Monday - Not Just Another Day!

Sharon has done pretty well today. When June and I got there this morning, she was sitting up in her recliner! They had disconnected her from her "ropes" and had her transfer to the chair. This is a big step in the rest of the process. While her getting up is NOT a quick procedure, it will be tolerable if she is not in a hurry to have to "go" or something like that! Don't know exactly how long all the hook ups will be there, but Dr Emerson wants the leg stabilized until the incision is well under way to being healed. After that, the stabilizing connections will be removed and the traction tension will be left until we return for the prosthesis replacement.

Dr Baum came in late, just before we left the hospital with a good news, good news story! They have postively identified both the fungal "beastie" and the strain of, as she said, "almost staph!" The fungus is identified as aspergillus terreus and is quite treatable and the almost staph is also quite susceptable to the drugs they are using. She is going to "reset the clock" on the drugs to the date of the last operation. That will have the projected last date of those infusions as 11 December. This date is, of course, dependent on how the blood tests show the beasties responding. If necessary, that can be extended until the signs are positive that they are contained. This "resetting of the clock" will likely mean that the replacement will be moved forward into Feb or March. This decision will be made by both Drs Emerson and Baum working to seek the optimal schedule for it.

I received a rather large shock this afternoon. I had a call late this afternoon telling me that my best friend had passed away. My buddy, Don Thompson, died around 4:30 PM yesterday after a bout of cancer that had begun only about 12 to 15 months ago. Don and I became very close friends during my later USAF days as we were running around the world together selling training for the F-16s to foreign goverments. Don was working for General Dynamics at the time and I was representing the USAF on these sales. As such, we had to work very closely together to provide the proper training for our customers. Working this close led to a lifelong friendship that was more like brothers than it was as "just friends!" Don had just come into the training world when I began working the F-16 sales, and he always gave me credit for giving him the basics of that part of our world. I, of course, totally denied any responsibility for that and came to admire Don's grasp of what we were doing. I soon began calling Don for advice on getting certain things done. Later, as I came to work with GD, then Lockheed, he was one who mentored me into that part of the world! All in all, I came to love and admire Don and Luzon as a definite part of our family! After I talked to Luzon this afternoon, I walked down to a private area in the hospital and just looked out the window and thought about some of the situations that Don and I found ourselves in around the world. I laughed a little and cried a little over what these memories mean to me. I looked off into the distance and saw a rainbow colored hot air balloon drifting over to the horizon. It made me picture Don, with his sense of humor and indominable spirit, drifting out there just looking over all of us.

Don, my brother, you will always be alive in my heart and memory.

Cheers!

Joe