Category Archives: Opinions

Friday – October 10, 2025

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There’s a little turmoil regarding Diane’s visit to Good Sam. Today was the day she was supposed to see her primary care, Dr. Ly, and I think she did, but she changed her annual visit from today to next week. I suspect that’s so he can address the results of her liver biopsy scheduled for next Tuesday.

Before I get too deep into this narrative I need to tell you that what I share is strictly here-say because I don’t spend a lot of time in the room with Diane. That’s not because I don’t want to be there, but because I actually have things to take care of at home. That’s mainly Max oriented.

Speaking of Max … he’s really depressed that Diane isn’t home every day. That’s not normal. He likes ‘normal’.

Jennie took some things to her Mom early this morning and has been with her all day. She’s totally involved with what’s happening with her Mom so if you want the real story, talk to her. She called a while ago to let me know that she wouldn’t be coming home this afternoon as planned (yesterday) because of decisions/suggestions made by the physical therapist(s) she visited. Mainly, she is not to be left alone, ever, and she needs a hospital bed that doesn’t lay flat. This is because of the cancer intrusion into her spine and pelvis. Being alone is a danger because if she falls, something’s going to break.

Normally you’d think Good Old Jerrie could serve that purpose, but because I fall on my face once in a while, I’m not a good candidate to address her needs. I understand.

So, they are keeping her in the hospital until arrangements can be made for her home care team to be identified. Our lives have been changed with the introduction of cancer into our lives.

That brings another thought to my mind. Diane has already had, and beat, cancer about 50 years ago when she had cervical, and uterine cancer. She beat cancer then and has no doubt about beating it again this time.

Your prayers will help. Let’s work to get her home and Max out of his slump. He’s so sad.

I stripped the bed and washed the sheets in anticipation of Diane’s homecoming today before Jennie called to let me know that’s not gonna happen. Max was listening and got really upset.

Because of Max’s exuberant nature, Diane needs to gather all her strength to deal with his welcome home mode. Should be exciting.

Not so normal after all . . .

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8 – number of days remaining until the liver biopsy.

Today is October 4th, so May The Fourth Be With You, My last post, on September 27th, was a little bit optimistic regarding Diane’s energy level, but playing the “Waiting Game” has proven to be a real downer. Her energy levels quickly evaporated while doing the laundry and it’s evident that I need to take the reins regarding that. All she will have to do is “point” and “direct”. One would think I could follow simple rules, right? Well, doing laundry is way more complicated than picking some random dial settings and adding soap to the machine. Consequently, my job shifted from washing to drying and folding. I’m pretty good at that. All I have to do is remember to check the drying once in a while;

Now, about the waiting part . . .

Frankly, it sucks, big time. Diane said the scheduler told her he needed to carve out a 5-hour slot for the procedure. The first one available was on October 14. The reason for the 5 hours is unclear to me but is apparently needed in the event Diane hemorrhages if she moves too much after the procedure. That’s all I know. Then, there’s something about the need for her to set aside some of her extra blood in case that happens,

It’s entirely possible that I know nothing about that which I report. Yeah, that’s more likely to be true. So, let’s presume that I know nothing. I suspect the majority of those who read this already have that presumption. That’s OK. I even encourage that.

Today was a milestone of note for Diane. She ate an entire hamburger! Honest. she also ate some french fries. If she can repeat that fairly often, she will improve quickly and work on beating some odds. That doesn’t surprise me at all because she’s already said, “We’ll beat this!”. We’re working on that.

Getting Back to Normal, Kinda

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Diane slept through the night and woke up hungry. That made me happy. But, she woke up before me, probably by a couple of hours.

I made us a 4-egg omelette littered with bacon bits. I got some of it to look a little bit like an omelette until I tried to turn it over and it quickly turned in part of an omelette and the rest was just a scrambled eggs. Thankfully she thought it was good, so I was happy. It was the first real food she’d eaten in about 3 days. Me, too, in a way. I’ve been eating Cheerios because they’re easy to fix. Oh, I think I had oatmeal somewhere in there. I think it was pretty good, too.

