Shit.

M's cousin has just finished his two rounds of chemo. He went in for some scans last week and was in for a shock: although the largest tumor has shrunk he suddenly has two new tumors in his liver. (!!!)

He was feeling so much better, his hair was coming back in and the family's optimism was finally returning. In spite of all that, his blood markers have suddenly skyrocketed off of the charts. It doesn't look good....

Give your loved ones a hug (or a call!) today! You never know what tomorrow might bring...

Photo update

The last 10 days have melded into a blur. S and B are enjoying jam-packed social calenders, with end-of-the-year school activities, field trips and birthday parties. I'm doing my best to keep up with them, but can feel my brain starting to wither with the effort.

We're having fun, though, and here are a couple of pictures just to bring you up to date:

	B's class participated in "Sports Day" in which all the 1st and 2nd grade classes competed against each other in track and field events. Here's Speedy pulling ahead in the final stretch.
	I flew to Dublin to visit an old friend. Luckily I'm well connected, otherwise I might have had to stay here...
	S and his class took a field trip to a sheep farm last friday. They learned a lot about wool production and even got to try their hands at spinning yarn! The high point, however, had nothing to do with sheep. They all got to swim in a creek that ran through the farm. Hence the bathing suit and wet hair in this picture.

Tick Watch 2008

M found two ticks on our underwear drawers over the weekend. I feel like we're in one of those horror movies where the monsters keep reappearing no matter how hard you try to escape them.

Oh yeah, and the neighbor? Her tests came back positive.

Normally I would probably be shouting "Run for the hills!", but that seems to be where they're coming from...

Aack!

I just spoke to my German teacher and guess what? She's just been diagnosed with Lyme disease. AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Lemon Lyme

So B has only just finished his round of antibiotics for Lyme disease. Our next-door neighbor is awaiting blood test results for a steadily growing rash on her leg, and I just heard that a boy who lives about five houses further up has also been infected.

Is this a burgeoning epidemic or just sheer coincidence? I'm not taking any chances-- have bought some industrial strength insect spray and have been dousing the kids every time they go out to play in the woods...

Creative visualisation

Picture if you will a fresh smoothie made with blueberries and raspberries. Now imagine said smoothie falling from a height of about 4 feet and landing in the vicinity of white walls, butter-yellow chairs, light wood and a freshly clad boy, the unwitting catalyst of this catastrophe. There are, of course, only ten minutes before he has to leave for school.

What was going through my head at that moment?

Call a realtor, find a new house and leave no forwarding address...

Hickeys.

Wordle is a completely addictive tool that generates word clouds from any text you provide. Who knew that my hickey post could morph into an artistic expression? I must be even more talented than I'd ever imagined...

COOKIES!

My house smells delectable! I have been craving ginger snaps for days now. Found this quick, easy highbrow recipe on Allrecipes.com.

(For those of you following sadistic diets like myself, the shortening can be replaced by applesauce, the all-purpose flour with whole grain spelt flour and the sugar can be reduced. They still taste delicious!)

INGREDIENTS

3/4 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup light molasses
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoon ground ginger
2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt


DIRECTIONS

1. Cream together shortening and sugar, add egg and beat until fluffy. Stir in molasses and mix well.
2. Sift all dry ingredients-twice, then add to molasses mixture and mix well
3. Using a cookie scoop or spoon scoop out spoonfuls of dough and form into round balls. Roll tops of balls in sugar. ***note: if you have replaced the shortening with applesauce the batter will be runnier. just drop tablespoon fulls onto a greased cookie sheet.
4. Place the round balls on a cookie sheet, these cookies flatten as they bake.
5. Bake for exactly 9 minutes in a preheated 350 degree (175 degree C) oven. Remove from baking sheet and cool.

That's my alibi and I'm sticking to it...

I was getting dressed this morning when M suddenly said:

Hey, what's that red ring on your back?

WHAT?! You're kidding, right?

No, I'm dead serious. It's right here and... uh oh.

WHAT!?

There's another one. and another one. Holy shit, Betsy, you've got at least 5 or 6 of them!

I raced to our full length mirror and contorted myself so that I could take a look. Sure enough, there were several round rashes on my back. Bright red at the edges and clear in the center-- very similar to B's except that they were perfectly round instead of elliptical. Could my entire back have been covered with ticks without me knowing it???!! With a sinking heart I twisted further to get a better look.

M? These don't look like bullseyes, they look like... hickeys!

What?! Want to tell me how you ended up with 6 hickeys on your back?

All of a sudden I burst out laughing. I had an ECG stress test earlier this week during a routine checkup, and that must have been where they attached the suction cup monitors...

Big career decisions

On the way to school this morning B told me unequivocally that he has no desire to become a teacher when he grows up.

The reason?

He doesn't want to have to clean up all that confetti in the classroom after Carnival.

100% organic wholegrain porn

My husband was watching the news on Tuesday evening when I suddenly raced in, flopped down onto the couch next to him, pulled down my pants and pressed a slice of frozen bread to my thigh.

To his credit he hardly raised an eyebrow.

Was this an act of seduction?

