T+93: The Things one does for one's Children

I'm struggling to provide you with a measure of today. On the one hand, measured on a scale of a day, it was not a bad day. Kay has had much less pain today, probably because she's now getting systematic pain control. As a result she has been happier and more active. Right this minute she's got TMF on the TV and is doing a word puzzle. She slept a lot this morning and has been quite active this afternoon. Chatting with Aunty Alison & Uncle Dom in Australia. Oma (Marion's Mum) then came to visit with Oom Wim (Marion's Uncle) and we went to the Theatre square (this hospital is brilliant w.r.t. facilities) and we flew (Guy & Glen's) helicopter. And we showed Oma Mama's birthday present from Daddy. Kay spent around 2 hours talking to Oma & Oom Wim, etc. When they left she fell into a deep sleep for an hour or so. Great!

Measured on a scale of longer than one day, everything remains the same. The BK virus symptoms remain the same, Kay is still tried by nasty thoughts and we're still locked up in this room with no view of the future. Still, this remains a challenge in shortening one's horizons.

Story for today: at 17:30 Kay told me that she was hungry. Her stomach had rumbled a whole three times! She wanted to eat something. She doesn't need to say that to me more than once. So I asked her what she wanted. "The pasta that was made by Aunt Audry's friend that one time when we visited them in France" was the answer. Since I wasn't there, that's a wish that's a bit difficult for me to fulfill, even ignoring the limited ingredients available in her hospital room. So I asked if there was anything nearer to home that met with her desire. "Penne Pasta with Butter", was the answer. So I checked with the ward. Sorry, not possible the response. I checked with Marion, maybe there was pasta at the McD house? No, but there is a fresh pizza Margarita in the McD fridge. Kay decided that this was good enough, so the deal was struck.

I had previously saved a pizza box from New York Pizza (by now I'm a volume customer) for just this moment. So I grabbed my box and hurried over to the McD house. I pre-warmed the oven to 200C and then made sure that the pizza was well cooked. Since the weather has cooled off, I took the opportunity to change into long trousers. Shorts will be a bit chilly later when Kay is asleep and I head back to my own bed. The pizza timer pinged. I cut it up into Kay sized pieces, packed it in my saved pizza box and practically ran back to the ward. It's a 10-15 minute walk each way (big hospital), but I guess I broke some kind of record getting to Kay's room.

I walked in, announcing that the pizza boy had arrived and hoping that Kay was still hungry - by this time it's 18:15. She happily took the box out of my hands, opened the lid, selected a slice, took a bite, and...   put that piece back, selected another piece, took a bite and... announced that it was far too heavy for her tummy. In the meantime I was trying to cool down, seems like the decision to put on long trousers was a bad one, the sprint from the McD house had left me rather too warm considering the temperature in the hospital. I told Kay that it was fine if she didn't want to eat the pizza but two mouse-sized bites could not have overloaded her tummy. I said that the feeling of heaviness was in her head. She tried another bite, but obviously it wasn't going down. Ok, no problem.

I took the pizza off her and tried a bite myself. Frankly it was tasteless supermarket heavyweight cardboard crap and I guess that if we want Kay to eat we'll have to make sure that we offer her food with some kind taste and that isn't just an excuse to shove calories in one's mouth, which can be the only explaination for the existance of this stuff. I mean, who the hell eats this kind of trash anyway? It's even blown off by post Chemo, post Radiotherapy patients - peoeple who are known to have no sense of taste at all.

I mentioned last week that I'd been working on a project for a while. I'm now able to reveal what the project was: Mama's birthday present. I have made Marion four photo albums, one for each one of the girls and one of them together. The photos date from the start of digital photography in the Howe Household, thus the end of 1999. I have put days of work into these albums, I've classified all 20,000 photos in my collection and then sorted out the best ones for albums. I've then edited them and finally produced the albums and had them printed. I started this process during Kay's bone marrow transplant period and have been working on them ever since. Unfortunately the company I chose to print them required 7 days for processing, so the albums arrived late, Wednesday to be precise. I picked them up from home yesterday and gave them to Marion in the evening. I think that she was pleased with them. You can see the photos that make up the albums at www.flickr.com/photos/howefamilypics. They are in various "Sets". The "Favourites" set holds just the ones that I like best.

A week tomorrow it's Kay's birthday. I guess that will be celibrating it in Room 13. This poses a problem: do we buy Kay presents that focus on her confinement or do we buy things that encourage her to look forward? She has wanted a Mountain Bike for a while and I had promised her one. Seems like a good idea for a birthday present, but then what's the message that Kay will get if we wheel a new bike into Room 13? I think Marion & I need to think this out fairly carefully.

That said, I already have a "Perfume Making" set and a "Soap Making" set, which are things that she can do here. I've also got a "Bomb Making" set (from a company called Insha'Allah Inc. They also have a set called "Make your own Microbes" that temptingly describes itself as providing "All the fun of The Andromeda Strain in a Box", but I think that we have enough microbes already), but I guess that this will need to wait until she's home, certainly given the way that she's feeling about Room 13 right now.

I took another one of the short term anti-anxiety tablets last night and for the first time in months I slept beyond 6.30am. In fact I woke at 8:45 and then had to scrape my tired ass out of bed in a hurry to get over to Kay before she started complaining. So if I'm late for work tomorrow, you know why. Probably going to have to think about setting an alarm for the first time in living memory.

Anyway, these are the last words that I'm going to write from my beautiful new Sony Vaio Z1 laptop. Sony know how to design a fantastic machine but they simply do not know how to support it. In spite of having bought an on-site, next day warranty with the system, Sony refuse to honour it and insist that to get my 3G modem fixed I have to send the Z1 back to them for a week or more.

I have no idea how they expect me to work c.q. survive without a laptop for a week - and bare in mind that this is a laptop targetted at busy executives. In the meantime we have argued with them and they have agreed that we can return the Z1.

I'm heart broken, it's a fantastic laptop with a beautiful screen. I did all the work on Marion's photo albums on the Z1's Adobe RGB screen and the (colour) results are great. But I cannot work with a laptop that doesn't have next day, on-site service. So I have ordered the Dell equivalent. Everytime I buy a computer from somewhere else than Dell I live to regret it. So the Dell laptop may not have such a great screen and may not be as well put together as the Sony, but it comes STANDARD with a 3 year next day, on-site warranty, included in the price. And we know from experience that Dell honour their warranties.

No brainer, Sony you damned IDIOTS. I hope you read this (or the complaints I've put on Facebook).