321) John's Aggie Adventure

January 27, 2009

Tuesday

Morning: My son, John, is moving out to Bryan, Texas today to take a new job that'll pay more and help him to pay off his college loans quicker. Oh, and also, he'll be away from his nagging parents and the party lights of Austin. Instead, he'll have the Aggies to contend with. I woke him up this morning to ask if he wanted to get up before breakfast and get an early start... and he said, "No", he'd rather wait til the crack of noon and get outa here after we are all gone to work. So, I said "Well some people may want to say goodbye..." and he said, "I will receive them in here. Send 'em in..." So, sister Shayna and the Terrier both bounded in...

Actually, I think it is a good move for John, even tho hes moving to Aggie-land. I took a truckload of his stuff out there on Sunday, met the roommate, Eric, and scoped out the mobile home that they will share. All looks fine to me.

On the drive back he shared with me the details of his plans for 1) paying double payments on his loan, 2) saving the majority of his salary, and 3) not spending so much of his disposable income partying by 4) playing soccer and 5) maybe finding an old driver and whacking golf balls. I offered to handle his financial affairs for only 3% but he wants to do it himself. We also talked about his using his GFTCU account since there is a branch out there because he can get better interest rates than from his bank. Actually, blog readers... I am not documenting this here for you... but for him. As an ongoing reader of this blog, he can come back here for a reminder of the "plan" he outlined at the optimistic beginning of his Aggie Adventure

The last few months of having John here, itinerately as it were, has been a wonderful opportunity to spend time and get to know him more as an "adult". When kids are raised in divorced families, even in the best of cases where the parents can get along and the kids spend about equal time at both homes, they are never at one's house 'fulltime' and then when they go off to college, they are basically GONE. So, having John come 'home' and actually stay at my house for most of the time over the past month has been something we wanted to enjoy and get the most out of. And, I think we did.

El Milagro: Nancy the Nurse, who is going to Moncrief's dialysis center, does my nursing eval and Rosie the Tech sticks me and hooks me up. I am thinking about John's moving and wishing we had had more time to work on the back 40 walls before he left. Dr. Venkatesh is here, making rounds with Jordi the Dietician, Ann the Nurse, and Sherry Social Worker following along behind, like a puppy watching for the scraps. When she gets to me she uses her usual happy concern to inquire how things are going for me. She always makes good eye contact, asks some personal questions, and moves to the chart review only after a bit of conversation.

She is still a little concerned about my low blood count and wants to hear about the frequency of bloody noses (HHT) and if they seem to me to be a major loss of blood. Well, how can I tell? I'm used to my nose running blood like a kitchen faucet at times... so, is that "major"? What's major to me might be different than what's major to her. So, I shrug my shoulders, review the amount of bloody noses (maybe every three days or so now that we have cedar and dry heat in the house...) and mention that I think I went to see Leary the Nose Doc since X-mas... She tells me again that they have increased my Heparin and that'll help the blood cells. She also mentions my phosphorous and Jordi reports on the new plans for binders: 1) 6 phoslo and NO fosrenol @ dinner; 2) 4 phoslo and half a fosrenol at lunch; and I added, 3) take phoslo every time I even think about food... which gets a laugh... I correct it to be "take a phoslo with each cracker, egg roll, and breakfast taco..." Doc notes these adjustments in my record and she and her minions move on down the line.

I sit back and worry about my HHT and if I have sprung a leak... and my mind immediately pulls up Bob Dylan's words: "Up on Cripple Creek she sends me; If I spring a leak she mends me; I don't have to speak she defends me; A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one" and then I drift back from that vision to the present, worries about leaking insides and finally, I rest my brain on Roseanne Rosanadana's "Its always something."

I turn on my radio to NPR ATC report on the octuplets and that knocks out my problems in one big whamo. So it goes.

Notes: In at 78.0 and out at 74.7 kgs.