Diane received a call from Dr. McKenzie this morning, I think. She probably told me what it was about, but her explanation was in Latin so I’m not sure what it meant. I can say, that she’s perked up awesomely. I think she’s almost ready for a trip to the beach but I’m not going to suggest it. She’ll let me know when she’s ready.

After a short nap Diane got up and got busy with her laundry. I’m out of underwear and I embarrass her when we go out into the world. So, for the rest of the day I’ll sit in my chair while she gets things done. BTW, all this activity on her part was self inflicted. She said the doc told her to slowly get active so “slowly” to her involves laundry. I’ll check in later to see how it went.

Surgery

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Today’s the day. I’m alone in the surgery waiting room, waiting for my turn to go sit with Diane while she waits in another room down the hallway. Jennie is with her right now. What we’re all waiting for is 1500, when the surgery is supposed to happen. Right now it’s 1300, so we have two hours to go before the procedure begins.

We left the house at 1100. Jennie drove Mom’s car because Diane doesn’t really trust me much on the road any more. I suggested she might consider having my driver’s license revoked although I do come in handy for making short trips to a store for various reasons. Other than that, my usefulness regarding transportation is about zero since Diane does it all.

On our last trip she piloted the pickup everywhere we went. All I had to do was park it when we arrived, unhook the trailer when we stopped for multiple days, and hook it back up again when it was time to leave. Since we decided to sell the trailer, that means the truck can go, too. Then all she has to do is figure out how to drive the bus.

I’m really not alone in the waiting room. There are other folks scattered around the room, but we don’t talk. That’s OK. Talking to strangers isn’t what interests me at this time.

Since I’m under strict orders to mind my diet, I chose to go eat lunch around 1500. Jennie will join me after Diane takes Diane to the operating room. By the time she got to me, I was done eating, so I just kept her company while she ate her soup. It was pretty hot stuff and she burned various parts of her mouth by testing it to see if it was ready to eat. She finally got it down. Then we mosied beach to the original waiting room to await the end of surgery and recovery. I sent Jennie in to be with her in recovery but I was tricked when she asked for my presence. I was happy to go because I had seen for only a few minutes this day and I missed her.

She was way perkier that I thought she would be. Surgery isn’t one of her favorite activities. She reminded me that anesthesia is what scares her the most, not the actual surgery. That’s a story for another time.

She improved quickly and successfully peed for the nurse. That was the goal for getting out of the hospital. Once that was done I helped her get dressed for her exit, then we headed home. The nurse called the parking valet so he could get the car to the front door so we wouldn’t have to wait. The recovery room crew told me everyone leaves that area in a wheelchair, but she failed to include the part about “patients only.” They didn’t bring me one so I had to walk.

Jennie drove us safely home and Max was ecstatic to see her. Surprisingly, he was gentle with her.

She didn’t stay up long after getting home and Jennie need to gather up her children and get them home. Then it was just me and Diane. I was so very happy she got to come home, as was she.

After she went to bed, around 1900 or so, I stayed up a little longer hoping she would go right to sleep. I don’t know what time it was, but at was ready for bed when I finally called it.

Apparently she went right to sleep because she left a bunch of lights on. I should have checked sooner, right?

That was it for the day.

We Have Cancer!

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For the past 5 years or so Diane has been dealing with what she calls “polka dot lungs”. That’s what all of the CAT scan images she’s seen look like to her, so that name sticks. Her doctor kept putting off biopsy’s because it didin’t appear that the polka dots weren’t getting bigger and the danger of performing a biopsy wasn’t justified because of the biggest one’s position, just behind her heart.

The we took our trip round Oregon which essentially ended in Fossil, Oregon where she visited the Emergency Room for what appeared to be a bad kidney infection. She was treated for that with a dose or antibacterial meds that seemed to take care of it. Briefly.

When we got home on September 18th, she was able to see her doctor who ordered a CAT Scan with Contrast. Doing this opened a more specific world for the polka dots. Turns out they were spots of metastasized cancer from a tumor on her left ureter, we think. The PET Scan may reveal a different source. Regardless, it’s cancer, and she’s littered with it.

