Daley Ponderings

I walked home late Monday night, because there was supposed to be this big snowstorm. Jeremiah was already asleep, sprawled all over the bed. In the morning, it was only raining Jeremiah and I had leftover pizza for breakfast, and we walked to the hospital in the rain. The nurses and child... (More)

Days +2 and +3 have been full of desire for eating but not the ability to keep it down. Also, bare bottom and oxygen blowing has been keeping the diaper rash from getting worse, and it might even be a bit better.  She has lots of diarrhea.  She has been sleeping a lot. She had a... (More)

My place beside you, My blood for yours, Till the Green Ember rises, Or the end of the world! One of our favorite series is The Green Ember, by S. D. Smith . Rabbits with swords, new stories with old soul, heroes and villains, joy and grief, hope and longing, with love and... (More)

I woke up at 6AM because it turns out that is when the hospital does weekly generator checks which involves the power going out, which shuts off the ventilation fan briefly and triggers these color changing lights (that we didn't know about previously, see below), and so the nurses run around to... (More)

T-minus seven days and counting. Transplant Day is Day 0 and they count all other days from that. Yesterday, I left off while Grace was still sleeping. She woke up slightly grumpy, but soon was fully awake and her normal self. Chemo every six hours, blood draws every half hour (!) plus... (More)

Based on the number of supportive messages we got yesterday, I know you are all eagerly awaiting an update. We arrived at the Dana Farber Jimmy Fund Clinic for lab draws and "here's what's happening" meetings. We sucessfully ordered Grace some food, and then we had to pop across the street... (More)

Warning: I'm feeling better now, but the following post pretty accurately how I felt for most of today. After a good appointment in Hillsboro, they still wanted us to go to a pediatric dentist who was familiar with chemo/transplant issues, so Heather headed up to Dartmouth this morning in the... (More)

For the most part, these last two days went pretty well.  Grace was a trooper as we navigated the multiple confusing buildings and talked with many providers and was poked and prodded by various specialists. Her audiology appointment went pretty well.  The doctor was impressed with... (More)

(this was written January 2024, referring to Grace's first two years of life) When Grace was about six weeks old, right at the beginning of December 2021 , I noticed that she had “ café au lait spots .” I looked it up on the internet, and discovered that these... (More)

Since I'm on a roll of typing out the insulation we've used, I figured I might as well post about our heating systems too. We have five different heating sources for our home, and someday we'll get a sixth... 1a. Oil burner base board radiators. I grew up with base board radiators and I... (More)

Someone just asked for advice on Facebook, and I figured I should save it here so I don't need to type it again when someone asks later.   We've had just about every kind of insulation in our house. So, more than you asked for, but hopefully useful. Also, if you don't know about it,... (More)

I am posting my backlog of pocket notes. Sometimes details are sparse. 2/1 - Jonathan, "Even Einstein didn't have a triple-digit IQ." Noah, "Isn't that the guy with screws in his ears?" Jonathan, "No, that's Frankenstein." Noah is losing teeth all the time, I have trouble keeping track... (More)

6/1 - Nathaniel was playing with the nebulizer, dripped some of the leftover liquid, said, "Uh, oh."  Then he walked to the bathroom, opened the cabinet, got out a hand towel, came back into the bedroom and wiped up his spill. 6/2 - I asked Nathaniel to put the toy cars away and he did... (More)

On Saturday, March 26th, Jonathan, Faith, Joy and I participated in our first karate tournament. The whole family rose bright and early so we could drive the two hours and 15 minutes to Standish, Maine.  This tournament is relatively small, with only about five dojos participating.... (More)

From an email written to my mom on April 4, 2015 at 7pm. Just after noon, Noah came screaming in from outside.  He was holding one hand with the other and blood was dripping.  I took him straight to the sink to wash off.  He couldn't tell me what had happened and there was... (More)