Waiting for nothing, the state of the cats and possibly other random notes

Apr 26, 2025

I keep starting to write a post in my head but they never make it to the laptop. For some reason I have been sleepy all week. I don’t know why, my eyelids have just felt heavy. Maybe it’s a new medication I’m on, or who knows, maybe it’s just life. Regardless, it was a relatively quiet week, just lots of doctor stuff. We saw Vasireddy on Thursday. Ernie’s been trying to fight off another round of weakness and fatigue, drinking lots of water and snacking but when he did bloodwork for his treatment his hemoglobin was crazy low. At his appointment, as I began my spiel on Ernie’s current health I paused, looked at him and said, “Oh, I’m talking for you again, aren’t I?” Vasireddy grinned and shrugged, as did Ernie. They both said they were used to it. Ah, well, you gotta go with your strengths.

After some discussion it was decided that we would stop the Keytruda, as it’s been well over two years. It makes me feel a bit off-kilter as now the only so-called cancer medication is made up of quarterly Zoladex shots (which is for the prostate cancer). But, as Vasireddy and the St. Louis doc both assure us, if anything changes there are ‘plenty of options.’ Yeah, ok. So off to the infusion suite, not for Keytruda, but for a unit of blood. It always takes forever to get blood. They have to do a blood test first to double check his blood type and then we wait and wait. A nurse told us they didn’t know if they could get it that day or if he’d have to come back tomorrow. We sat and we sat, waiting to hear. I had my laptop with me as I’d come straight from work and I kept thinking that I’d do some work once his blood transfusion started. But eventually the nurse returned and said he’d have to come back tomorrow at 6:45 am. Ernie just chuckled and said, “Looks like I’ll be coming by myself,” while I attempted to not look horrified at the time. So after a couple of hours of sitting there and getting nothing done they taped up the connection to his port and sent us on our way.

We were both really happy to get home and I’m always happy when I’ve made it up the steps. I normally use Big Red (the rollator) when I go to Carle or anyplace where you don’t know how much you’ll be walking. This time Ernie got the new Road Guy out for me so I decided to just go with it. Man, I don’t know if it was Road Guy or just my legs but I had a horrible, horrible time walking just to the doctors office from the waiting room and even worse going to the infusion suite. Distressing but I made it.

And now on to the important things: the cats.

One of Olney’s favorite things to do is to hide under the dining room table, or between the couch and chest we use as a coffee table in the living room, and leap out to attack Ernie as he walks by. This apparently makes both of them quite happy.

Sack on the other hand spends much of her day bringing her favorite toy to Ernie so he will play with her. If he doesn’t jump to it she just sits and stares at him. Once in a while, she’ll lift one paw up a bit and let out the tiniest meow you’ve ever heard, just to seem a bit more desperate. Sometimes she just carries it her mouth from room to room looking for someone to play with her. I’d say thank you to Eva but she has apparently doomed Ernie to a life time of waving this little piece of fabric about as it hangs from its little plastic wand.

They often curl up like this, particularly at night. Whenever I get up in the night they look up, seemingly slightly embarrassed.

The Puppywoods remain just that. Maybe someday they’ll be Dogwoods but they remain tiny. Just the same I adore them. The white one is in memory of my father.