Alan’s Army

Huh, #50 - wow, some kind of a milestone.  Glad to report I have not developed “Blackberry thumb” yet.

Alan has now had 10 of his 33 morning  radiation treatments and  13 evenings of chemo.  He’s a bit tired, but otherwise OK.  Thankfully nausea is still not an issue and 7 days after his last steroids he still has a very healthy appetite - we try not to get our fingers, or the cats, to close - ravenous AND blind are a bad combination.

We visited the Neuro-Opthamologist in Newark Wednesday afternoon.  He thinks Alan’s sight may be slightly better.  Alan reports that some days seem better than others and some of the “cloudiness” may have lifted, but hard to tell.  The left eye remains non-light sensing and his right eye is still 20/400.  If he carefully moves a hand-held eye chart card before his right eye he can make out the top two lines but he can’t read an eye chart on the wall at all.

The doc asked Alan if he was “psychologically ready” to explore low-vision measures to see what could be done about him making the best use out of what eyesight he has.  Alan’s reply was “sure.”  We talked about that on the way home in the car and Alan’s said “Am I psychologically ready?  What the heck does that mean?  If it means am I hoping and praying that my eyes get better but want to be able to do the best I can with what I’ve got, then I guess that’s a yes.”. So we have an appointment for a week from Monday back in Newark with a low-vision specialist.

Yesterday morning we went to Tyler with John McGinley and took the form off the Hole 9 C-pin.  We moved the basket to the new pin position and it looks awesome!  I had tried to align it so that from the tee pad it would be fully visible and framed by some trees, and it came out perfect.  We played the hole and Alan was the first one to putt out on it.

We were starving, having neglected breakfast to get to the park, and were on our way to Slack’s Hoagie Shack for a cheesesteak (Best in Bucks County) when while stopped at the four-way stop in the park a lady pulled up in a car and told John that “the Amish were having a pig roast back behind Wendys” so we went over there and sure enough there is a Pennsylvania Dutch Farmers Market behind Wendys and the Amish were selling roast pig sandwiches.  About then Rex called and said he’d meet us so he came over and we had some excellent roast pig and ice cream.  When we got home Alan told Ginny “You’ll never guess what we did after Tyler Park - the most random thing ever - we went to an Amish Pig Roast!”

Gina came over in the afternoon and she, Alan, Amber, and Ginny spent the afternoon at Mom and Pa’s at the pool.  I opted to stay in the AC and get some work done.

Amber ended up going with cousin Caitlyn to eat dinner at a house-sitting job, while Alan and Gina went out to Contes for some of Princeton’s best pizza.  Since everyone bailed on the fresh jersey corn and marinated chicken thighs, we decided to hold them over to Sunday night and Ginny and I went to the Tiger’s Tale for a nice steak and scallop dinner - just the two of us.  It was a real nice change from the past two-and-a-half  months worth of “date nights” eating fast food together on the way to or from a hospital.

(Note: a bunch of folks from the community and church have brought food by the house, so we have had some very good meals - thanks all!)

BT - A bunch of plans for fundraising for Alan are in full swing, I will include these with info on the website in another update later today.

Thanks,

Andrew