oakley swims to the rescue

then, oakley reconsiders and heads back to shore.

watching the lake

but mommy, this rock could be delicious

evie holds a cicada

getting ready for more play-doh playing

turns out lake champagne is BYOB

outie

check out that belly button

best seat in the house

"it is unclear to me why my sister finds this play-doh so fascinating"

back from a long weekend in vermont with more pictures than you can shake a stick at

julie arranged for some great weather along with a fantastic campsite for us to celebrate aaron's 30th birthday this past weekend. i feel that my nephew could definitely qualify for posting on cute overload.

mmmmmmm...??

one of the kids had this at camp. i thought the hot dogs looked particularly unappealing and i had to get a pair of scissors to open the buns- what kid brings scissors to the cafeteria? i looked up the nutrition information online. seems like this lunchable not only looks gross, it truly is gross.

OSCAR MAYER
LUNCHABLES - FUN PACK - ALL STAR HOT DOGS W/CAPRI SUN 3 CT 4.1 oz

Serving Size 1pk Servings per package 1

Amount Per Serving

Calories

450

Calories from Fat

170

% Daily Value*

Total Fat 19g		29 %
Saturated Fat 7g		35 %
Cholesterol 30mg		10 %
Sodium 860mg		36 %
Total Carbohydrate 64g		21 %
Dietary Fiber 1g		4 %
Sugars 40g
Protein 10g

Vitamin A 2 %	Vitamin C 6 %
Calcium 10 %	Iron 15 %

truck o'pipes

the cutest thing i have ever had on my thumb

i wonder how you get something posted on cute overload (which, thanks to randy, is now my #1 time-waster at work).

home again, home again

after saying goodbye to all the nurses yet again, matt and i headed home to farm street around 8:00 tonight. although he is dreading the possibility that, while home, he might get sick again and have to spend another ridiculously long night in the emergency room, he was quite happy to settle in to his own bed tonight and was asleep before his head hit the pillow. the drain came out yesterday and matt will be on antibiotics for 10 days. still no word on when he will now start chemo- probably not this monday- maybe next tuesday after labor day. konrad and jen sent him some lovely flowers.

another day at the hospital

it looks like matt will be staying on farr nine for at least one and maybe two more days. he'll be treated with some potent antibiotics to combat the infection that seems to be thriving at the site of the former fluid-filled sac. it is also possible that the drain will be removed tomorrow, as it appears that almost all the liquid is gone. the doctors finally let matt eat around 1:00pm, after i embarrassed him by raising holy hell with his nurse and his social worker. however, my hissy fit earned him the ok to start consuming and i was delighted. unfortunately, the only thing that really sounded good to him this afternoon was sweet-tarts. he ate half a package while the baked cod he ordered from food services quickly became cold and unappetizing on his bedside table. although you might think we'd be almost out of optimism by now, we're sure he's going to be feeling better soon and won't have to go back to farr nine EVER again. the nurses are getting pretty sick of us. well, at least sick of me...

oooh, they make that in banana flavor?

matt has been home from the hospital since late tuesday afternoon, but has continued to have a fever and has been experiencing what we call "pain episodes," where for about 5 minutes a few times a day, he endures "the worst pain of his life." not so much fun. but matt says he'd rather endure a few brief minutes of intense pain than be in mild pain 24 hours a day. i guess it's a reasonable trade-off, but i wish it was one he didn't have to make and it seems like one he shouldn't have to make. the pain emanates from the part of his belly where the drain is still installed, siphoning off any fluid that accumulates in the area. the combined ill effects of the fever and the pain episodes finally forced him to call the hospital and he spoke to dr. callery and described his symptoms. dr. callery said, "i can't do medicine over the phone. come in to the ER." so matt, bekah, (who is visiting from wyoming for a long weekend) and i packed in to the dodge colt vista and drove to the downtown boston beth israel deaconess medical center emergency room, where, upon our arrival at 5:00pm, we were told that the paperwork was all ready to send matt back up to his traditional quarters on the ninth floor of the farr building, and that it would be just a short wait while they prepared a bed up there.

just so you know, in hospital-speak, "short wait" means 10 hours. bekah and i left around 2:30am and they still had not moved him upstairs. he had consumed two more barium shakes- this time they let him try a banana one, which matt said was almost tasty, and endured another CT scan. they also, once again, did not let him eat anything besides the barium shakes. he was wheeled up to farr 9 around 3:30 this morning and is now awaiting word of what is causing his pain and fever and how long this latest hospital stay might last. we're still perfecting our technique of calculating the hospital rate conversion factor (multiply the time they say by "Hx" to arrive at the actual time of discharge) but it looks like he should be out by labor day.

captain america ponders why his suit no longer fits him

"guess i shouldn't have eaten so many new york system hot weiners."

a piglet ponders his next meal

"seriously mom, all i'm asking is for you to stay out of the mud until after lunch."

i think i'll be featured in this next week

ian plots his next move

julie and aaron gave us a two-person board game with directions in swedish, german, and perhaps russian. we finally figured out how to play, and although i have not been able to convince matt to give it a try, i did get matt's cousin ian to play a few games. the game was fun but it does involve an inordinate amount of math at the end. i "accidentally" forgot to keep score in the fourth round (in which ian soundly trounced me) and claimed victory in the fifth.

what kind of caterpillar is that?

it's the kind that eat oak leaves and stick their asses in the air.
oh, that kind.

we thought you was a toad

no, i'm a frog.

coulda done without that

i got t-boned on the way to work today.

it was totally and completely not my fault and i am not just saying that.