Hardly. I'd spilled hot water on myself while making a cup of tea and couldn't find any ice cubes...

Straight out of National Lampoon, episode #232

Some are destined for greatness, others for parody. My life seems to fall consistently into the latter category.

I just got back from another field trip. S's class visited the hospital after school today and I agreed to be a chaperone under the condition that I could bring B along with me. The teacher wasn't happy with the plan, but she needed all the help she could get, so she agreed, as long as B was discreet about it. Those of you who know B are probably already chuckling-- discreet is just not in his vocabulary.

So we get to the hospital and get a tour of the lab there. The technician whipped out a vial of urine and demonstrated how she tested sugar levels with a dipstick. Then all the children got their very own dipstick to take home to test themselves. As a joke I suggested to the teacher that she might be able to include that as part of the lesson tomorrow and she stared at me horrified. I keep forgetting that my dry sense of humor doesn't go over all that well with Germans.

B, probably inspired by the multiple vials of urine, suddenly had to produce some of his own. As we were leaving the lab we spotted a bathroom. I sent him in hoping that he could go really fast and that we could catch up with the group before they turned the corner at the end of the hall. I was hoping he'd be discreet.

Suddenly I hear B's screams echoing throughout the hallway. I raced in to find him at the sink, rubbing his eyes and howling. He'd tried to squirt disinfectant on his hands and somehow it had splashed up into his eyes. I stuck his head in the sink and washed his eyes out with water. It sloshed all over his hair, shirt and pants. A nurse brought us a towel and gave B a wet washcloth to hold on his eyes during the rest of our tour.

Then we wandered around in the pediatric ward for a while trying to find the class. B got a lot of attention for his wet washcloth, which spurred him on to new thespian heights.

Next stop: the emergency ward, where all the kids got to have a cast put on their finger. The teacher told B that he couldn't participate since he's not part of the class and he burst into tears. The kindly hospital staff, who had already offered to have his eyes checked out by the paramedics, felt sorry for him and intervened. So now he could get a cast too, as long as I accompanied him.

When we got back out one of the girls came up to me, held the arguably very phallic cast up to her pants and said: "Look Betsy, I'm peeing!" Of course then the rest of the children followed her suit. S turned to me very proudly and said: "I taught her that. Thought it up all by myself!"

I would not be surprised if the teacher is at home right this very minute sticking pins into a voodoo doll with my name written on it...

Shouting from the rooftops

This blog seems to have turned into a bad news gazette lately. So I thought I'd buck the trend and write about something pleasant for a change.

Back in March I visited a holistic doctor for a general tune-up. I wasn't sick, but wasn't feeling 100%, either. She told me that I am allergic / sensitive to a wide array of substances and suggested some radical diet changes. The first couple of months were difficult and discouraging, but I've stuck with it, and you know what???

I FEEL GREAT!!!

This has been a proverbial silver bullet because it's taken care of digestive issues, minor skin problems, headaches and energy fluctuations that I've been chalking up to hypoglycemia. I still don't metabolize sugar very well, but the dips I have now are much milder. I think that they've just been exacerbated all this time by caffeine and a sensitivity to cow's milk.

I've always been suspicious about those celebrities who go on radical diets and then swear they've got loads of energy and bound out of bed at 5am to go running. OK, so that's still a bit far-fetched for my situation, but I do notice a definite difference and I'm thrilled! This reformed milkaholic will be staying off the wagon for the forseeable future!

(Near) Disasters R Us

What is up with us lately? We seem to have some seriously shitty Karma to work through.

A couple of weeks ago B was swimming at our hotel in Cairo when I noticed this suspicious Lyme-like rash. Luckily I had the presence of mind to take this picture.

When we got back home I took S & B to the pediatrician for a post-dysentery check-up, and while there I mentioned the rash. Apparently the bullseye-shaped rash, the hallmark of Lyme disease, grows bigger with time. It already seemed bigger to me, but just to be doubly sure we marked the edges last Friday with a permanent marker. And my, how it's grown.

great.

The pediatrician said to come in for a blood test, but it's changed enough by now that he said that's not even necessary anymore. There's no mistaking it: B has lyme disease.

He wrote a prescription for amoxycillin for 10 days. LUCKILY I'd done some research this morning and had read that children should take antibiotics for up to 30 days. I asked him about it, and he went and dug out his books and, sure enough, it's a longer cure.

I think I might need a double scotch on the rocks this evening.

Birthday traditions

Some people celebrate their birthdays with a big party for friends and family. Others bake special cakes or plan trips to faraway places.

I tend to mark the occasion with unmitigated disaster. In 2006 an already bad day was topped when a falling branch met my windshield at high speeds. My birthday last year saw the expensive culmination of a losing battle with my internet provider.

And this year? Well, it was no exception. It started out wonderfully: a delicious surprise breakfast and an 11k hike in the Schwarzwald. Everything was going along smoothly until yesterday evening. D the wonderdog is limping again. It's only been two and a half months since the operation-- she's finally fit again and we had so hoped that all of the problems were behind us. This morning when she woke up she was completely lame.

