From West Virginia to Chicago

After that long drive to West Virginia, I needed some R&R and there was no better place to get it. We spent two days at home, four days at a nice cabin on Bluestone Lake, and two more days back home. The first two days were nice and relaxing as Memorial Day weekend should be. We went up to our family plot to visit the relatives and my Dad gave us the rundown on who they are. Probably we should learn that too, but it's fun to see him get so excited!

Bluestone Lake was pretty exciting too. We finally caught some fish as you can see in the picture to the left. I guess large mouth bass have to start somewhere! And damnit... we'll catch 'em when they're that young. Catch and release of course.

We also had some of that salmon that I brought out from Seattle. That was deeeeeelicious. But enough with the food references.

The Friday we got back from the lake I took my car over to get the brake lights fixed (they had been out for pretty much the whole trip) and the window sticker updated. I also went to see the DMV to get a breast cancer awareness lisence plate. Why, you ask? Because they don't have brain cancer lisence plates, so I chose the closest thing to my mind...

Anyhow, the brake lights, the sticker, and the plates went fine. But when I got into my car after they finished up, the check engine light was on. Now it's even weirder than that. I had him take the car back and run a diagnostics check on it. It said the oxygen sensor was bad in the exhaust. Huh? The exhaust is definitely nowhere near the brake light switch so how could I blame them??? I couldn't, so we ordered an oxygen sensor (one expensive SOB). An hour later, it arrived and they plugged it in and they still had the check engine light for the same reason. Unfortunately, now it's closing time and the boss had gone to his daughter's softball game. They sent me on with my car, but without charging us for the O2 sensor.

Okay, well whatever. I can drive back to Chicago with a bad O2 sensor. Or at least that's what I thought. About a half a block away from the car care place I notice that none of my guages are working. Not the speedometer, the tachometer, nothing. Thirty seconds later... the car dies. It's completely dead with no electrical activity at all. I manage to get the car pulled off the road and call my house.

I'm supposed to go up to Chicago on Sunday to have an MRI on Monday. It's now Friday night and we have to find someone to fix my car on a Saturday. Egh. One of our finest friends, Danny, is a retired car fellow who's been in the business for longer than my parents have been alive. My Mom calls Danny to come rescue me and he sure does. He puts enough charge on the battery to get me to his house where we can make an appropriate diagnosis. When we get there, after much hemming and hawing, we (read: Danny) determined that it's either the voltage regulator or the alternator... and they're both in the same unit. Fortunately, he said that once we got that replaced, everything else would fall in line.

We actually managed to find a shop that was open Saturday morning, they replaced the alternator, and we managed to drive on back. Danny was absolutely right about everything falling back into line. We got sent out from the garage with a bad O2 sensor and it turned out to be the alternator... go figure. What I still can't figure out is why the heck the thing started happening when it did. I just took the car in to get the brake lights fixed!

That Sunday I drove back to Chicago, uneventfully, and got settled in. The MRI hadn't changed a bit since the previous one, which is phenominal. My speech problems are non-existant now and I feel better than ever. I've even gone to the gym a couple of times and while I'm a pile of dough, it feels good to be working out again.

Tomorrow, I'll go down to MD Anderson to meet with the neurosurgeon and neuro-oncologist down there. The neurosurgeon will probably say, "what do you want to do? Surgery or no surgery?" And I'll probably say, "no surgery." I'm not sure about that, but I can't bear the thought of another 6 months of recovery for limited benefit. I'll let you know what happens after.

Mike