This morning, at 0945 we checked Diane in to the Nuclear Imaging department of Good Sam Hospital. This is something she’s been striving to get for a while now. She saw her urologist a few days ago and received conflicting info on what needs to be done.

She was originally scheduled to have a PET Scan today but after the doctor met with her he thought the next step was to give her a stent in her left ureter next to the kidney to stop the severe pain she’s been experiencing. But, the PET Scan was never cancelled so we acted on the knowledge we had. No followup info was provided regarding the stent surgery until she was taken to perform the PET Scan. It was the right choice as her doctor spoke to her on her way to the test then came back and talked with me. Turns out they had hopes to piggy back the stent surgery after the PET Scan today but instead they will do it tomorrow afternoon.

As I type, she is getting the PET Scan done and it’s supposed to take about an hour. Then, there’s another 30-minute part that has a name I cannot remember.

1050 – The first hour of the PET Scan is over and I’ve not heard anything from the nurses so I’m putting this away until I get some news.

Diane finally finished around noonish so we could go home. She was in a lot of pain and hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday,

I fixed us two can’s of soup; vegetable beef for me, and chicken noodle for her, I ate all of mine, she barely touched her’s. She did eat a yogurt which pleased me because she needed something for her stomach to churn on.

It’s now 2130 and she still hasn’t eaten anything but that yogurt. Neither of us can wait for tomorrow so she can get the stent installed and make the pain stop. I’m helpless with this and cannot tell you how brave she is to tolerate the pain knowing what’s causing it.

I’m stopping here. Pray for her surgery tomorrow to be a success,

The Dalles

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Up early due to inability to sleep due to the fact that Diane was unable to sleep due to her damaged back. That sounds complicated, I know, but it really isn’t. Her back isn’t damaged in the normal way because she didn’t fall down. It seems to be related to the medicine she received in Fossil, Oregon that was supposed to help with a bacterial infection she sprung up with. For a while she thought it was just back pain from doing something strenuous. The meds helped for a bit but we were both fooled by her uncanny ability to tolerate pain at a level only professional atheletes can endure and still function quite normally.

She seemed to be getting better as we get closer to home, but her “tough guy” attitude failed causing her to pick a wiser solution that ended with us terminating our last night in The Dalles. Instead, we packed up all our doodads, bit our farewells to Cliff, Susie. Terry, and Carolann and hit the freeway.

You may recognize that his is the first mention of Terry, and Carolann because our traveling partners to this point were Cliff and Susie. Terry, and Carolann joined us in The Dalles to join us in our triumphant re-entry into the Gresham area before venturing on home to St. Helens.

Before leaving last Wednesday morning, I took a long walk with Max, around the parking lot we were using for an RV Park. He was a little confused because he was expecting us to spend one more day on road. I don’t know why he was upset because all he does when we’re driving is sleep.

Diane did ALL of the driving on this trip. She insisted and I wasn’t inclined to argue about it. My job was to get the trailer parked at every RV Park we visited. She did all the rest, and she did it in an excellent manner.

It was good to get home, even though we enjoyed the trip. We made more memories, and none of them were the result of me falling on my face again. The last time that happened was on August 30th. Since then all the wounds healed, the scabs all fell off, and I didn’t even get a small bruise from the trama I suffered. I found that lack of bruising to be unfair. Most people who take a blow to the nose usually get black eyes. Not me. I attribute that to the fact that I have O+ blood. I’m pretty sure I shared this photo already but it’s worth another look.

Once home, Diane got to talk with Dr. Ly, her favorite, and he started her on a path that ultimately led us to the emergency room at Good Sam Hospital. They poked and prodded her, took anothe Cat Scan and ordered more internal pictures for them to study.

There’s one more trip to the hospital next week for the additional internal photos before they can identify what’s going on. They sent us home with a script for Oxy (which she won’t take), and something else for something I can’t pronounce.

