Alan’s Army

Friday:

Happy 4th!

A lot of lazing around occurred.  I slept in until something like 8AM - what a lazy bum!

Walmart is wide-open but sure enough the pharmacy is closed.  Thankfully we have enough various bits of Decodron (steroid) leftover from previous scrips to carry Alan over to tomorrow.  His new tapering schedule will take him to next Saturday.  While at Walmart I picked up a cassette tape player so he can use some of the books-on-tape people have given him.

Saturday:

Eric Robbins came over and we took Alan up to Liberty Corner to play.  We only played six holes and Alan was done.  The humidity is simply off the charts.  He said that he couldn’t see as much as the last time (it was bright and sunny last time) and as good as Eric and I were, BOB was much better at setting him up on the tee and describing the shot he needed to make.  On the way home we stopped and picked up Alan’s prescriptions at Walmart - $282 - ouch!

Sun:

Alan and I went to the Rutgers course to lend a hand to BOB and Kit at the Jersey Jam warmup.  It was only about 80 degrees but the humidity was off the charts and you could see the air.  We sat under a tent at tournament central and an occasional breeze was a blessing.  We could see four holes from our vantage point and I gave Alan the play-by-play.

A drop-out would have left Kit and Hope to play by themselves in the second round so I borrowed 5 discs and played with the ladies.  I didn’t do that bad considering the lack of my own discs.  The Gateway Magic that Mac lent me was actually a pretty nice upshot disc but I really missed my pro-line Rhyno for putting.

It got a bit boring without me to tell him what was going on so Alan called his mom and Ginny came and picked him up.  After the tourney the McGinley family, JB, Missy, and niece Caitlyn (who didn’t go to Maine) came over and we ate an egregious amount of pork roll, hamburgers, hotdogs, and cheddarwursts of the grill.  Afterwards a bunch of us jumped in the pool.  Alan was pleased that Gina stopped to visit on her long drive back from Pittsburgh where she had attended a wedding.

Monday:

Day 1 of Alan’s Radiation and Chemo - If there are no interruptions he will finish  on Ginny’s birthday on August 20th.  Maybe we’ll take a few days at the shore afterwards.

While typing this update in the waiting room the nurse came in to warn me and the waiting patients that there would be a delay as they were having a problem “setting the field parameter” on the machine but they were on the phone with technical support.

When Alan came out he reported that they had to reboot the machine and one of the radiation techs was swearing at Microsoft.  I kidded that it was like he was back at work.

OK, so Radiation treatment #1 is done.  Tonight Alan gets his first dose of Chemo.

Off we go back home to wait and see if nausea will be an issue.

Thanks all, we hope the US folks had a great holiday weekend.

God Bless,

Andrew