Entries from July 2007 ↓

Great news – John does not have Leukemia! We got his test results back this afternoon and we were elated. We are now getting checked into the children’s hospital where John will receive the same IGV gamma globulin treatment that he received last time for ITP. Then he will stay overnight again and tomorrow morning we will see where his platelet counts are. If they respond really well John will go home tomorrow and if not he will get another treatment and stay another night.

The anesthesia for John’s Bone Marrow procedure went smoothly today and John woke up groggy but fine. He was eating his lunch within 1/2 an hour after waking up and is in good spirits now.

Now I’m so happy to be on to trivial easy things for the remainder of the day!

It’s Charlie’s 12th birthday today so I can take him and get him the jeans he wants so badly. I can pick up some movies to watch in the hospital. John has become transfixed with Bionicles (lego robots) and I will pick him up some to play with in his bed. In fact, John kept shooing me out of the hospital long before I had learned of the good results insisting that it was OK for me to go get his Bionicles NOW.

They will be running some additional blood tests this time to see if there are any unusual blood disorders he may have that are not ITP. We get results for that back tomorrow. It remains most likely that he has ITP.

Cheers and thanks for your thoughts and prayers

We went to John’s Doctor today for his weekly blood test. Last week John’s platelets had gone down to 84K which got us worried. BUT Dr. G said that this is normal with acute ITP. We got results back today that John’s platelet count was down to 29K.

At this point the Doctors want John to have further treatment which will either take the same form as last time in hospital OR we may use steroids. Before that though the Doctors want to do a blood marrow test to completely rule out leukemia. Given that John’s other blood factors indicate normal ranges it is extremely unlikely that John has leukemia but they still want to rule it out. Since steroids can mask leukemia it is also important to do the bone marrow test before administering them.

Tomorrow morning we will go to an outpatient ward attached to the same hospital we went before. From there they will knock John out for the bone marrow procedure. The procedure is short and he won’t feel anything since he’ll be under. He will not be out a long time. From there we will know the results and we are praying for ITP!

As long as the diagnosis remains ITP we will move on to treatment for ITP using either his former treatment via IV or the steroids which are administered orally. If we use steroids he may be able to go home the same day. If we use the previous treatment we’ll transfer over to the kids hospital where he’ll get his treatment via IV again. This will necessitate the same overnight, or two night stay.

We’ll keep you up to date.

Julian and Shannon

Airport travelers and local drivers in the West Palm Beach, Florida area were treated to a strange and puzzling site on Sunday afternoon at Palm Beach International Airport (PBI). There, on one of the runways sat a British Airways 747. British Airways doesn’t fly to Palm Beach International and to my knowledge 747 Jumbo Jet’s don’t land here.

Shortly after 5PM EST we were driving our car east bound along Southern Boulevard which runs parallel with the main PBI runway. That’s when I noticed the 747 – it’s distinctive mass and overpowering size dwarfing the regularly sized planes. Then I noticed the fire truck and emergency vehicles surrounding the plane. Something caused that plane to land where it wasn’t supposed to land. It appeared from our distance that the 747 was in normal condition – the reason for the landing not apparent. We can hope that nothing more than frayed nerves befell the passengers.

We turned on the local radio in the car while the plane was still in sight as we drove past. No news that we could find anywhere. We arrived home and went to the Internet. We pulled up the local newspaper site, The Palm Beach Post. Nothing. We searched local T.V. stations as well – nothing that we can find anywhere on the story.

It’s been hours since we saw this and NONE of the three major newspapers are reporting ANY story. Nothing is reported on British Airways site that I can find either. Nothing on any of the local news network sites such as Topix.net. Nothing on big news aggregators like CNN or Google. It’s as if it didn’t happen. You might wonder if this Sunday was an especially busy news day here in West Palm Beach but it’s not. Most of the stories that are running I recognize from two days ago.

It all just strikes me as amazing that something so out of the ordinary wouldn’t even garner the smallest of headlines for businesses whose business it is to report local, state and national news. It strikes me as a bit pathetic.

[tags]British Airways, PBI, West Palm Beach International Airport, Palm Beach International Airport, 747, mishap[/tags]

• Ex-Qwest boss gets six years – 07/27/2007 – MiamiHerald.com
  Corporate Crimerica in action. Thank goodness we got one of the “good guys.” Too bad the halls of our corporate headquarters house millions more just like good ol’ Joe.
  (tags: Corporate-America Corporate-Crime Corporate-Crimerica)

I have gotten far away enough from the business man I once was to see things with the clarity that one can only find from a distance. And it is not a view that I could accurately hold if I had not been up close and personal.

When I sit listening to my wife speak with staff, clients, bosses and vendors I recognize my own life in business all too well. How it spills over in all areas of our life. How it comes to define us because it is what we do.  She is talking people off the ledge. She is negotiating the peaceful surrender. In this case the hostages are dollars and we win some and we lose some. There are collateral losses. There is collateral damage. There are the occasional celebrations of victory. These moments are a recognition of a sliver of time where we are momentarily ahead of the game.

In the end I can’t find any meaning to it beyond basic survival. Any meaning at all.  It is not a hostage that we have saved or someone we have kept from leaping from a bridge. It is a dollar earned and a dollar lost.

But I wonder.

If we were to to apply our great powers as a people to saving ourselves with the same fervor that we chase the all mighty dollar — what then?  Would it even be any better or would we just fill our life with the same puts and calls with a different currency?

Check out Charlie’s latest skate board adventure.

Cute Little Bastards Post: Charlie Sk8′s

See the pics of Chaz on Flickr here.