I'm going to keep her crated for the next couple of days and hope it blows over, but I've got a very bad feeling about this. The vet assured us that once the bone splinter was removed that she would be good as new. We were so relieved to have been able to finally close that chapter, but today she's worse than I've ever seen her before.

I'm trying not to think about the consequences all too much...

2 more photo souveniers

And then he fell off.

Thanks, I think I'll pass.

Garbage City, Cairo

OK, OK, now that I've gotten the amoebic toxicity levels of frustration and disappointment out of my system I wanted to tell you about some of the amazing things we were able to see while we were in Cairo.

Our kids have been very interested in poverty lately. We often tell them how fortunate they are to be living in a wealthy country and to be in possession of "favorable" passports, but it's always been a very abstract concept for them.

They've been saving their allowance for the last five weeks to "give to poor people in Egypt". I was humbled and a bit overwhelmed by their generosity. Really wanted to do something special since they'd gone to so much trouble, so I called a contact of M's who is the MD for Chrysler in Egypt. On Tuesday he arranged for a driver to take us out to "Garbage City", the central collection point for Cairo's garbage. Inhabitants live among the refuse and eke out a living sorting and selling much of what they recover.

I was completely floored by what we saw: narrow streets teeming with people and absolutely full of garbage. I'd expected everyone to seem depressed or beaten down, but they were lively and busy and paid us no attention whatsoever. They even looked surprisingly clean, given the conditions they were living in.

We stayed in the car and didn't get to take any pictures inside the city itself, but I did find this fascinating video on YouTube. (We were actually able to go in the underground church he talks about.)

Welcome to my nightmare

Thanks so much for your nice comments! We are, in fact, feeling much better. I've made an appointment for the kids with the pediatrician for later on this week for a full checkup. Since we don't actually know what we had there's no way to know if they might have a parasite that could rear it's ugly head again later.

The whole incident was very scary. I've always been pretty relaxed about food when I travel. M and I were laughing at the irony yesterday: we traveled illness-free for a week on a safari through Tanzania and ate chicken that was kept for days on end in a cooler filled with water. It was cooked by the time we ate it, of course, but still! I guess that time we just got lucky with the Russian roulette.

This time we didn't.

And what made the whole ordeal even scarier was that we have no idea what it was that made us sick. We were staying in a good hotel which was supposedly taking precautions for foreign guests and their sensitive stomachs. We only ate out twice, and then, as recommended, at busy restaurants where high turnover supposedly ensured that the food was fresh. We only drank bottled water and didn't use ice in juices.

Despite these precautions, however, M and S got sick, then B 12 hours later, and then, after playing Florence Nightengale around the clock, I eventually succumbed.

Once we'd recuperated enough to keep anything down we were too weak to take the hour drive into the center of Cairo to forage for food, but were also too afraid to eat much of anything in the hotel. It was a nightmare. Literally, because I'm still waking up every night in a panic after dreams that the kids are eating bad produce or are playing in dirty water.

On the 15th S was terribly ill and I called for a doctor. He came and inspected S, B and M and, without explaining what he thought they had, he wrote out two long lists for medications. When I, as a lowly female, asked what each of them were for, he got angry. And when I mentioned that I didn't need a fever reliever because I had Ibuprofen with me he got up and stormed out of the hotel room and didn't return. (!!!) (How dare I question his authority, no matter how politely!)

Someone from the hotel went out and bought the medicines for us, but I had no idea how much to give, because the dosages he'd written were vague (1 big spoon??) and differed wildly from the amounts given in the package inserts. Luckily M had his Blackberry with him so we were able to email with my dad and my Grandfather, who is a GP, for advice. (THANKS AGAIN, GUYS!)

We had a very scary moment with S later on that evening. He had a high fever but was feeling too nauseous to take children's ibuprofen or any of the anti-microbial medicines. He was very weak and seemed to be getting worse, so M and I picked him up and put him in the shower to bring down his temperature. After that he started feeling well enough to take the ibuprofen and when that kicked in we could move on to the other medicine. If that hadn't worked the next step was definitely the hospital.

Oh, and the icing on the cake was that the bathtub leaked. Every time you took a shower water would stream out from underneath the tub onto the floor of the bathroom. So every time we bathed or used it to bring down various fevers the flooded bathroom became like an ice rink. At one point S needed to vomit, jumped up from his bed in a panic, raced to the bathroom, wiped out and skidded into a wall. It was just such a nightmare!

And I haven't even gotten to the insects yet. The ones that feasted on the kids and had S waking up one night screaming because he thought that he'd been stung by a wasp.

Let's just say that this travel experience was less than optimal.

We did have a chance the first few days to see some interesting sights. I'll blog some more about those tomorrow...

Snapshots from the front

Pyramid 1	Pyramid 2
Spent some time riding on camels	Spent more time riding the porcelain dromedary
The Nile: Due to the wonders of modern technology, Cairo hasn't flooded in more than 30 years	The Hotel Bathtub: Despite the wonders of modern technology the deluge was regular and relentless
Heiroglyphics 1	Heiroglyphics 2

Back from Cairo...

Which would you guys like to hear about first: the sights or the dysentery?