My job, until next week, is to keep her from going crazy with laundry, emptying the trailer, and getting everything off all the counters and tables – all the stuff I brought in from the trailer. I got it pretty much emptied yesterday. It wasn’t her choice for me to scatter the stuff all over the house, but I was resolute to keep her from interfering with my methods of dispursing all the bags I filled. There’s a bunch of stuff I left on the patio, and even more that I added to the overflowing garage.

I’ll provide more news when I get it.

Things Change

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By the time you read this we will be halfway home. As I sit here, thinking, I have absolutely no idea where halfway might be. But, we’ll be heading that way some time this morning.

The mornings here in Baker City have turned frigid and Max doesn’t like that much because he’s so short and his stomach hairs get wet in tall grass. He hasn’t complained openly about that, but it’s evident in he way he looks over his glasses at us that reveals the truth. He also misses all his squirrel friends in his back yard at home.

Yesterday we visited a museum in town that looked promising, and it was. The biggest draw was a gold nugget that weighs about 15 bs, seriously. It’s huge. They have it, and lots of other nuggets on display behind 1 inch glass vaults. The big nugget is valued at around 11-hundred-seventy-five-million $$, a worthy sum for something you could put in your pocket. Surely it would hasten your pants to fall to the floor should you attempt to carry it that way.

There are many more photos of this venture, but I need to get this thing into a current status. Working from behind wears me out, and Diane’s ill so we needed to make plans for heading west to home instead of north to Hell’s Canyon. Yes, we’re calling it quits for this trip.

Diane had an infection that I may have mentioned, and took a bunch of pills to kill bacteria. It cleared up the urinary tract issue, but apparently killed bacteria required to help digest stuff. That resulted in severe abdominal pain. Since she’s the driver on this trip we pooled our thought with the Daron’s and chose to depart this morning with a new destination.

While packing up, Max lounged between the trailer wheels to ensure he wouldn’t be left behind.

This is the dog run area that Max will miss when we’re gone. It’s nine acres of off leash freedom.

The original plan was to turn right on Highway 82 in La Grande and head for Elgin for the night, then move on toward Hell’s Canyon tomorrow morning. Instead, we turned left on Highway 82 in La Grande with a pause in Summerville (population 135) to find Cliff’s Grandpa’s Grave then continued on H-82 to Elgin for the night. Susie found the grave no problem.

The jaunt to Elgin from Summerville took about 15 minutes and it was fairly easy to find the Ha-Wa-Nu RV Park. It’s located on the banks of the Grand Ronde River. That seems odd to me because the Grand Ronde tribe owns the Spirit Mountain Casino. We pass it on our way to the beach once in a while. It’s odd because we’ve been traveling around in Oregon for many days now and all the cars have Oregon plates and we recognize names of places we’ve been before. Normally, when we travel, it involves many states instead of just one.

The end of this trip was the Umatilla RV Park on the Columbia River. It’s very pleasant here and ALL of the grass is green. Max loves it, as do we. After dinner with the Daron’s, we rested well in preparation for our next leg to The Dalles. Dusty is looking forward to that.

Prairie City

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We left John Day at the stroke of noonish and made the “grueling” drive to Paradise City where we will spend just one night. The drive was 13 miles, but it was on our list, so we stopped. It’s a really nice facility but right off hand I cannot remember much about it. My mind doesn’t seem to retain anything for a useful amount of time. It’s there, then it’s gone.

So, I’m just going to share what’s in my head right now.

First, we mad it to Farewell Bend State Recreation camp ground located a few miles from where Cliff’s Grandpa used to live. It’s a small town of 450 residents and has no gas stations. While he and Susie toured the town, Diane drove us to Nampa for a visit with Jim, Donna, Steffani, and Bob. Diane was excited about the drive because once you cross the border into Idaho, the speed limit rises to 80 MPH. It gave her an opportunity to burn out the carbon she’s been accumulating in the engine.

It was a nice visit. Short, but nice, and we got lunch!

