Children's Hospital

Today I went to visit my niece at Children's Hospital in Seattle. The surgery has been scheduled for tomorrow afternoon (if I remember correctly) and should take a few hours. They were originally going to do it next Monday, because her blood pressure was pretty high, but I think that they finally realized that they were dealing with a 2.5 year old little girl who had never been to a hospital before and had all sorts of strange people poking and prodding, and on top of that, her parents were probably a little scared too. I imagine that all of these things made a minor contribution to elevated blood pressure levels. But now that she has been there for a while and gotten used to everything, surprisingly enough the blood pressure has dropped down to more normal levels so the surgery has been moved forward. It gives them a better shot at being out of the hospital before Christmas. But she seems mostly like her normal self. She seemed kind of grumpy today, I took some pictures of her with my cellphone camera and I only got frowny faces with one half smile. Maybe if I get a usb cord for my phone I will upload them.
Children's Hospital is a nice and friendly environment. If I had a child with problems, I would take him there. But you walk in there, and after a few minutes you want to leave. It is probably due to the fact that it is such a nice place, that you just think about being at home and so you just want to go home. They have murals on the walls, family lounges with small kitchenettes where you can put and prepare food you bring, playrooms and lots of toys for the kids... just about everything you could want. Except that it is not home.

Re: Important

So far this month there are quite a few things of importance to write about. We will see how far I get before I am interrupted. The first thing I would like to talk about is Wilms Tumor. One of my nieces was diagnosed with this type of cancer last week. It's a rare cancerous tumor that develops from immature kidney cells. It primarily develops in children from birth to about 6 or so. She is not quite three. She is at Children's Hospital now, she had a preliminary exam and they ran a bunch of tests to try and determine how far along the cancer was. The doctors figure that she has had the tumor for about a year, but that it is probably still encapsulated within the kidney tissue. That is good, in case you were wondering. It means that it likely has not spread to the surrounding tissue yet. They have her on a tentative surgery schedule for this next week, and they will remove the diseased kidney. One of my brothers also developed this same cancer when he was 6 months old, and the doctors removed his kidney as well. We are all very positive, all things considered. My father gave her a blessing the other night that had good things to say. They live out of town, and when they went to the hospital on Friday, if it was really bad they were going to schedule the surgery for that same day, or Saturday. But they determined that it was alright to wait for a little bit, so that is encouraging. The unfortunate part of putting off the surgery is that she is required to stay at the hospital until the surgery, and who wants to stay at the hospital for an undetermined amount of time. I know I don't. But she is a happy little girl, and I'm sure that their little family will make the best of it. On the bright side, I work in Seattle, and so I can go visit on my lunch breaks.
On a less serious not so distressing note, today we went and got our Christmas tree. We tried to get it last Saturday, but Rachel got out of work late (on her birthday) and the place was closed by the time we got there. It is a u-cut tree farm out in Hobart called Papa's Tree Farm. Kind of far from us, but it was fun. Racel doesn't like being cold, so cutting a tree down in the snow (it has snowed a little in the last day or two) was not the most fun for her, but I would like to make this a tradition. Anyway, we cut down a 7-foot Frasier Fir. It's a pretty nice looking tree, for a great price. I did make us look a little for it though. Rachel was going to choose the first tree she saw with a for sale sign on it so that she could get it over with and get out of the cold, but I wanted to make sure that we got a tree that we were both happy with. She ended up picking out the tree in the end. It is not a full and conical as the sheared trees that you get at the grocery stores, but that is fine by mee, cause it looks like a real tree that we went and cut down (since that is exactly what we did). I am very happy with it. Ok, I have been interrupted now. We put Noah's crib in here with the computer so that no one wakes him up by talking or whatever. So I have to get out now, since Rachel just out him down to sleep. Expect more tomorrow.

The Day Before the First Day of December

I thought I'd get a last post in before November was over. I seem to have less and less time to do this nowadays. We just came home from my mom's house for our third Thanksgiving Dinner. This was the Real Thanksgiving, in my opinion. Everything homemade, and all of it good (except for brussels sprouts). Let me check if I wrote about Thanksgiving last year... yep I did. Chinese food at my moms house on the day of, then turkey at the in-laws, and then Thanksgiving on Sunday, because that's the day when the most people can get together. This year I decided to smoke the turkey at the in-laws house. It turned out real nice. I finally found a brand of charcoal that works well consistently. It's a brand that I found at Lowe's: Cowboy Charcoal. It's a lump hardwood charcoal, not a briquette, which is full of crap that is not wood. It's a little more expensive per pound, but I like the quality much better than anything else I have tried so far. So the turkey at my wifes parents house turned out really good. And the Chinese food at my moms was really good again this year too, except that we didn't have hot and sour soup. I have a friend at work whose parents own a Chinese restaurant someplace not close by, and he said that they have the best hot and sour soup ever. He bragged about it so much that I asked him to bring me some, and to give me the recipe. He said that he would, but I still haven't seen (or tasted) anything yet. I'm going to have to find a really good recipe for next year.

What I've Learned About Work

Weekends are great. Mostly because I didn't have to wake up at 4:30am to get ready to go to work. I also get to see my family. Working all day long all week long is tough. I spend about 12-13 hours just at work, not including the 45 minute drive to get there and back. I get up and it's dark, I go home and it's dark. But the good thing about working is that I can pay the bills. And I think that is a lot more than many people can say these days. I am grateful for a job that gives me a certain security. Fedex has made it a point over the years to never lay anyone off. While we might get less hours when times get tough, we will still have an income, and still have medical and dental benefits. Even though I don't particularly enjoy my job (I find it tedious and stressful) it is a job that pays a living wage, and I find that I can live a fairly comfortable life. I will never get rich as a result of delivering packages, but I don't really think that anyone who works for someone else ever does. And I am pretty sure that I am not very interested in running my own business. I don't think that is for me. I don't want to end up here forever, but I am ok with it for now.