Feb. 22,

After three weeks in San Francisco there are some basic needs you can no longer avoid. It is very easy to neglect everyday chores like doing your laundry and slowly you run out of the travel sized everything you hastily crammed into your luggage for a spontaneous short term trip that shapes itself into something vastly different. We adapt.

In the last six months I have become all to familiar with hospital life . Dads current stint in San Francisco was preceded by the three weeks my mother Dianna spent in the hospital in early August for stomach surgery. The doctors removed a bleeding ulcer they could not control with medication. That was followed by dads trip to Davis in September for a procedure to improve his heart function that obviously was unsuccessful. Then in October My very patient wife Bobette under went a surgery that would keep home bound for six weeks.

January ushered in the new year and I hoped that the passing of 07 would take with it the health cloud that hung over our family. But no, early one morning we found ourselves one again in a hospital emergency room comforting or son Brendan who had suffered several seizers earlier in the morning. Two weeks later I found my self in San Francisco with dad and Joanna.

I bring up this sequence of events only because I am constantly amazed at a persons ability to adapt to things beyond their control. Trials like these force one to slow down and bring different priorities into focus. The past three weeks in an odd sort of way have been very therapeutic for my self. I have once again been able to restore a trait that I prize highly - PATIENCE - a trait often smothered in the pace of modern day life.

To be honest Utah had a very difficult day yesterday. The amount of Potassium he is administered tends to make his stomach upset and of course when his stomach is upset he loses more fluids and with the fluids goes Potassium. To control the upset stomach the doctors give him another medication. We now have a dry erase board with a column dedicated to medications. It's the only way can keep track of them all. I feel that part of the problem in his going home is how long a drive it is to Nevada City from San Francisco. In the event something were to go wrong on the way home it would be difficult to treat. For now he is content to stay here and get well enough for the road trip home.

Today he does feel much, much better and finally his Potassium level is up. Currently he is sitting in the family room reading the paper and intends to attempt the treadmill. His condition varies so much from day to day and today it's good.
Thanks
Duncan