Before leaving Nampa for our return trip “home”, we stopped at Costco to fuel up. The last time we didn’t do that and ran over 125 miles on an empty tank in the motor home. True story. We drove all the way to La Grande. The next morning was our checkout day so I had the pleasure of emptying our holding tanks on that way out of the park. It took a while and I’m happy to report that I didn’t spill even one little drop, then we went up the side road to Huntington to visit a museum.

There was a lot of interesting things inside, most interesting the curator who grew up in Huntington and knew where Cliff’s Grandpa lived (2 blocks from the museum). I think she remembered the color of the house, too. She knows the history of Huntington.

The railroad was something that touched everyone’s lives in some way, as did river traffic on the Snake River. There’s information about the time a steamboat captain sails his way through Hell’s Canyon.

The rest of the items are typical for a small town, except for this guy.

It’s not often that you run across a gun-toting preacher.

The next stop was at the “A Frame RV Park” in Baker City. It was a fairly easy drive. Actually, it was very easy for me because Diane is doing all of the driving. The only thing I do is park the truck and trailer on arrival, and hook it all back up when it’s time to leave. Easy peasy, right?

We checked in for a 2-day stay so relaxed after getting things connected then the next morning we took a trip to the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center that resides on a hill just outside of Baker City. Actually, it was just 4-5 miles from our current residence.

This was an excellent stop. The displays and stories are awesome. We stayed long enough to be the last wagon remaining in the parking lot. If you’re ever in Baker City, this is a must to visit.

On the way back to the ‘ranch’, we were assaulted with a rock hitting the windshield thrown by a little car going the other way, The glass chipped and cracked and will require replacement. We decided to celebrate this assault by eating dinner out at the Latitude Forty Five restaurant. Great people, excellent food.

Bsck at the A Frame Park, I took Max for a walk in the 9-acre dog park they have. He really liked the freedom and he met many congenial dogs.

I got the TV working by searching local channels. It’s almost as good as Dish TV but there are only 66 channels. We did, however, get to watch AGT for the first time on this trip.

This day, our last one here in BC, we spent looking around town for thrift stores and cheap places to shop.

Tomorrow we leave for Elgin hoping they can accommodate the two of us for a couple of days. From there we’ll be going to Hell’s Canyon.

Heading Easterly

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Our trip took a negative turn while stopped in Fossil when Diane decided it was time to address the pain in her back and the suspect color of her urine. As it turned out, she was able to see a doctor right here in Fossil. That was a minor miracle. She got first class treatment, a diagnosis of a serious kidney infection, and a medical subscription delivered to a pharmacy in Condon, just up the road a ways. While waiting for her we toured Fossil (it didn’t take very long) and Cliff drove the pickup. I would have drove, but my wallet is somewhere in a USPS truck on the way to Nampa. Jennie found it and sent it to Steffani so we could pick it up when we visit them in a few days. Until then, it’s against the law for me to drive anything.

Once the doctor released Diane, we picked her up and headed to Condon. It’s 19 miles of wobbly road from Fossil. Our destination was the Murrays’ Pharmacy. We found it with no problem but had to wait a bit because the doctor pushed the wrong button, apparently, and the script was sent to Boardman. I suppose we could have driven there to get it, but had we done that we may as well have gone home from there. So, we waited.

Once the meds were dispersed, it was time for lunch so we chose one of he two available facilities. Sadly, they wouldn’t let Max in so we headed to the other place. But, the young lady who ran the craft store next door offered to babysit Max while we ate. Her name is Jennifer.

She was the highlight of the trip as far as I’m concerned. Very nice person. The food wasn’t remarkable as advertised. I think my judgement was swayed by my choice of a breakfast burrito. I had to pick the innards from a list and I didn’t choose well. Everyone else was OK with what they got.

From there we wove our way back to Fossil and spent our last night at the fairgrounds then hit the road again, heading for Grant County Fairgrounds in John Day. It seemed like a long trip, mainly because it went well into the afternoon. We’re normally hooked up at the next site by noon.

Now it’s almost 1100 and Diane is plotting the next stages of our journey. According to the calendar, the next stop is Farewell Bend State Park in Huntington, Oregon. Cliff lived part of his life in Huntington so there’s a reason for that stop. While there Diane and I plan to visit Idaho to get my wallet from Steffani. Then I’ll be legal and can go visit beer joints.