as i attempted to pull into a parking spot along the street in order to dash in to the dover market and get myself a diet coke (if only i had really quit yesterday the way i told matt i was going to), a guy waiting to pull out of the parking lot in a 1999 chevy tahoe assumed that i would be getting out of his way sooner than i actually did and drove directly into the side of my vehicle. because the collision happened in slow motion, it seems that the minivan incurred no more than surface damage. i wonder how mass audubon will feel about me driving around in this hoopty mobile for a while.

cursed barium shake, i will drink you but i will not enjoy it!

mmmmm

matt had to endure another CT scan yesterday. the scan itself isn't bad, but the pre-scan consumption of the barium shake could not be desribed as "enjoyable." in an attempt to be more deeply empathetic, i tried a sip, and while it wasn't the worst thing i have ever tasted (bertie bott's any flavor jelly beans in "ear wax"), it certainly was far from delicious. the newest CT scan revealed that almost all the fluid collection is gone, but they do want to leave matt with the drain installed for a while longer in order to ensure that no additional liquid accumulates. matt was feeling fine and looking forward to coming home last night, but they decided to keep him until midday today. i have already learned that in hospital-speak, "midday" could mean anytime between 11:00am and sometime early next week. he is feeling much better, is eating well, and is looking quite svelte.

no further progress has been made in determining the origin of the fluid-filled sac. we know they are doing everything possible to try and figure out what caused this. they've consulted with a lot of people and even turned to one of the biggest experts around- google. one doctor told us they actually googled matt's chemotherapy drug, xeloda, in an attempt to learn if the chemo pill might have caused this. i suggested they consult wikipedia as well.

a change of pace

matt is feeling much better. he is eating reasonable amounts of food and is no longer hooked up to an IV. perhaps if today had not been a sunday, he would be home right now instead of still in the hospital. i think he will be discharged tomorrow, but will likely still have the bag and drainage thing going on for another week or so. the mystery of the neck pain has been solved- the drain has forced matt to sleep on his back with his head turned to the side- viola! neck pain. the mystery of the giant sac of fluid continues.

the natick community organic farm also has bunnies. i thought a bunny picture might be nicer than another hospital photo.

wait wait don't tell me

today matt and i listened to "wait wait don't tell me" on npr. one of us really enjoyed it. the other one of us took a nap. guess which is which.

as if the giant sac of fluid was not inexplicable enough, matt has also been experiencing a lot of pain in his neck. no one has been able to provide a reasonable explanation of its origin (i proposed the theory that it was caused by traffic lights that are not timed in synch with each other, which can be, as matt has said before, a real pain in the neck. this hypothesis was pretty much ignored) and for quite a while, the doctors couldn't get their acts together to provide him with any treatment. finally, this afternoon, he got some relief via IV muscle relaxers. it seemed to help both his neck and the site of the sac catheter feel better. there is still a very small amount of fluid draining out of him, which they are continuing to collect and analyze to try and determine the origin of the cyst. matt will be in the hospital until at least monday, when they will do another CT scan to see if the sac has disappeared. and then he can come home.

hmmmm

based on the color of the liquid that drained out of it, i'd say that the "large, fluid-filled sac" in matt's belly was actually his bladder. whoops-a-daisy. dr. callery continues to insist that this was some sort of unprecedented growth (he stopped by the room again today. this is seriously more than we saw of him following matt's whipple) and that the color of the liquid is "good." i guess if there was a severe infection it would have been more opaque. over 500 ml of liquid drained out before they emptied the bag. matt was in a lot of pain late this afternoon, but perked up tonight when he was told he could eat whatever he wanted- his first food in almost 60 hours. because of the special circumstances, i made an exception to one of my strictest tenets and actually let him pick only the m&m's out of a thing of trail mix.

good news and bad news

matt has been finding it very difficult to rally following the termination of radiation. we had both both hoped that after the stoppage of treatments, the pain in his stomach would quickly fade. but that hasn't happened. he has felt better on occasion- well enough to conquer jerimoth hill- but really for the most part has been fatigued, sore, and not hungry. finally, after a two-day trip up to new hampshire, matt returned home last night and asked me to take his temperature. it was a warm 101.8. i talked to some doctors and he took some ibuprofen and after 45 minutes, when his fever had gone up to 102, we decided to make a visit to the emergency room.

there were a number of theories as to what was causing the fever. the staff quickly drew some blood so that they could test for lyme disease, eastern equine encephalitis, and west nile virus, as well as strepp and other less trendy bacteria or viral diseases. they also did a chest and stomach x-ray and started him on IV antibiotics. randy and i stayed with matt in the ER until about 4am, when they were getting ready to admit him for the rest of the night.

today, they decided to do a CT scan and finally found what they think has been both the cause of his fever and the source of his stomach pain. matt has an alien growing where his duodenum used to be.

well, not an alien exactly. more like a "giant sac of liquid" as one nurse described it. it has also been referred to as an abcess, a fistula, and a cyst. the fist-sized blob has been pushing on his organs, right around the site of his surgery, making it very difficult for food to pass through his digestive tract. the great and humble dr. callery took a break from the tour to stop by matt's hospital room this evening and said that he has never seen anything like this develop three months post-op. he doesn't have any idea what might have caused it, but tomorrow they will drain the fluid out of the sac and try to figure it out.

meanwhile, matt is spending yet another night in a hospital and yet another day without eating. that, along with all the rough and trying days in the past two weeks, is the bad news. the good news is that getting rid of this blob is an easy thing to do and will not require surgery. it is also good that matt doesn't have some type of bacterial or viral infection that would be difficult to fight off. and, it is good that because of this setback, it is likely that the doctors will choose to delay the start of his chemo treatments so matt will have at least another week to recover. and finally, it is good to really believe that there is a corner to be turned in his very near future where he will genuinely start to feel better again.

oh, and whatever these things are, it is also good news that his treatment does not involve their use.