He answered the phone. “You want me to hand it to her?” And then he continued listening, and then talking, and then finally held out the phone, telling me my doctor wanted to talk to me.  Acknowledging afterwards she’d wanted to talk to him first.

Because apparently I would give too cheerful a spin on things.

Busted.

But no! Really! I woke up with a temp of 99 and able to stand upright this morning for the first time since this started. (Just don’t push it too long.) I guess all we had to do was buy that blood pressure meter to make my bp stay up enough. (Gotta love that $1.62/ounce breakdown on that price. Doesn’t everybody buy electronics by the pound? So, how cheap would that make an Ipad2…?)

Note in the reviews that there were some complaints that the thing read too high. Note that some of those reviews are answered by others gently saying, you need to read the instructions. Palm up…

And the best? Who knew 5.5 mm rosewoods were so heavy, but, I got about 400 stitches knitted tonight. It felt like I was reclaiming a part of myself.

As the phone call was ending, Richard was going, Ups and downs, ups and downs.

“Did he say ups and downs?”

Yes he did. But I’m ready to stay at the ups.

Nearly repeated last Tuesday, at 102.5, but Richard came home and saved the day so no IVs after all. Tylenol, Zofran, Gatorade, fluids fluids fluids.

And then he went out and bought a blood pressure cuff that you don’t have to hear to be able to use. My mornings will be measured.

That man is my hero.

If you haven’t discovered her yet, I highly recommend Sharon Randall: her writing, and, simply, her. Her column used to run in our paper, and for years, till it fell apart, I kept a particular one on our whiteboard. (I had a description of it up but it didn’t at all do it justice so I’m deleting it.)

Her columns continue on her website, and I just thought I’d mention. I love that she’s got a first grandson just a little older than mine.

Oh, and as for Richard catching my germs? Apparently they gave him a one-night scam.

I’m someone who can walk around with 80/40 blood pressure, so I’m not sure what it is with this ongoing get down quick before you fall down thing all morning.

I picked up a Little Dee book to make myself laugh after a fairly long day.  I’m looking forward to knitting my Lisa Souza cashmere/silk when I have the oomph to wind it up. It’ll come.

Richard’s hoping he’s not coming down with this…

So our friend Phyllis brought us dinner and tailored it around what I can eat, with pecan brownies to cheer him up. She’s a peach!

The gorgeous Cooper’s hawks came hunting twice today; I’m getting to where I can tell them apart by size. Male raptors are always smaller than the females.

It had been raining all day but suddenly there was a brief break.

A small flock of house finches was squabbling at the feeder, red-breasted males and brown soft-striped females all vying for the highest spot as always, while four mourning doves below were sharing peacefully close to the window, where I’d thrown a little seed just for them over where the concrete was dry after taking this picture.

All other species seemed to suddenly be hiding.

Usually, the doves pretty much ignore the flighty little finches, but not this time; there was a sudden flash of dash above and a millisecond behind they too took off.

But they are big and they are slow and they are clearly more worth the effort of the hunt (and there’s a reason why they reproduce more often than the others); the female hawk did a tight u-turn right outside this window as she veered after them.

And gone.

Now, if we could just put another window in that one bedroom so I could see through it in the direction the chases always seem to go… (Can’t. Would make those walls less earthquake safe. Not to code. I asked once.)

A little while later, three doves were feeding near me by the window and the finches too came back. A western jay was going after the hanging nutcake, his killer beak long and thick and sharp and sturdy as he jackhammered off what he wanted.

I looked at the little dove below, noted how tiny and thin its bill was, and thought, yeah, if dinner might fight back, honey, you do lose.

Then the view went silent again. Nothing out there but me and the now-downpouring rain, looking out at empty trees. Take your shoes off at the door, folks, they’re muddy.

The male Cooper’s swooped across the yard, long and low, wings and tail wide, raising up at the last second to the top of the fence.  He did the little tail twitch that comes with settling in.

Only–I was facing his way watching him. And there wasn’t a thing to eat.

This would not do.

He raised one foot just a bit.  Put it down. Then the other. Shook a river of water out of his feathers and channeled it down his back. He turned his head this way and that over and over as he shifted his weight again from foot to foot, looking for all the world like a little boy hauled before the principal–knowing I was there but refusing to look up at me, wanting to be the one having it his way.

