Two long hard days..... in These titles mean nothing.

… and perhaps a third tomorrow.

Monday was the day Joana went for chemo and a discussion with her doctor. He wants to change her chemo. She is on three medications = I don’t know their names. He wants to cut back to one and then cut the dosage on that one. It’s the one she gets by pump so that means less time for the infusions but it still means that on the third day she goes to the local hospital to have the pump removed. He wants to do that for two months and see what happens. He’s always happy with her performance/her tolerance for the medication.

There is the option for having it done in college town which is 20 miles away instead of the city which is 50 miles away. But.... having it done closer would mean two trips - one for labs, one for chemo. He tells us carefully too that the medicine we would get at the nearer town would cost more than we get in the city - where they get a better deal from the manufacturer because they use more of it. Also if we keep going to the city (every two weeks) we can see him, and he is a very nice and capable man. So I think we will keep making the 50 mile trip instead of making two twenty mile trips.

While Joana was waiting for her chemo to be mixed and installed Jim and I went out for lunch - Joana gets lunch while she waits. When we got back she was finished and sitting by the main entrance waiting for us. That was good except we all forgot the return box for the pump and there wasn’t an appointment for removing the pump. We didn’t realize that until we were half way home. I mean to call today to try to fix it but I forgot and I was gone most of today. I guess I can call tomorrow even if tomorrow is the day she has the pump taken out.

When we got home yesterday, I went back to town to write my thing for the writers’ group and print it out and get some groceries. Including Tylenol for Joana’s sore back and pulled muscles.... even though she shops for herself twice a week.

Then today, I took her food and went to town and bought gas and picked up my companion writer and headed to the tiny town the writers group meets. It was a beautiful sunny day with sparkles in the frost/ice in the trees. The writers were short some but still a nice group. We had written about belief. Interesting to me was that several of the stories had ghosts in them. Several of the people believe they have lived in haunted houses. I’ve never noticed ghosts or hauntings myself. Unless Joana comes back - I would not put it past her.

On the way home we had lunch at a pizza place - we’ve been having a hard time finding a place to eat between our town and the writers town but this turned out pretty good. It was Taco Tuesday and we had a young male waiter who said he was a replacement from the bull pen. Three tvs were on to the impeachment trial prep - interestingly enough for a small town in Iowa, two were tuned to CNN and one to CBS. My companion said her husband watches Fox. We carefully skirted politics.

Jim had a dental appointment today. He also got Joana’s handicapped parking tags to hang from the rear view mirror. We finally appear to have jumped through the correct hoops. There are two and I think we will put one in Joana’s truck and keep one for the Buick. We will not cheat. I promise.

By the time I remembered calling about Joana’s appointment and the missing box for her pump - it was too late for business hours. So I will do that right away tomorrow morning. The pump goes in a labeled plastic box when it is removed from the port on her chest and then the box and pump are picked up by a currier and returned to the city hospital/clinic. They (or we) forgot one other time and the local hospital can put it in a plastic bag and send it back that way too. But we still need an appointment for have it done. It’s probably just a formality - after all it’s a hospital and they’ve been doing it for her every two weeks for going on six months, so it should be ok. It’s just something else to do/to think about/fun fun till her daddy took the t-bird away.

I have an appointment with Jacki with an I from the Klobuchar campaign tomorrow to discuss the caucus. It’s at 10 am at the library. This caucus deal is getting old. It might be fun, but it’s full of repetitious detail.

Phone calls.
- Jim had one last night asking polling questions and then asking if he wanted to be interviewed by the NYT. He said it would be ok as long as they didn’t want to film him.
- I had another poll tonight that was obviously pro-Trump. I was asked questions like: Do I support abortion up until birth. Did I support socialism/communism over capitalism? Was I in favor of totally open borders? And did I want to take everyone’s guns away? These impossible questions were being asked by a pleasant young woman who told me I had the option to refuse to answer specific question and I refused to answer the worsts ones. I told her I was sympathetic to her job - and wished her a more conservative person for her next call.
- I had my Jacki call described above.
- And a call telling me Mrs. Biden will be in college town tomorrow at their headquarters on main street next door to the bar/restaurant where LBH and I had cheesecake on our great tour of NE IA and the tri-state area. I could go over after the library meeting with Jacki, I suppose.

My current caucus strategy - that I tell everyone who shows any interest at all is to support Amy Klobuchar on the first vote. She’s my kids in Minnesota’s US Senator, she’s a scrapper from the Iron Range, she stood (or sat, I can’t remember which) on the grass at the Minnesota State Fair on the hottest, most humid day a British Columbian ever had to endure, and answered questions from the audience for a public radio show - and did a really good job.
I doubt she will be viable - meaning she will not have 15% of the vote, so then I will move to Biden’s group. I really want a woman president but I’m not a fan of Warren. I’m sorry, forgive me. I believe in real Democrats who know who they are from an early age.

Ok, that’s it. Thanks for bothering to read this collection of twaddle and drivel.

Have a good tonight and tomorrow day everyone. Be kind. Have fun.

Last updated January 22, 2020