and had lunch there.

Finally, here is a picture of proton patients "recuperating" from their treatment. You may recognize two people in the picture, involved in one of their favorite activities -- eating.
















The words of Albert Hammond's 1972 song "It Never Rains in Southern California" are certainly not true today! More next week.

Milestones

Several milestones occurred today.

The first is that today is our 29th anniversary. We'll be holding off celebrating until next year on our 30th.

The second milestone is that Paul now has two dots on his guest badge. When the patient first arrives, he is issued a guest badge. There are stick-on dots denoting "classes", similar to what we went through in school. The first dot (green) denotes that the patient is undergoing treatments 1-11 and is a "freshman". After treatment 11, the second dot (yellow) is issued -- "sophmore" status. After treatment 22, the third dot (blue) is issued denoting the "junior" class and finally, after treatment 33, the long awaited red dot is issued to the "seniors". Graduation can't be far behind. Kind of corny -- yes?

You may be wondering why the dots are issued in multiples of 11 treatments. The reason is that the standard treatment course is 44 treatments. Paul will only be receiving 42 treatments. He has a specially designed treatment plan because of his artificial hip. He is currently attempting to do the complicated math to determine precisely when to stick on the remaining two dots :-).

So far, so good. More later this week.

Paul in His Pod

The first shift techs were kind enough to humor me and take several pictures during today's treatment (#9).

Below is Paul in his "pod" (an open lower body cast into which the patient climbs for each treatment). It's called an immobilization device. Rob, one of the techs, is levelling Paul's hips in preparation for the treatment.



Here is another picture of Paul in his pod, after adjustments were made:

Following is a picture of the daily x-ray that is taken and overlaid on the planning CT scan that was taken in March when we were here for the consult. The round object on the right is his right artificial hip prosthesis.




One more shot of Paul in his pod. This is probably getting boring . . . just imagine how Paul feels!

Settling In

Treatments 6 and 7 were completed successfully -- 35 to go, but who's counting? This week's appointments have been at 9:30 AM, so far, but tomorrow's appointment is scheduled for 10:00 PM. Paul will call in the afternoon, at shift change time, and try to get in earlier. We're learning that sometimes this works.

Last night we went to one of the patient sponsored "pot luck" dinners. There are two a week, on Monday and Tuesday nights. The first time one attends these events one needn't bring anything (so we didn't) but after that one is supposed to bring some kind of dish. We'll probably try the Tuesday night one tonight which is held at a different location. We signed up for a dining out event Thursday evening which hopefully won't be pre-empted by a nightime treatment appointment.

The fan on the power supply on my desktop computer died yesterday but, as you can see, it's back among the living. We took it to Best Buy and the Geek Squad replaced the power supply and checked out the rest of the hardware.

That's about it for now.

The Treatment that Almost Didn't Happen

Friday's treatment almost didn't happen because of "computer problems" (Does this sound familiar?). We had heard that this happens so we weren't totally unprepared. The tech called at 3 PM and cancelled Paul's appointment scheduled for 9:00 PM. Bummer, we thought. So we went out to dinner. Then the tech called back at 7:30 asking if Paul could come for his treatment after all. Fortunately, we're about two miles from the hospital. They had to restart the system three times but finally everything worked. It's now 5 down, 37 to go.

Paul had his weekly appointment with his assigned Loma Linda physician on Thursday. This guy really likes to talk! He has everything down to the lowest level, I guess assuming that he has patients of all different levels of understanding. We got the feeling that he thought he was talking to grade schoolers but we smiled and asked appropriate questions.

There are several other LL patients staying here at the Residence Inn. One man is from Australia and has brought his entire family (This includes approximately 12 grandchildren) to stay here with him for the entire nine week treatment period. Unfortunately, several of their rooms are either right next to us or right down the hall. Imagine the noise! Thankfully we brought our white noise machine, which drowns out about 90% of it.

No treatments on weekends -- more next week.

3 Down, 39 to Go

Treatments 2 and 3 were uneventful, thankfully.

The scheduling is a bit weird. Today's treatment was scheduled for 5:45 PM but they called at 3:20 and asked if Paul could come in early. No problem! We dashed over to the hospital. Tomorrow's treatment is scheduled for 9:30 PM but they said to call in the afternoon, when the second shift comes on, and check if they had an earlier opening.

Paul met a man named Ron who lives very near us (Lake Mead and Rampart for you Las Vegas residents). Ron had also used urologist #1 (the "blip on the radar") and didn't like him either so Paul gave him #3's name.

Tonight is the weekly support group meeting (Paul calls it the weekly "revival meeting") but we're not going. We only plan on going when they have a speaker discussing something in which we're interested.

That's it for now.

1 Down, 41 to Go

We arrived here yesterday afternoon. If you can possibly avoid it, don't drive into southern California on a Sunday! Traffic was very bad.

Paul had his first proton treatment at 9:00 AM. The first treatment takes a little longer as several additional steps are done. It took about 45 minutes, from the time he left the waiting room to the time he returned. Tomorrow's appointment is at 6:30 PM. "Newbies" generally get evening appointments. We have put in a request for a morning appointment, on an ongoing basis. They said that they would try to accomodate us as the schedule permits.

Paul reports that he felt nothing during and after the treatment. The techs said he did "very well", as in he didn't fidget too much! He is currently out walking to Best Buy (about 1-2 blocks) to buy a line cord that we forgot to bring for my desktop computer. We borrowed the one from my power wheelchair to connect the computer.

That's about all there is to report for now.