Dude. You plunked yourself in the most visible spot in the fence.

Suddenly something caught his eye and he dove down the other side, and whatever he was after had to be right there because there is just no extra space at that spot.

And just to the left, I knew, was the neighbors’ garden. Which, they showed me in delight once, being fellow enthusiasts themselves, the birds like to tear leaves out of to build their nests.

My Coopers probably shared dinner close to their own. I wonder if it’s the big nest in the towering silk oak. I wonder how many young they’ll raise this year. I wonder if the Cooper’s I saw perched on the lightpole at the end of Tennyson Street was one of theirs…

My dear husband went out to buy groceries today, the hood on his jacket pulled down low  over his face as he dashed to the car. Twice, actually, after missing an item.  We will now have our chicken soup.

And we have settled into our warm, dry, but empty nest, knowing that baby birds will hatch soon and we’ll get to see them, too.

This morning had my Dr R’s old phrase ringing in my ears: “Progress is nonlinear.”

Uh, yeah.

Note to self: do not faint in the bathroom (nope, nothing got hurt) in the middle of changing the ileostomy dressing. Just–trust me, don’t. Richard laughed a few minutes later when he came in the room, which was exactly the comic relief I needed just then. He’s a treasure.

Meantime, my friend Teena brought more flowers, another card, homemade cookies, and some mango sherbet. I am ready for this germ to get out of here, but meantime, again, I am well taken care of and very grateful.

I’m catching up on some book reading; today, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell and I quite recommend it. Oh, and Don, you grew up in San Francisco, the video here is for you: a tornado today just off Ocean Beach! Or, more technically and in Eensy Weensy Spider terms, a waterspout.

Well, I was at this stage.

And then I got all these messages from my readers–you lifted me up more than I can say.  Thank you.

Our kids called or messaged home, as did various other family members.  You know that did me much good.

And today my friend Kathryn emailed and asked what she could do. Could she, say, doorbell-ditch some ice cream for me?

And I, Haagen-Daz right in front of me, had to tell her, Sorry, Richard scooped you.

Marguerite called and refused to be brushed off. I told her Richard was working from home, keeping close tabs on me.

No, but what do you crave? I need to *do* something!

Honestly? I’d love one of those little (I was thinking 8 oz) bottles of mango juice from Trader Joe’s. But it’s not worth the trip just for that one little thing, don’t feel you have to.

She showed up on my doorstep with a quart of it and flowers.

I have so many good people around me buoying me up–we both do–both in person and by phone and online. I feel well taken care of and very very fortunate on all counts.

My first dinner since Monday stayed down.  It was small, but, hey, and the ice cream did too.

And I’m a lot closer to feeling like this.

Zofran, an anti-nausea med, is a wonderful thing. I just need the earth to roll over in its bed a few times to get over this. I’m at least not as sick as yesterday. My in-law who wanted a chemo cap, meantime, called to report that it had arrived safely, that it fits her just right, and that she feels very elegant in it. I could not have asked for better.

Thank you all for all the well-wishes. It helps, it helps a great deal. My apologies for not doing a good job of answering, and now pardon me, I’m going to go fall back into bed again.

Doing my treadmill time last night, I was pleased at how energetic I felt. It had been a really good day.

Today so much not. Woke up with a sore throat and fever and the lupus went bonkers. I did a little email and put myself back to bed.

It went downhill fast from there. I couldn’t get up, I couldn’t even lift the phone from above my head in the headboard to call Richard. For hours. I finally willed myself to anyway, because it was so bad that the will to live kicked in and made me.

We just got back from Urgent Care and two IV bags of saline; my kidneys are working now, the heart is behaving, but if tomorrow is like today they want me to come back and get more.

I had Richard bring along a shawl project with me in case they admitted me at Stanford, but they didn’t. Hope springs eternal: can’t go anywhere without my knitting, even if.

Nina, whose Ann Arbor shawl graces my book (OOP but cover-price copies available at Purlescence), called today; she needed to stop by after work a moment.

