I so love North Carolina snow. See?

Here today:



Gone tomorrow:



Well, actually, here Thursday, gone Friday, but you know what I mean. And look what popped up from under that snow at Mom's house:



Buddy's brother is the baseball coach at Tulane, so Chase, Judith, Buddy, and about a hundred or so more enjoyed a party at their house tonight, and many, many more will be enjoying Alumni weekend in New Orleans.

See ya Monday!

Yes, it snowed, and no, Mom didn't make it to Greensboro today, but thankfully, friends of the family lined up to hover over Jacob (and the dog) until Mom can get there tomorrow. I'm sure Jacob is tha-rilled to find out that she's decided to stay over until Monday since Buddy doesn't get in until midnight on Sunday. Better cancel that party, Jacob! She's tough...just ask your Mom!

Judith and Chase made it to New Orleans, and will have a great time with Buddy, Rick, and family. I'm pretty sure they'll watch some sports. I hear there's some sort of big game this weekend?

Judith snapped a picture of this map at the Proton center. It's a little fuzzy, but if you squint just right, you'll see all the pins marking the home cities Proton center patients. There are pins all over the US and scattered around the world, but they're thickest in TX, of course.



One more treatment under his, um, skull, so:
6 down, 14 to go!

Nope, not happy hour here, but I sure got an earful of Judith's "whine"...

Hang on, this gets complicated. Mom's driving to Greensboro tomorrow to take care of Jacob and JD (the dog) so Buddy can fly to New Orleans and Judith and Chase can drive from Houston to see him and his brother's family. But there's a catch. It's supposed to snow/sleet/rain here tomorrow morning. Maybe it'll warm up by noon so Mom can head on over. Maybe it won't. So Judith's whinin...er, concerned that things won't work out. She and Chase really, really need a break and Chase has even agreed to skip Friday's appointment to drive to Houston Thursday night (which means adding a day onto the end, ack!)

So while most in central NC are looking hopefully toward the sky for snow, I suppose I should be on Judith's side and hope for a quick warm up. :: sigh ::

Some convenient circumstance forced Judith to go shopping, but the Target checker apparently put some of her items in someone else's bag. Not good! They're also having very frequent internet connectivity problems. Rough day.

At least Chase's treatment went well!

5 down, 15 to go!

Favor Request from Uncle Mitch.....

"Soli Deo Gloria" is Moving Up The Indie Heaven Radio Charts

Hey y'all

I know that many of you have benn "Giving God The Glory" for Chase's recovery as much as I have.

I'm writing to ask you to vote for "Soli Deo Gloria" (latin for: To God Alone Be the Glory) on Indie Heaven. The song was produced and performed by Micah Tapp.

If you'd like to vote, click on banner below and then..............




Visit Indieheaven Today!


Click on the radio tower
Scroll down to around #76 (or lower hopefully) or so
Find and Click on song title: "Soli Deo Gloria"
Scroll up to my picture at the top (holding Krispy Kreme Donuts)
Click on your choice of stars to rate the song and help it climb (5 stars is great, 1 not so great!)

Judith's favorite song: December Rain is also there at around #45 if you would like to vote for it during the same visit. It is listed under my co-wrtier's name : Eva Wilson

If a song reaches the top 40, it will be listed in the CRW magazine - a Christian Radio magazine that goes out to every Christian radio station in the US. Many radio DJs visit IndieHeaven's site, listen to the music on the IH radio, and contact the artist for a copy to play on their station.

You can vote 1 time/day from a single IP address. (So if you have both work and home computers, you can actually vote twice.) It will be carried on the chart for 90 days.

Thank you for taking the time to listen. :)

Mitch

No news is good news.

Treatment went faster today - just an hour! And every day it seems, they're asked to report earlier. Tomorrow they have to be there by 3:15. Soon they'll have to get up before noon! Heh. Finally, someone in the family who sleeps later than I do!

I guess it's pretty boring in the treatment room, and he reports the radiation smells awful. He doesn't think cologne will help because it comes from within. He can't chew gum because he can't move. Maybe some of these breath strips right before treatment?

It's so boring he's also had plenty of time to count the light beams. There are 21 zaps on one side of his head, then they swap the acrylic forms and brass shields and do 21 on the other side. I guess he can't count the spine stuff unless they prop up a mirror for him.

Hey, if anyone at UNC Hospital is reading this, can you puh-lease get records to send his first MRI? Thankyouverymuch.

And Chase, if I hear that you've groaned and called Judith a loser again for taking pics, this lovely picture of your favorite local restaurant's sign will be replaced by the picture of your messy room.

Or worse. Capisce?



4 down, 16 to go!

Nothing much to report. Go to the proton center, slog through another treatment... At least he's feeling better today and Judith didn't have to drag him kicking and screaming.

Judith sent me a picture of Chase's room, but it looks, of course, like a teenager lives there, so I won't embarrass anyone with that one.

Here's one of him doing schoolwork (or surfing the net, whatever), with the lunch his mom lovingly made for him (which looks just like the lunches Mom used to make for us!)



Here's the waiting area of the Proton Center. The glass area's ground level, and the room's about 2 stories down. Most of the time when Judith's waiting out Chase's treatment, it's just as empty as this picture shows.



A few tidbits from their brochure:

Construction spanned 3 years - 1 to build, and 2 to install and test the equipment.

Two-thirds of the facility was constructed below ground level (yeah, see above picture). In some areas, eight foot concrete walls were constructed for radiation protection.

Before excavation, 85 million gallons of water were removed from the ground (no info on how, dangit)

A 20-story building could be built with the amount of concrete poured for this building. (missing info - how big a footprint for this building?)

When equipment weighing more than 1,600 tons arrived from Hitachi City, Japan at the Port of Houston, it took a 31 truck caravan to bring it to the construction site.

3 down, 17 to go!

Zofran is your friend. Or at least it's Chase's friend. I thought this Proton stuff wasn't supposed to cause nausea, but he was feeling it yesterday. Chemo went smoother than this?!? I tried to tell Judith it was that hot dog she gave him, but she swears it wasn't, so he's back on the meds. Nothing new for poor Chase...

At least they both had a good day today. Social creatures that they are, they very much enjoyed visiting Debbie at her home in Sugarland (and Chase really enjoyed the XBox Live her two sons had set up). Judith met Carol, one more link in the "friend of a friend of a sister-in-law of a friend" connection (did I get that right?) that led Judith and Chase to Debbie. It would be cool to someday get a picture of the whole chain in one place, but I'd probably have to burn a lot of frequent flyer miles to make that work. Or get very proficient with Photoshop.

Chase also seems to have made a local connection at Rice University. So far they're just facebook chatters, but they're trying to go see a movie or something sort of college like. It would be nice if he had some local college games to go to, and some friends to hang out with, so go Chase! But don't forget your Mom!

W00T! for reaching 10,000 visitors! Sitemeter's been running up to 2 days behind lately, so I didn't think I'd actually be able to see who hit the magic number, but if I'm reading it right, I think our lucky winner was Memaw!

Now off to think up a prize...