Go Rams!

And "Yay!" for CSU for winning the New Mexico Bowl today!

Day 67--Yachtzee!

We're just hanging out tonight playing Yachtzee and listening to "Excursions" on KRFC (the radio show that Torger normally does with his pal Randy). Torger has really been missing the chance to do their annual Christmas show, but Randy's been doing a great job flying solo. So far he's played some Julie Andrews, Claudine Longet, James Brown, and Flaming Lips!

We're having a restful day after a pretty hectic week. On Wednesday, Torger had to have four separate biopsies so they could check different parts of his body for levels of GVHD: back, arm, inner thigh, and face. He was pretty miserable for the rest of the night after getting four shots and then having four chunks of skin cut out. But the results came back last night and the doctors are happy with his GVHD levels, so that was good news. We did learn another interesting tidbit this week: Since the transplant, Torger's developed a couple of deep, parallel ridges on each of his fingernails. One of our regular nurses, Erin, told us that's because fingernails often fall out after transplant, but apparently Torger's nails resisted it. Yikes! We're kind of glad we didn't know that one at the time.

Day 61 And Still Not Done

This has been a pretty uneventful weekend. Torger just got off the phone with his dad and is waiting for the television event of the season on the SciFi Channel: "Sharks in Venice." He is, of course, disgusted that the sharks that will apparently be the villains of the movie are great whites--and not even a kind of shark that could possibly, under some far-fetched circumstance, ever stand a chance of winding up in the Venice canals. But he plans to watch it anyway because, well, it's a killer shark movie. Set in Venice. Meanwhile, I'm making dinner (like the sharks, we're also having Italian ). I've been trying to get Christmas cards written in between going through bills and trying to keep up on the filing. My friend Jean advised me early on in Torger's treatment to start a file to keep bills and insurance statements coordinated, and keeping up with that file has been both time-consuming and essential. There are so many bills for so many different providers that it becomes really hard to keep them straight, and it would be really easy to pay something twice without this system. There's one unit of the hospital that has twice now neglected to bill our insurance and just sent us a bill for the total amount due, which I might have paid if I weren't making a point of matching all these things up. So while Torger is watching sharks, I think I'm going to enjoy a quiet evening collating.

Day 58--Just Need to Wait

Torger went in on Wednesday for his Day 57 bone marrow biopsy. We won't know the results until next week, but Dr. Tse did warn us that we have to be on the lookout now for pneumonia and fungal infections, which tend to hit hard after Day 50. Just when we thought we were almost in the clear! But we'll just wait it out. We're very much in waiting mode now as we get through the second half of the hundred days.

Torger hates the biopsies (with good reason--they hurt), but they're the only tool we have to know if any leukemia cells are coming back. Otherwise, Dr. Tse is very happy with how Torger's doing. He continues to have just the right amount of GVHD showing up on his skin, and his kidney and liver function are doing much better. We got a little bit of a laugh when Dr. Tse told us that the BMT team is "all very fond" of Torger. That's such a nice thing for a doctor to say. (Of course, Dr. Tse is also the one who, in his medical notes outlining the initial transplant protocol, described Torger as a "pleasant 52-year-old white male.") We chuckle because of Torger's well-established reputation as my Old Man Grumpus, but the truth is, he really has been a good sport through this whole thing. Of course, he's back to being grumpy today because he's sore from the hole they drilled in his hip to get the marrow out. Having watched the biopsy, I think he's more than entitled.

Day 56--Everything's Fixed

The car's all fixed now...new window, new battery, new keys, even a new pair of wiper blades. It's like Christmas for our Honda. We're doing better, too, now that we've had some time to regain our perspective. We're also pleased that the Denver police have assigned a detective to the case because we were able to get the video, so maybe they'll actually catch the guys with their car trunk full of other people's blankets, mittens, and owners' manuals. Ha! (Sandy, the hotel manager, said she thinks these kinds of car break-ins tend to pick up around the Christmas season because this is the way the thieves go shopping for their presents.) Our 5-year-old nephew, Will, assured me that they don't have robbers and burglars in his neighborhood because they're not allowed there. I think Will's on to something. We just need to start posting "No robbers allowed" signs.

