Made it Back

About 3:30PM. Didn't get into the hotel in Portland until 2AM since the plane was 2 1/2 hours late. Got into Frankfurt going over 3 hours late, so Delta can't run planes any better than United.

Didn't hear back from the guy in Geneva so went up to Hamburg instead. Unfortunately I should have made a reservation at the model train place. I got there about 10:30AM last Wednesday and the next tour that wasn't full already was 2:30PM. Must be a real tourist trap to be that busy on a weekday morning in non-summer season. So, I just
took an earlier train back (they run every hour during the day). Nice train, cruises at 200Km/hour (124MPH) and some of the cars have LCD TVs on the seatbacks just like the newer planes.

Saw a number of wind turbines on my train trip. They tend to be in small groups of 2 or 3, although I did see a group of 10 one time. They look bigger than the ones we have in Oregon.

As far as the problem with barnnetwork, it's what I came to suspect. When the kid filled the water tank they must have gotten some water into the control box for Dino's water dispensor, shorting it out. They brought in a big metal water tank for
Dino to use. If the waterer was setup normally it wouldn't be a problem, but the control box is needed to turn on the water pump. I cleaned the corrosion of the PC board and jumped over a trace that had completely corroded away and it works again.

Have some pictures from the trip. If any of them are worthwhile I'll put together a webpage for them and post the address here.

Nothing heard from Geneva

If I don't hear anything soon I think I will go up to Hamburg and take a look at a huge HO scale train layout "Miniatur Wunderland".

The regional buses, streetcars, and trains all operate on the honor system, with occasional checks to check for compliance. There was finally a conductor on a portion of the my trip into Mainz this morning. Fortunately I still had 45 minutes left on the weekly ticket I bought last week, so I avoided a 40 Euro fine :)

I've noticed that on one or more streetcars the electronic sign in the car that announces the next stop sometimes says "Schott Glas" instead of "Schott AG" for that stop, I guess someone had a sense of humor.

Back to Laundry....

Picked up report and CD

"Summary: Our current examinations revealed possible metastatic involement of the right lung and a suspicious left parailiacal lymph node. Alternatively, the lung findings could be interpreted as postinfectious residue."

I am hoping that they use the same format for CT images as in the states. They put the two images from last year as well as the two from last week on the CD.

Otherwise, I have been taking long walks when weather allows. There is lots of traffic on the roads, but there are orcherds (spelling?) but I'm not sure what type of trees they are. There are tractors on the roads mixed in with the cars, and even some kids walking or riding their horses up the street nearby.

A couple of days ago I went to the Johannes Gutenberg museum and walked around inside a 1000 year old cathedral, and picked up a sandwhich from Subway on the way back :)

Still three units on barnnetwork not responding: Dino's water bowl, the camera, and the 24 volt charging system. Can't think of what would take 3 devices off the network, especially since they are in locations separated by quite a distance. Seems kind of early in the year for lightning.

That's all for now, probably back in town on Monday to do my last laundry of the visit.

Back at the Internet Cafe

Fortunately it is right across the street from the laundromat. Have moved my flight to the 22nd so should arrive back home on the 23rd of April. For some reason the barn network went dead on the 10th and then came back alive, except for Dino's water dispensor, I hope it's working.

Hoping to go down to Geneva next week to visit CERN, have to email the guy and find out if he is back from vacation yet.

I'll Pass for Now

Got a CT scan of both abdomen and thorax on Thursday and Friday. I had a long talk with Dr. Schuler about the results. The CT scans showed no obvious cancer metastsis, in fact it showed less suspicous activity than the one 7 weeks ago in Oregon. If it were cancer it should have grown significantly in that time period. Given the lack of elevated tumor markers the Dr. cannot say whether there is cancer or not. Every thing that is suspicous has another reasaonble explanation. Given that, he gave me the following possibilities:

1) Continue with the "wait and watch". He said that even if it did start to grow and I had to come back in 3 or 6 months, the treatment would be the same.

2) Do two cycles of chemotherapy. If anything shrinks then it must have been cancer and they would then do a third cycle. If nothing shrinks then it wasn't cancer but I probably wouldn't have to worry about anymore.

Being a coward, I chose option 1. I will go to the clinic next week and get an ultrasound on the remaining testicle just to make sure that it is OK, might as do that while I am in Germany, just in case...

I had already arrangedto rent an apartment in a suburb of Mainz called Fenthen, about a 20 minute bus ride from downtown. Quite expensive, but still much better than a hotel room, I'll be moving in today. I plan on returning home around the 25th of April. Hopefully I will be spending my time as a tourist and not in the hospital.

All screwed up

Went to the hospital on Monday and met with the oncologist. After he obtained the actual pathology reports from my operations last year we found out that the report that Dr. Thüroff gave me was wrong. First, there was no mention of vascular invasion when in fact there was. Second, there was one lymph node that was positive for metastsis while the report said there were none. Had the urologist and I had known this we may have decided to do the chemotherapy last year which would have increased my survival odds.

I check into the hospital on Thursday and will probably start treatment on Friday. It turns out that I will be in-patient only as long as required to determine that I am handling the chemo OK and will be out-patient for the balance of the time. The one nurse I spoke with had very fluent english, I suspect she must have lived in an english speaking country at some time.

We did talk a company that arranges short term apartment or room rental on Monday, although nothing looks good so far. There is a single room apartment available not far from the hospital that will become available on Thursday that might work out. Even that is very expensive, could be as much as $700 per month unless they give me a discount for monthly rental. One room apartments in regular apartment buildings can be over $900 per month. We went and looked at a small "apartment" that was really a converted "Comfort Hotel" that apparently didn´t do enough business so they converted it to apartments. The kitchen was a joke, just a small refrigerator and a two burner hotplate. Hopefully we can come up with at least one other option before Thursday.

Have had good weather until today, it has started to rain. I hope we can get a regular telephone setup soon, calling my cell phone is very expensive. If you are feeling rich the number is 011-49-1520-2774824.

In Mainz

Due to the thunderstorms in Atlanta almost all flights were delayed about 1 and half hours, including my flight from Portland, but of course, not my flight to Frankfurt. So, I didn't arrive until around noon on Friday. Since just about everyone at the hospital takes Friday afternoons off, we couldn't accomplish anything there.

I will be checking into the hospital on Monday. In the meantime not much to do, except go to the internet cafe to do this, try to figure out the highly complicated laundromat, and maybe go to Wiesbaden on Sunday.

By the way, did you know that some of the letters and almost all of the punctuation are in different places on German keyboards? Like the "Y" and "Z" are reversed, making this sentence very difficult to type :)

Haven't looked at apartments yet, apparently it would be through some sort of service which of course isn't open on weekends. I will make a list of items and have Daniel check out the possibilities while I am in the hospital.

That's all for now. I forgot to bring the piece of paper with my cell phone number on it, but Jennifer Barker has it, her number is 541-542-2525.