Day 8 of the current 4-week cycle

I had expected that today would be a short day and told Emma, Karen and Karen's guest that I would be home before noon.  The 2 girls didn't much care because they were going up to Snowbird to take the tram to the top and walk down with a guided tour of the wildflowers.  But it was not as short as I thought it would be for no very clear reason.  I waited to check in and then waited in the hallway waiting area until 10:30 before Craig took me to be weighed and then to the Infusion Room for the rest of my vitals; where I experienced more waiting, enough to finish reading the magazine I had taken with me.  The Laurie informed me that inasmuch as they were not drawing blood today they would wait to put the line in my port until Pharmacy sent up my Velcade dose and they would accomplish insertion of the line, infusion of the Velcade and removal of the line in one continuous operation.  When she was ready to do all this she recruited Amy, a nurse that I had not previously met, to assist her and they did accomplish it all in just a couple of minutes. But I wasn't ready to leave until about 11:30.

Last week I left out some other activities done during our 20-day "vacation" I only wrote about the Festival and Karen's arrival. I had an appointment on July 1 with Dr.Tashjian at the U. of U. Dermaetololgy Center to review my progress with the therapy that he had prescribed for me.  Four x-rays were taken of my right shoulder, which he examined before seeing me and then after comparing the strength in both arms he pronounced me recovered from the damage to my shoulder and arm and told me I could start doing things that I like to do; if it is golf go out and hit some balls one day, hit a few more the next day, and after a week or so of increasing work go play a round of golf.  I haven't done any of this yet because our weather has been beastly hot, but our weather girl told us last night that we are going to have a general rain storm tomorrow and a high temperature of only 79 degrees.  That cool period probably won't last but I may get to hit a small bucket of balls and more if I can go early in the mornings.

I had an appointment the following day with Todd Reich the therapist who had set up my exercise regime who wanted me to continue the exercises and to come back again in 2 or 3 weeks for further follow up.  He first took me into the gymnasium and had me perform several sets of exercises on some of the machines and changed my push up routine and asked me to come back on July 23 for followup, which I did.  At that session he had me repeat the machine exercises and then did some measurements on my range of movement in my right arm, which he said he would compare with measurements he had made when I first started with him.  If he did so, he did not disclose the results.  He told me that I am doing very well and I have the option of returning in 2 to 3 weeks for more followup, but if I think I don't need more attention from him I can cancel that appointment.