Overdue Thanks

Hey crew,

First let me let you long time readers in on some news. I have recently been approached by several new people that have mentioned they have been reading the blog. Well welcome aboard to all you new comers. I have no idea how many people are reading it, as there is no counter statistics with the free blog service I am using. But obviously it is more than I imagined. Some people have just found it on their own, others have been directed or referred by other readers. Anyway I welcome anybody interested enough in me and my progress to come along for the ride. I will try not to dampen my emotions given the larger audience. You might read things here that you would never hear me say to you, but hey I got to be me. Consider this your view into my personal diary.

Now let me correct some things from the last post…

-I have to wait until the fall to stain the deck as they changed the formula on the treated wood this year. Um, working on that was a pipe dream anyway as you will see in the coming posts about the “recovery vacation week”.

-Jeff was not able to come with Tondi (my sister, and do not ask me where the name came from) as he runs his own construction company and had to meet with the building inspectors 3 days in a row, which makes her coming all the more heroic.

-Cindy went to a Cisco boot camp; many of you might not be familiar with this and could have even read it as a Crisco boot camp. The non technical readers totally did not understand what this was. She was learning about the guts of high tech phone routing for her job, not taking a cooking class for a week.

-I have been told by many honest sources that the haircut picture in the last post was not my most photogenic performance. And I will have to say looking back at it (as of course all of you are now to see how ugly I am) it is pretty bad. Hey I already felt like 10 lbs of shit stuffed into a 5 lb bag that day, and then I just had the joy of shaving my head for Chemo. It was not a shining moment. So I will make the unprecedented move of editing a previous post and change the picture sometime later. So if you are reading this after the change has been made, sorry you missed what the entire ruckus was about.

Next I have to get some huge thanks out to various folks for cool stuff they have done for me that I might not have fit in here before.

My sisters, Tammy, Michelle, and my mom worked on a fantastic quilt for me since I dress like an Eskimo all the time and live wrapped in a blanket at home year around. The quilt has pictures photos all over it from events and time periods in my life, along with family and friends. Around the perimeter are quilted squares with memorable sayings, funny events, and family member names. It is truly a fabulous collection of memorabilia, and quite warm and comfy. I think the intention was to wrap up in this and get a hug from all your favorite things simultaneously. It is so cool and took a tremendous amount of work.

We have had the lawn done a few times now thanks to the folks at Blackbaud. The crew they hired has done a great job, they edge the driveway and planters, and weed whack along the fence each time. The lawn looks great!! They even left us some tomatoes from their garden after the last visit.

Also we got the house cleaning done by the professional maid service, once again thanks to our Blackbaud friends, and the house is cleaner now than the day we moved in. They even got the 16 foot ladder out of the garage and used it to clean the windows 20 feet in the air in our 2 story living room. Way beyond the call of duty. They did a fantastic job. I know we will be using them again.

Back in February there was a very nice surprise for me. A beautiful cherry wood box was delivered to my office and inside were well over 100 cards and letters from friends relatives and well wishers. This was a surprise project that I know many of you participated in. It was great to get it and very emotional to read the contents. I could only read a few each day and then I turned into a blubbering idiot. So it took a while to get through them all. The majority of them were given to me without return addresses, just the card and envelope, but not the original envelope where it was mailed to for assembly. So I did not have many addresses to respond to. That left me in the quandary of how to or if I should respond. Some people would get response and others wouldn’t. If anybody compared notes it might seem as though I snubbed someone on purpose. So I did the easy thing and treated everybody equal. Hell, I don’t know how to say thank you for all that mushy stuff anyway. So it was left kind of hanging out there. I want to take this opportunity to thank all that participated in that project and to let you know it was overwhelming. The emotional support that I have received and continue to receive is miraculous. It could not have come at a better time. It was a home run!!! The case and contents are on display in my living room.

Thanks again.

My sister Tammy pretty much remodeled the top floor of her house to accommodate me during my visits to Duke Medical Center. I am not kidding. She moved out of one bedroom, got rid of all the furniture and fixtures from the room she was moving into. Changed all the furniture around. Remodeled a third room into a closet and is destroying and redoing a bathroom that will finish off her new master suite. This craziness was done much in part to provide me with a comfortable base of operations to attack the Duke campus. I thought she was just doing it because she is a crazy home project do it your selfer, and it was just coincidental I was going to benefit by not sleeping on the couch but be able to take her old room. Later I found out that it was done because of my predicament of being away from home and her trying to make me as comfortable as possible. So my eternal thanks to her and Randy for going through all that to help me out. I really wish you had not, but I know that wild horses could not have stopped you from doing it. I love you both so much. Thanks for opening your home to Cindy and I. Sorry we can’t take more advantage of it (thanks to those bastards at Novartis who killed my study drug), but while we were there it was great. You can bet we will be back for more Popsicles and hot chocolate (my cravings go to extremes of hot and cold too). I tried to get a picture with Tammy and me and all her animals that we love to play with while there, but for some reason try as hard as we may, we could not get the 3 dogs 3 cats 2 birds and 7 fish to hold still for the camera. We had fun trying to get them together though. This is the best picture we came up with after all those attempted round ups.

More thanks to come to others as the story progresses. I have taken enough of your time for now. (Plus it is 4:57 am, better try to take a nap, Cindy is going to kill me, I think I will have biscuits and gravy for breakfast in an hour, mmm yummy delusional insomnia cravings)

All things according to his will.
Ta ta for now,
Greg