During our short conversation, she decided instead to go home, grab her knitting–yup, got her addicted too now–and so we sat and chatted for about an hour, wondering why we didn’t do this more often.

I showed her Lorraine’s qiviut scarf and the little lace scarf I’d made out of one skein of the Arctic Blend. Ten bucks for a qiviut blend. It is lovely stuff.

Nina had the same reaction to Lorraine’s handiwork that I did: she immediately put it on and declared that wow, she felt like a million bucks. It looked smashing on her, too, she was absolutely right. Just her colors. I so wish I’d thought to take her picture in it.

I showed her the matching big skein of yarn, not yet knit, as all the Warm Hats stuff and baby blanket got ahead of it in the lineup.

Well now.  I could totally knit that gorgeousness up for her, she thought out loud. (With a grin.)

I explained that, editors willing, it’s to go in the next book.

She laughed, “You can tell stories on me again. After all these years, you’ve got lots of stories to tell on me!”

Wait–was that a hint?

On his way out the door from church today, carried in his mother’s arms, was a baby not quite at the walking stage yet but with a marvelous mop of light brain (note to my big sister: yes, I meant to type brown, not sure where mine was on that one) hair and usually I can get a cute grin out of him to match. I don’t think he’s quite ready for a finger puppet yet; he might try to eat it. So I just play peekaboo and the like with him when I get a chance.

It had been a long time away from his crib and it was naptime and he had the face of a little one who’s about to start making it known loudly.

And then suddenly he saw me. His little face burst into a grin! And he stayed smiling, waving bye bye at me, all the way out.

I tell you. I could float on that one for days.

There was a mini-conference today set up by the Lupus Research Institute, so I set my alarm for early this morning and went.

Until Wednesday, no new treatment for lupus had been approved, not for lack of trying on the part of those in the lab, in over 50 years.  Daniel Wallace, the rock star of lupus researchers, told with frustration of how one company had recently carefully followed all the FDA’s guidelines and had spent many many millions of dollars, only to be told that the third FDA president since they’d started had now decided to shelve it for reasons that many felt were very wrong. (And I personally know a patient who went from the normal person I knew to severe brain damage symptoms akin to late-stage Alzheimer’s, to being blessedly, miraculously normal again during the trials of that drug that is now denied to her and her good, supportive husband. I have not seen her since.)

There was an outcry. And the FDA finally paid attention to the disease.

So now there is Benlysta, and great hope–and more new drugs in the pipeline, at long long last.

One of the people who testified before the FDA for Benlysta’s approval was on a panel that spoke today. Another was a patient who’d been in its trials.

What I didn’t expect, though, was to get to have several minutes of private conversation, after most the others had left, with a gentleman (and I use that word to convey my very great respect and admiration for him) whose name I missed, the head of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

He in his own remarks to the group made clear that stem cells can now be made from adult cells. No embryos need be involved.  This goes far beyond lupus; this is everybody. Californians voted for this, the State of California will get 50% royalties on all patents from this, and it is already returning $4.50 for every $1 spent on it.

The state isn’t exactly swimming in cash and the funding was to be re-voted on after ten years. That will be 2014. He wants the word out: there is great hope that we could cure many diseases and that treatment will bring down medical costs, as well as vastly improving the lives of those treated–and their families by extension.

First they had to build the buildings; they did. Then they had to hire the researchers. They have been. Talent has come in from all over the world to pursue their dream jobs of doing real and lasting good for one’s fellow man.

Sixteen million people in California with chronic diseases, he said. And all those others who will get a disease that could become treatable. We can do this.

Random curious photo: our local mini-tsunami got its picture taken here, the water playing jump rope across the San Francisco Bay.

You asked for Parker pictures; here’s another from our visit to San Diego. Parker’s already beginning to look older than that.

Meantime, Nathania made my day last night when she looked at the cotton chemo cap I’d made and exclaimed over the depth of the cable: “Cotton usually goes flat!”

Well, I used really small needles to get that effect, but I could only do a few rows of that a day in that yarn so it went really slowly.

She looked at me, knowing cotton knitting, going, Yeahhh. But meantime, I am so glad at how it came out and it was with such a sense of joy that I sent it out and on its way to tell the recipient I love her and hope all the best for her. It was exactly the right project for her. I’m so glad I made it. I so hope it eases at least that part of what she’s going through.

