some news is good!

Heard from Gary; the hotel is great, weather wonderful and he has good days and not so good. Alex and Danielle were going off to see the ruins, a 3 hour bus ride away. Gary & Rhonda opted not to take the trip. They are back on Sat with a full report and maybe photos.

Susan

no news is good news

Haven't heard a word from Cancun so I am assuming everything is going well. Rhonda had arranged for wheelchairs at the airports and hotel just to make it easier for Gary to get around. He tires easily.
I still haven't figured out how to post photos of the "shave" but if you want to see them, email me ( boopboop@earthlink.net) and I will be happy to forward them. Just put Gary's photos as the subject and I will be able to sort them from the spam.

Susan

Big doings

Gary shaved his beard after sixteen or so years. He has a very nice face underneath all that gray fuzz. If I can figure out how to do it, I'll post the before, during and after photos. He looks younger.
He will have his next Avastin infusion on Thurs. This will give him a day to recover before they take off on Sat for Cancun and week of sun, fun and a change of scenery. Gary's next scans will be after he gets back.
Gary relishes phone calls and visits. Mornings are better then afternoons and keeping visits to one to two hours are best. He enjoys going for coffee to Barnes & Noble or Panero's.


Susan

Big news

the Twenty Fifth on the Fifteenth

Everything else is put in perspective in the context of today being our 25th anniversary! No matter how sick I feel. Seeing Rhonda next to me each morning makes me realize I am the luckiest person in the world
Gary

update 5/13

I'm off to Syracuse on Thurs and look forward to a wonderful visit. We've been doing a lot of remembering and I'm bringing up a stash of old photos and looking at them should be fun. It's been a difficult week for Gary, physically and mentally but with Danielle home and Alex do in another day, that should brighten up both Gary & Rhonda spirits .

Susan

Gary writes:

The past few days have been physically quite difficult. I’ve had a series of bad headaches and stomach aches. Much of that discomfort passed when Danielle came home yesterday. Once I am able to get the headache under control I do feel much better. I still look forward to visitors but need to work the timing. I think much of this is reaction to the drugs. I do miss seeing my friends and colleagues. Please let me know if you are in the neighborhood and want to stop by. That is one of the best things to help my recovery.

This was sent to Gary by a colleague after his last lecture, May 9th.

Susan



Gary,

Thanks for inviting me to your "Last Lecture." It was a powerful experience and I was honored to be included.Your students were so engaged. I could not help but watch them and the focus that they had. I will confess to being a bit jealous as my students tend to fall asleep any time I get near "life lessons." I don't think I am as funny as you are. Anyway, I walked behind several of them after class and they were chatting about their own stories around school, how they've gotten to where they are, and where they are going next. So in case you were wondering, they were listening. And so was I.So now that school is almost over, let me know when you want to go walking. In the meantime, I have begun riding my bike. I am not very good, and, I must say the seat is downright painful at this point. I'll let you know when I get up to a few miles and am ready to take the lake path on, maybe by the time you are back from Cancun.Take care,Cynthia

I know much of what I am writing is pretty redundant to ha you already know. Trisection was going to focus on support systems. Without doubt your medical support system is most important. I have been most fortunate to start with one of the top neurosurgeons in the country. Not only based on his technical abilities but also his demeanor and our ability to connect with one another. Certainly my background in cognitive neuroscience, that I took Oliver Sacks out for lunch made a tremendous impact on him.

On a daily basis it is my family that has provided me with the support, strength, motivation, drive to keep going on each day. This is what I look \at every morning and realize I have something worth living for

I know much of what I am writing is pretty redundant to ha you already know. Trisection was going to focus on support systems. Without doubt your medical support system is most important. I have been most fortunate to start with one of the top neurosurgeons in the country. Not only based on his technical abilities but also his demeanor and our ability to connect with one another. Certainly my background in cognitive neuroscience, that I took Oliver Sacks out for lunch made a tremendous impact on him.

On a daily basis it is my family that has provided me with the support, strength, motivation, drive to keep going on each day. This is what I look \at every morning and realize I have something worth living for

support

know much of what I am writing is pretty redundant to ha you already know. Trisection was going to focus on support systems. Without doubt your medical support system is most important. I have been most fortunate to start with one of the top neurosurgeons in the country. Not only based on his technical abilities but also his demeanor and our ability to connect with one another. Certainly my background in cognitive neuroscience, that I took Oliver Sacks out for lunch made a tremendous impact on him.

On a daily basis it is my family hat has provided me with thesupport, strength, motivation,drive tokeep going oneach day. This is whqt Ilook \at every morning and realize Ihave something worth living for

Accomplishments

I suspect there are very few people who respond to a diagnosis of a terminal illness with a short prognosis any different than I am. There are two things I spend considerable time doing: Thinking about what I will not be able to eddo. My mother died at a young age, as old as I am now. And I had an uncle who died ten years younger. Ever since I got married I always thought about the parts of my life my mother never got to see. Now I think about my children’s futures. Although they are in a much better position than I was when my mother died. I still want to dance at their weddings and hold (if there are any) grand children. More importantly was the time I would spend in retirement with Rhonda. I can go on and on about the things and places I wanted to go with her. That is probably my biggest disappointment. Where do I go from here? I really don’t know. Hopefully the legacy left for my children and wife will preserve the memory of who I was. All I hope is that I am remembered as caring, loving thoughtful husband, parent, brother, and friend. The ways my wife and children respond to me lead me to believe that those hopes are valid. Also the fact that I have friendships that have lasted over 40 years tells me that my evaluation of myself is valid. I certainly am not going to list all of my positive characteristics. What I do want to do is to reflect on my accomplishments.

I certainly was not the student in high school or college that made my parent proud. Even my athletic abilities were minimal until I started paying basketball as a high school senior, but that wasn’t anything my parents were interested. I really am not sure there was anything I accomplished that they bragged about, although there were things they certainly could have.
My children are certainly at the top of my list but I certainly cannot take complete credit for that but according to Rhonda, I was the major influence on their development. I cannot accept that.
When you work at a university it is difficult to see that receiving a Ph.D. in a research discipline is a major accomplishment. I don’t recall the percentage of the population that has a Ph.D. and the percentage of people who start Ph.D. programs actually complete their dissertation
Actual accomplishments. My first “real” job was working for GE, Martin Marietta, and Lockheed Martin where I managed the team that was designing the computer interface for the next generation submarine system. On the surface this may not seem like a big deal but we brought those systems to the computer age with digital color displays. In fact the design standards and conventions we developed for that system was adopted as the Navy standard. Our work also resulted in the Navy making Human-Computer Interaction an integral component of all their designs. In addition to receiving a General Manager’s award for my work on the proposal for that project, The Navy pointed out that the HCI design was one of the significant strengths of our proposal.
I certainly cannot compare any of those accomplishments to what I have done as an educator. What stands out most is something that took place at the end of my first year back in academia. I taught a core lab course (Cognition) that was required for a psychology major. After graduation, one of the students from that class took me around to meet her entire extended family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. She was the first, not only to graduate from a college, but to attend college. Seeing how proud her family was of her, touched me in ways I have never been affected again.

new posts

There are a couple ofpersonal commnets I want to add related to my accomplishments. I hope todo that this after noon maybe cldean up someof somen of the typos and other garbage

right now I am partaking in a favorite activity. sitting at Panera's eating an egg souffle drinking a latte. reading theblog it is focused on my medicalcondition. There have been acouple of other events that I would like to add later today. I am continued to be overwhelmed by my friends,family, students, andcolleagues and how much they have they have congtributed to myrecovery Thanks to all of you