Chondrosarcoma – ah shit, bob's sick

Saturday morning, Sher and I had brought Al to the Dartmouth-Hitchcock  Medical Center were I may be staying. Before leaving I had given him (Al) the job to photograph the place for this website. It gave him a job and a purpose. For an 11 yr. old this can be a tough experience … visiting the cancer ward where Dad will be staying. It’s hard for anyone let alone a little kid. It’s even hard for me to face. But he did well … real well.

We saw other people in various stages of recovery, tested out some wheelchairs, bought some great chocolate chip cookies and in a little while he seemed to understand better and not be afraid of the place. That’s all my goal was … simply to introduce him.

On the way to the house (about a 45 min. drive) Sher told him that Mike was coming to visit and that he’d be there when we got back. Well this really made his day … and to be honest, it made the day for all of us. You just focus on this stuff 24/7 …. like Brett Dennen says “it’s enough to make you crazy”.

Anyways … after Mike showed up Al really seemed to relax and get it … his visit set the tone for the rest of the weekend and it was great. I’m not full of energy these days but Mike filled in that gap. I’m proud of Mike, not only for his accomplishments in school and work … but for what he did …. I don’t think it was easy for him either. Mike is 24 years old …  he’s quite a young man.

He stayed until Sunday and head out after dinner. We all played some board games, cards and had a general good time. It was a pleasure to relax and get this off my mind for a while too.

Thanks Mike, both your Mom and I appreciate what you did … and we love you for it.

Sunday Night, August 16, 2009:

Tomorrow afternoon, I’m going to my regular Family Doctor to ask him for 2 things that are very important to me.

The first one is about pain management.  Since I had the biopsy, this tumor or cancer has been kicking up some pain every night. By the end of the day I’m tired and experience some pain. The simple answer here is more pain killers. Right now I’m taking Vicoden and lots of it.

The second thing I want to talk to him about is “what other options” I may  have. I now know what western medicine is offering. Surgery without any guarantee of walking out whole. I have been told that the loss of use of my right foot is for sure and probably I’ll be in a wheelchair, or there’s a good chance of it for life. Not that thats the end of the world … I can certainly live with that … but do I have another option? That’s my question.

Is there Chinese or Indian or some other eastern medicinal route I can take. I know of many cases where this type of treatment has been successful … I also know many have failed. But I have to find out, I’d be a fool not to investigate.

Another thing I’m not clearly sure of is the amount of time I can “gamble” into investigating this. The big Medical Center seems to be in a hurry to put me under the knife. Are they being driven by money they can collect from my insurance company? … or are they really trying to save me? … thats the question.

So Monday afternoon I go see my Dr. Clay. He’s a fine General Doc and I trust and value his opinion.

East meets West here on the horizon line where I’m living at the moment. It’s a lot to think about and the decision needs to be made quickly.

August 16, 2009

A few weeks ago before I knew what was coming at me, I’d decided to re- start or re-write an old website that I had lots of fun with.

I used to own an art gallery/coffee house in Chester, Vt. that became pretty popular. Folks used to come in for breakfast, lunch and sometimes a lite dinner and of course in a small town you get know every one of your customers. After years of running the coffee house (to make a long story short), I decided to close it. But, a lot of my regular customers were lost as what to do for lunch. At the same time, I had taken a job with a company in town that employed quite a few people … especially for a small town.

Anyways, it was always a struggle to figure out what to have for lunch. Not only for myself … but for the folks I now worked with and past customers. Some of my old customers used to stop by the house and ask me to make them some lunch! Now thats unusual .

So as a joke one day, one of old customers said I should make a TV show called “Cooking Without Bob” … we all laughed, and I decided to build a website that would deliver suggestions of what to have for breakfast, lunch, dinner or an in-between snack, depending what time of day you logged onto the site …  just for fun. This all happened years ago.

Back to today … a month or so ago I had been thinking about re-building the site except now I was a much better programmer and decided I’d set up a little database and enter the data/suggestions that way. You know, you’re typical MYSQL database with PHP trimmings and just have some fun. So I started it.

There’s not a lot of data in the database yet, but I a few suggestions at a time. I even have a few recipes and facts in it. It’s fun … I use it myself when I don’t really know what I want to eat. I’ll keep adding as much and as quickly as I can. Unfortunately, I’m not feeling quite up to “par” today and probably won’t add anymore today. But check it out … it’s pretty funny. The site knows what time it is and delivers the content accordingly. You can also chose the time of day you want suggestions for.

Here’s a link:

http://www.cookingwithoutbob.com

Cooking Without Bob