Waiting for the next step

Evan will go to Minneapolis on Tuesday for PET scan to see how the last chemo treatment affected the Hodgkin's in his left lung. Once that is determined, he'll get the next step in the game plan.
That last treatment was pretty darned nasty, but Evan received a platelet transfusion on Monday, which helped tremendously to bring him back to himself . On Tuesday he mowed Grandma's yard, helped Paul fix the haybine and made dinner. The rest of the week followed suit. Today, he and Ned are back chasing bears with the hounds.

Ned had his cast removed on Tuesday. He's now got a boot and is still on crutches, but he's got a little more freedom of movement with the foot. He starts physical therapy on Tuesday (Tuesdays seem to be big in the Ruesch medical world) and then has the surgery to remove the pin or pins that can come out of his ankle in another month or so. He's gotten pretty darned good with those crutches. Even so, I'm sure he won't mind ditching the things permanently.

Alyssa is 31 today. Amazing. Her birthday gift -- the bedroom curtains -- never got made last weekend. We didn't sew a stitch, but we did some great cooking and a lot of very ambitious planning. That's got to count for something. Since it's August, I spend a lot of time at work, so it's no surprise that there's been no progress on the sewing front just yet. The end of September is realistically the soonest I'll be able to tackle much and I really can't ask Paul to learn to sew. He asked me to learn to bale hay last month. A couple of loads of bales convinced me that we had the right set-up all along: he uses the farming machines; I use the sewing machines. No sense messing up a good thing.