Before leaving John Day, Cliff and Susie are going to visit the Kim Choi Chuck State Heritage center here in town. It’s a pharmacy place from the 1800’s that was quite popular. I may have spelled it wrong, so look it up. Cliff is already gone because the center has RV parking out front. As plus is that they have guided tours and the entire experience is free. Pretty cool.

Here’s what I had for lunch yesterday in Mitchell. A really good hamburger and some apostrophe French fries. Never had those kind of fries before.

Diane said I should mention a little more about Mitchell so I will. It’s just a little divot along Highway 26 unlike the places we’re used to seeing along #26 in the Portland area. It’s. It’s a little confusing to me at times because here we are in a totally known part of the world and everyone has Oregon plates and we traveling the same roads that we do at home. It just doesn’t seem right to me at times. Another road we share is Highway 30.

The place we ate at was called Tiger Town which is affiliated with a like named brewery.

We ate outside under that red awning because they wouldn’t let Max inside.

Vacation Prep

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What! Another vacation? You barely got over the last one. Gotta go, though, because it’s on the calendar.

First there’s an injury report I must share.

Prepping for this trip involved replacing static shelves in the pantry for ones that conveniently move. During this process I purchased a small job site table saw so I could make sawdust. It works just great and I can actually pick it up to move it around.

That leads me to the first injury. No, I didn’t saw my fingers off. Instead of moving the saw out of my way I attempted to carry a bunch of stuff around it and got all tangled up in power cords and a 5-gallon bucket. The end result was me falliing to the cement floor, scraping my right shin bone on the bucket, and slowing down the bulk of my descending body with my left arm (the bad one). The end result was a reinjury of my left shoulder and a sprain to my left wrist. Kinda minor, really, but it hurt. Not enough to keep me from finishing the job, but it hurt.

The next injury occurred yesterday when I was trying to un-wind Max from the mess he made with his tie-out cable. Unfortunately, I had him tethered at the front of the car port which gives him access to the side yard, accessible via a wonky set of stone stairs. There are only, like 3 steps, but missing just one of them can cause damage. Check it out.

When I landed, it was face first, or at least a very close second for my face plants this year. The injury report I initially received from my body was a broken nose because it was that kind of pain. Struggling to my hands and knees, before Diane could see me at my worst, there was a considerable amount of blood escaping from a few places that stopped my fall. So, I chose “broken nose” to report that as the cause of what happened when my body made contact. Diane heard me hit the ground and, as she’s prone to do upon hearing unfamiliar thuds, asked “what happened?” Not being fully in charge of my senses at this point resulted in me reporting, “I think I broke my nose.”

She found me quickly, but without panic, and asked if I needed a doctor. I waitied to see if I might start spurting blood from some other area of my body. I didn’t, so deemed that I was fine. “No doctor needed.”

I found it interesting that she thought it would be a good idea to take a couple of photos before I cleaned myself up. Her only request was for me to brush the yard debris off my front side. I was a mess. I had to lean back as far as I could, as I walked to the bathroom, so blood wouldn’t drip on the floor. In hindsight, I could just as easily pulled up my t-shirt to staunch the flow, but that was not one of the possibilities provided as I headed to the bathroom.

I was thankful for my glasses, which blocked yard stuff from plowing into my eyes, but they bit the dust and will no longer be useful to see properly. So they will be retired with honors, replaced by an older prescription that were handy.

After that last paragraph our journey had begun and we are now well into it. Last night we stayed at the county fair grounds in John Day, Oregon. Prior to that we’ve spent a couple of days at the Peyton Dam RV Park near Madras, then a couple at the Wheeler County Fair Grounds in Fossil, then last night in the Grant County Fair Grounds in John Day. We’d like to stay a couple more days here, but all the sights are reserved through the weekend. We were lucky to get a site last night.

More later as the journey progresses.

Until then, here’s a sunset from Fossil for you;