I woke up and shaved since I hadn’t shaved since the biopsy.  Dry shaving can be a little painful, I wised up as I wanted to speed up and added some shaving gel to the mix.  Once I was done shaving into my work clothes with a collared shirt that was open that would not rub against my neck and stitches.

I received a call from my Internist office stating that the oncologist, Dr. Thomas Cosgrif was off on Friday, he was also off today, Monday, Tuesday, and of course the July 4th holiday, on Wednesday.  I decided that I would call another oncologist to see if I could get an earlier appointment than having to wait all the way to next Thursday just to see him, not include waiting to start treatment.  I called Dr. Laura Brinz’s office and asked when I could make an appointment as a new patient.  The first question they asked me was what insurance I had, I told them Blue Cross and Blue Shield HMO.  She said that they must ask that before any additional questioning and answers.  She then said that the first available appointment was Monday at 4:30, but there was a possibility that the Dr. was going to come in on her day off on Friday to make up for Wednesday.  She asked me who had referred me, and I told her that Dr. Jacob’s had mentioned her as a great Doctor with plenty of faith.  Faith never hurts in such situations!  The nurse said that she would call me back if the Doctor was going to have office hours on Friday once she found out.  If not we would schedule the Monday appointment.  I told her that was fine and gave her my info.  She then instructed me to call Dr. Jacob’s office and Dr. Yager’s office and have them fax over the results of the XRay since it was not done at EJGH.  She said that everything else they should be able to pull up in the computer system.  I called up my Internist’s office and had them fax all my information and documents over to Dr. Brinz’s office.

I then returned a client’s phone call that I had missed.  The client was wondering on the status of a storage array install, I said that we had scheduled it last week for this upcoming Thursday or Friday, and that I would forward her the emails on the storage array install schedule.  I then put together my laptop computer, put on my shoes, and headed over to the office.

When I got to the office, I put together the checks that had to go to the bank to transfer funds from one account to another for payroll taxes and the upcoming rent that was due.  I then emailed out all the monthly statements that I had run the night before.  I also prepped for going to install a new VOIP to analog phone adapter and setup a printer/copier/scanner for a new client moving into a new office at an existing client’s office.  I packed the van with my laptop, toolbag, printer, toner, and wire and headed out.  I deposited the checks at the bank and then continued onto the new office to do the work.

I arrived at the office that I had to do the work at, and I unpacked the van, putting the printer, laptop, toolbag, toner and wire on the hand truck.  I pulled the hand truck up the 5 stairs and into the office.  I then went to work.  The VOIP phone provider only had sent one phone adapter, so I had to call up the phone provider and explain to them that we wanted 2 phone adapters that way we could have 4 concurrent calls at one time on 2 different numbers.  To save the time and physical expense from having to setup an entire phone system, we simply used a VOIP to Analog adapter.  I then put this phone adapter into the closet and attempted to test it out, however the cisco switch that I was plugging it into had portfast disabled.  I had to log into the switch and configure it for portfast so that the connection would be established as soon as the wire was connected and not be delayed for 20 seconds while the switch checked to see if there were any loopbacks present on the new connection.  Once the VOIP adapter was working, I then used a piece of velcro to mount the adapter to the wall since it did not have any mounting holes.  I then ran 2 network cables from the switch down tot he adapter on the wall for network connectivity.  I then ran 2 wires from the patch panel to the telephone punch panel for putting the phone line on multiple phones.   It was during just running these wires I felt hot and sweating a little more than usual.  I also felt a little weak, but not enough to stop me.  After all, all I am doing is putting ends on wires and punching down 12 wires on a 66 block.  However, this did make me aware of my limits of what I could expect to do the remaining of the week, but I’ll take each day, day by day.  My sister texted me about this time, asking me what I was up to.  I was working, she replied to me, always finding something to keep me busy, well that’s just who I am.  I am doing OK, starting to hit a wall, but not too bad just yet, but back to the work and what I was doing.  I then patched the phone adapter to the telephone punch panel and added the metal connection clips and the 2 lines on both of the phones in the office now worked for dialing in and dialing out.  I then unpacked the printer, and took off the 25 pieces of blue take they had all over the printer.  I then plugged in the printer and it was ready to be used as ac copier/fax.  The added functionality of a scanner/printer can be added once the office is completely setup.  I attempted to fix an issue with the computer, but could not get the voicemails to play through the website because of a problem with Silverlight continuing to crash.  I will have to do this later.

During all this, my cell phone had rang, and since I was done setting up everything, and it was a little after 3:30.  I decided to return the phone call since it was the nurse saying that the Doctor would be working on Friday so that she could see me.  I used the new phone system to make the out going call to test out the quality.  My appointment was for Friday at 9:45 AM.  She just needed to know my height and weight so that she could order the PET scan to stage the Lymphoma.  She faxed the paperwork to the insurance company for approval while we were on the phone, and told me that she would call me back with the date and time of the PET scan once she received the approval and setup the scan with the appropriate people.  The quality of the phone was great with no issues.

I then went and talked with my client in the building I was working in and explained in greater details about my situation and what was upcoming depending on the outcome of the biopsy.  She wished me the best of luck, and wouldn’t know what they would do without me.  I told her that I am not a quitter, I am not planning on going anywhere anytime soon.  My plans are to overcome this obstacle and continue on providing my greatest possible level of service as always.  I then got my hand truck, toolbag, laptop and wire and packed up my van and headed back to the office.

I arrived at the office, and I brought all the items up my office and started following up entering into the computer everything that I had done today at the client’s office along with everything I had done over the past few days for client’s while I was out of the office for billing purposes.

My parent’s then stopped by with a Pomegranate Smoothie from Smoothie King.  I invited them back into the office to show the the portable ice maker that my Business partner had gotten as part of a Hurricane survival plan, that is if another Hurricane like Katrina was coming our way, we were not going to leave, but stay, and that would provide us with ice, as we already had a water filtration system and plenty of bottled water to last a few weeks, which is more than enough time for a baseline recovery as seen from Katrina.  The reason I showed my parent’s the portable ice maker because on days that I am not feeling hungry from the chemotherapy, I may be able to drink smoothies and such, and smoothies take plenty of ice.  During the middle of the summer the icemaker in the freezer at home cannot keep up with general icing drink needs along with the greater amount of ice for smoothies, so this was to show them what we would need to supply the demand for ice without having to run out to buy extra ice.  My parents left and I finished up the admin work.

I then put 4GB into a desktop I had in the back and emailed the client the invoice for the RAM and to let them know that they could pick up the computer tomorrow.  It was then time to head home.

When I got home, I ate a homeade salad with mushrooms my dad had cooked and some chicken from the weekend.  I then plugged in my laptop computer and caught up on yesterday’s update, and wrote about my events for today.  It’s only 9:15, but I am not planning on staying up late tonight, I’ll watch some more TV, get a bath, and then go to sleep on the lazy-boy.