Cancer. I received your get well wishes (on card and envelope!) on Thursday. Thank you.

On Friday I received word via a family friend that my dad has stage 4 Myelodysplastic Syndrome. She sent me a four page printout from Seattle Cancer Alliance. According to what I read it is several different diseases that all affect the blood-forming cells.

The article mentions three risk factors: exposure to toxins, such as benzene, radiation or certain solvents or pesticides, over many years; smoking; chemotherapy or radiation used to treat cancer. Dad certainly has none of those risk factors!

So for now I guess my hope to be able to get out of prison before either of my parents die is fading fast. This also makes the point of me looking to establish some sort of support system on the outside more critical. My one hope for being able to take care of Mom and Dad upon my release while I work at putting my life back together does not look like an option.

As far as how I am doing, besides the heavy emotional burden, my leg is still causing stabbing pains every once in a while and I hope that is a good sign as opposed to the symptom of the bones not fusing. I have been hobbling around keeping all weight off it.

I spent several hours in front of the computer today and had a blast of a time working on some exotic report layouts. Boy I can not wait till I really figure out all the stuff I can get access to do!

The one thing that is a new challenge is working with queries. I can use some of the software's wizards, but then look under the hood as it were to see what the actual query statements look like. I am also getting better at using the Visual Basic stuff.

Let me write a few short posts for the blog and then crawl into bed and rest my very tired body!  ¶ 6:32 PM