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Vacation report first. Yesterday was a slow day -- I finally started reading The Raw Shark Texts, which Vicky gave me either for Christmas or for my birthday. (I am very bad about knocking books off my to-read list.) I found the first few pages a little off-putting -- the style was too showy for my taste -- but once the story gets going, it really sucks you in. It reminds me a bit of Stephen King, if King were British, with a dose of maybe C. S. Lewis in That Hideous Strength for conceptual weirdness and a slow-building sense of wrongness with the world.
In the evening, the Shaws came by for happy hour, after which we had corned beef for dinner. I love corned beef.
Today a man came by to take a look at the chimney, which has been leaning for several years and pulling the front of the cabin slightly out of line, so all our window frames are skewed. We think he will probably work to shore up the chimney next summer, so that's good. Dad and I also painted a couple touch-up jobs inside and outside the cabin, and then took an axe and a two-man saw down to the South Shore trail and cut up a tree trunk that had been lying across the path for a few years. Trail maintenance is sort of a communal project on the island, and that was our contribution for the year.
This evening we are going down to the Blake cabin for a Labor Day potluck picnic. My mom is making scalloped potato and ham casserole.
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Now the bad news. My Uncle Bob was put into a medically-induced coma around noon on Friday, in an effort to combat both the bacterial infection that he caught via his IV line, and the GVH (graft-vs-host disease) that he's been fighting off and on for over a month. The GVH has not improved since then, and today a doctor told Aunt Jan that there's only a 15% chance of recovery, and only about a 1% chance of a good recovery with much quality of life. So she and my cousin Brian signed a do-not-resuscitate order for my uncle.
And now, basically, we are waiting for him to die. It may take a few days, it may take a few weeks, but this is almost certainly the end.
...
Damn it all to hell.
In the evening, the Shaws came by for happy hour, after which we had corned beef for dinner. I love corned beef.
Today a man came by to take a look at the chimney, which has been leaning for several years and pulling the front of the cabin slightly out of line, so all our window frames are skewed. We think he will probably work to shore up the chimney next summer, so that's good. Dad and I also painted a couple touch-up jobs inside and outside the cabin, and then took an axe and a two-man saw down to the South Shore trail and cut up a tree trunk that had been lying across the path for a few years. Trail maintenance is sort of a communal project on the island, and that was our contribution for the year.
This evening we are going down to the Blake cabin for a Labor Day potluck picnic. My mom is making scalloped potato and ham casserole.
---------------
Now the bad news. My Uncle Bob was put into a medically-induced coma around noon on Friday, in an effort to combat both the bacterial infection that he caught via his IV line, and the GVH (graft-vs-host disease) that he's been fighting off and on for over a month. The GVH has not improved since then, and today a doctor told Aunt Jan that there's only a 15% chance of recovery, and only about a 1% chance of a good recovery with much quality of life. So she and my cousin Brian signed a do-not-resuscitate order for my uncle.
And now, basically, we are waiting for him to die. It may take a few days, it may take a few weeks, but this is almost certainly the end.
...
Damn it all to hell.
