T+7: I'm back at home, Richie isn't.

It's been a week since the transplant, and Richie is still in that "no fun" time where you get socked by the side-effects of the Melphalan. Richie ran a fever last night, which broke this morning. He is still feeling the sore throat from hell, however, and could only talk in short bursts until his throat got too painful and he had to rest his larynx. However, this is all to be expected in an SCT at this stage.

The ability to bi-locate would be a great supernatural talent to have. Unfortunately this is not AD&D, where if you have the right spell in your spellbook you can do it. I can only be one place at a time, and here is where I have to be.

As it is, being at City of Hope, I missed the delivery of Richie's keyboard. So one of the things keeping me here is waiting for FedEx Ground to deliver the damn thing. They are the abject WORST at keeping to a schedule. I remember when my refurbished ThinkPad 600e was being delivered from San Diego (San Diego! Just down the coast from me!) I waited a whole fucking day to get my package. A whole fucking day of having to be hypervigilant, lest FedEx play "ding dong ditch" with the package.

Anyway, the bastards have until 4pm. That's it. I'm leaving at that point, to go to Woodbury. I have to iron out some final things with the Business Office, and I also have a class to attend.

At least I was able to get a good night's sleep last night/this morning. That felt good.

Dose 1, Melphalan

Well, I'm at Hass Manor instead of CoH because last night I got almost no sleep. A random guy who identified himself as being from Children's Protective Services tried to gain access to the building through the security gate. I sensed an attempt by someone misrepresenting himself to "socially-engineer" his way into the building. I did not let him in, and called 911 asking if there was a legitimate Law Enforcement officer attempting to gain access to the building. They said "no." My spider-sense didn't fail me. However, I was so shaken up by the incident I couldn't sleep very well. Today I am totally dragging ass. Bleah. No 3 hour rides to and from Duarte for me today. I'm going to take a nap later and then see how I am later. I'm going to get Richie a headphone amp at Guitar Center.

Richie is actually quite happy to talk on the phone. Verizon says our landline can make unlimited calls all over the US with the package we have. I'm gonna hold them to it, because Duarte is a toll call. Richie got the Melphalan this morning and he's actually not doing too badly with it. They are taking a lot of precautions to make sure he doesn't get the mouth ulcerations, the nausea and vomiting, and the diarrhea. He was getting ready to eat lunch when I called...it hasn't affected his appetite yet either.

Our good friend Tom Reed answered the call for the keyboard. He's bought one on eBay and it should get here soon. Thanks, dude.

Hopefully I will see Richie tomorrow. I hope that this asshole doesn't try to gain access to the apartment building again. I think I will sleep in clothes tonight in case I have to deal with this guy directly.