Specs: cast on 16, another riff on the Knitty Coronet pattern, only with a different cable and no fold to the brim, just straight up from there. The two four-stitch cables were crossed every other right side row so that I could adjust the length easily, keeping it in the pattern while matching how long I needed it to be to fit her. (Which is 2″ more than it would be for me; I’m glad they measured.) I did a three-needle bindoff on the right side of the brim part so the seam wouldn’t chafe, and at the top, I crocheted the end to a few inches long and left it for decoration without running it inside, French beret style, again for the sake of comfortableness.

(And yes, that is a Vincent Van Gogh in the shower curtain behind me. I am, after all, an art dealer’s daughter. Art museums are a great way Toulouse-Lautrec of time.)

Sue Nelson of XRX has been accepted into an experimental treatment, Stage 1 trials (the kind you don’t ever want to have to be in but are ecstatic to get into when all else has failed–which is where she is) for her Stage 4 ovarian cancer. She will have to fly in for treatment repeatedly, her insurance may deny all, and her expenses will be huge. XRX is raffling off not the book but their actual Great American Afghan to try to help her meet what this is going to take for her. Sue helped piece that afghan.

Benjamin Levisay’s post about it is here.  Tickets are $10 a shot. I’m joining the many trying to help and to get the word out.

———

Edited to add: the USGS is showing three (now seven) strong earthquakes in the last hour in Japan, including an unfathomable 8.9 (now reappraised as a 9) and a tsunami that followed, with more warned of. Forty-one quakes in two days and that number changing fast. My prayers go to everybody there, too. My stars.

Okay, so, 45 minutes later, I come up with the perfect comeback.

I zipped over to Safeway tonight to replenish the milk supply for my morning hot cocoa; in, out, home, was the plan.

There was a guy with some gray in his hair and a basket on his arm who approached the checkout line, hesitated, stepped away to look over at something else just a moment and started to step back just as I was right there now and in his way.

Hey. I was pushing a cart, he was holding his groceries with a two-pieced metal handle pulling heavily against his arm. In my fatigue-centric world, he wins; I offered him to go ahead of me. I was in no hurry.

There was the polite, You go ahead. No, you go ahead.

Alright then, so I did.

And turned and complimented him on his sweater to be nice back.

“It’s Irish,” he told me proudly. (I wasn’t surprised. It was also machine-knit, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.)

“I made one for my husband like that, only, there are no patterns as big as he is so I had to design my own since he’s 6’8″.”

Oh my. That opened the door. The Voice of Authority proceeded to tell me that sure I could, just go to a store where they sell yarn, they have all the patterns.

“Yes, but not that big.” I smiled sweetly, letting him in on the laugh. (Right?)

He insisted there are no new patterns in knitting, just rehashes of what’s already been out there. Those Irish, now, each town had their own. He tried to convince me that they might have been originators but nobody else could be, not now, it’s all Been Done.

I told him I design some of the patterns in those stores (thinking of my book)… (Again with the smile.)

He seemed offended. No no no little girl, is how he came across as he made clear his stance that such hubris on my part was not to be tolerated.

I didn’t argue with him, just let him go on, my eye contact level fading away.  My transaction soon give me a graceful way out–slide your card here–then I turned, smiled, and bid him a good evening.

Home. Put the milk away.  Sat down in the family room. I double-checked the cabled pattern lineup I was starting for the cap of the hat whose braided brim I’d made during my lupus group meeting today, a hat that will be identical to no other on earth when I get done–

–and looked across the room at my piano.

Seven and a half octaves. They’re all there. All those keys were invented years ago. You couldn’t possibly design anything new with them, it’s this key and on up through that one, one right after another, it’s all already been done.

(Ed. to add: I felt sorry for the guy for so needing to dominate that he wrecked a perfectly pleasant conversation. So as I drove home in the dark, I said a prayer for him: easy to do, since I don’t ever have to see him again, and the effort certainly couldn’t hurt him and did help me. Who knows. Maybe the Universe will teach him a little kindness from the encounter. I can hope.)