Otherwise, life is back to "normal." Dr. Tse called to congratulate us on doing a good job of keeping Torger hydrated this past week. I think we do deserve congratulations on this, since it requires a little bit of work. In addition to his daily fluid infusion, he has to try and drink up to two liters of water or non-caffeinated beverages every day--but no tap water and no ice made from tap water. We've found an unsweetened, decaffeinated, bottled green tea with no preservatives that he likes, and it sounds like it's working for his liver and kidneys. Yay!

Torger's dad, Jon, called on Saturday, and he offered an interesting observation. While he's counting his own life in terms of years, Torger is counting his in terms of days. It's a good reminder to appreciate every one of those days and not let the creeps of the world spoil any of them for us. The creeps in the world are WAY out-numbered by the good guys.

Still More Day 54

Sandy the hotel manager and her assistant, Jason, were able to isolate the section of the security tapes where the guys broke into our car, and they called me to down to the office to show me. You can see a dark gray Pathfinder pull up to a red sportscar parked three slots down from us, and a young guy in a white sportscoat and jeans, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, hops out of the back passenger side seat. He looks in the other two cars in the lot, then meanders over to ours and glances in the window. Then he opens the back door of the Pathfinder and leans in, as if he's talking to the other people in the car--and the tape glitched out right at that second, so unfortunately, you don't see them break the window. It comes back about two minutes later, and you can see a different guy, who had been sitting in the passenger seat in the front of the Pathfinder, standing at the rear of my car. He's got a green bag in his hand, and at first it looked like he was sliding backward out from under the rear of my car. It was very weird. But we think what we're seeing him is him shutting the trunk. There are papers scattered around my car at that point almost exactly where I found them this morning--many of them sheets from notepads we've gotten from Dan Richmond, our insurance agent. (We always keep a Dan Richmond pad in the glove compartment.) Then he hustles the green bag over to the Pathfinder and hops in, and they all drive away. We couldn't see their license plate, but we think the police might be able to. The other cameras around the building caught them pulling into the parking lot and driving out, but lucky us, they only stop at our car. It all happened about 9:30 last night. 9:30!! In addition to just being pissed off about the whole thing, I'm annoyed at what they took, besides the papers from the glove box...it was all stuff that had absolutely no pawn value and is just going to wind up in a dumpster somewhere, but it's stuff we loved. The green suede gloves I've had for 10 years, the fingerless mittens my sister knitted for me last winter, and from the trunk, they took the green velour blanket that Torger's mom gave us as a wedding gift 16 years ago. It was a worn out old blanket, but really soft and Torger's favorite...he took it with him when he went in for the transplant and had it with him all through his stay in the hospital. We'd only left it in the trunk because we didn't really need it in the hotel, and last night when I unloaded groceries from the car I saw it there and thought, "I really should bring that in and wash it." I never imagined anyone would steal an old blanket. We just picture him going home to Mrs. Thief and saying, "Here honey, here's the blanket you've always wanted." She'd be totally bummed. But we'll miss it, and I think that's why this whole thing is so hard for me to wrap my brain around. It all just seems so stupid, and it makes me sad.

More on 54

I am, once again, very grateful for Torger's ability to cheer me up and help me look on the positive side. He had the idea to go out and get a "club" for the steering wheel, which we hope will at least prevent our car from getting stolen tonight if we park under a bright light right outside the hotel entrance. We taped up the window and went over to a nearby Auto Zone for the club. Then, when we went back out to the car, our battery was dead. We'd been having trouble with the starter, but now apparently our battery is about gone, too. But really, what better place to have your battery conk out than in the parking lot of an auto parts store? The Auto Zone guys jumped it for us and advised us to drive around for a little while to make sure it was charged up. So we took a little drive east on Colfax to Watkins, Colorado, which is really just outside Aurora but seems farther. By the time we got back to the hotel, none of it seemed so bad anymore. I'm now busy rearranging tomorrow's appointments with the hospital (Torger) and the dentist (me) so that we can get in and get the car fixed first thing in the morning. Torger says to write that now he's whining for his dinner, but really he gets the non-whiner award for today.