It Does not Compute, Random Beer Garden, and Basal Cell Carcinoma - Week of February 22, 2015

Hans and Lisa (of Metamorphosis Road blog), Bob and I wanted to hike on Sunday, Feb. 22. However, the cold weather put a damper on that.

Instead, Hans came over to help fix my computer. It was massively sluggish, giving odd error messages, and wouldn't let me play Scrabble.

Oh, no! Please don't take my Scrabble away. I hadn't been able to play Scrabble on my computer for two weeks. Bob let me play on his computer when he wasn't using it.

Hans generously slogged through my registry, hard drive, and files to delete excessively large files and threats to my system. The upshot is: I need a newer, faster computer. On speedtest.net, my system performed terribly.

The other problem seems to be our AT&T air card. Hans had me run updates on the air card and that helped considerably.

By the time he had worked on my laptop for a couple of hours, I could play Scrabble and we were able to back up my computer onto an external hard drive. Thank you, Hans, for helping fix my ailing laptop. My laptop is three years "old." I guess that's ancient for a computer anymore.

We took off for Random Beer Garden in the afternoon where we treated Hans and Lisa to craft beers on tap at Random and Z's Wood-fired Pizzas. Lisa had her laptop with her and showed me Windows 8.1. She can edit her photos easily on her computer screen with flicks and swoops of her fingers. I see Windows 8.1 in my future when I buy a new laptop. Lisa did a great blog on San Antonio hikes and Random, and even took photos, which I forgot to do. You can click here to read her blog.

Here are some of my older photos of Random...

The old farmhouse

Inside the old farmhouse, now an events center.

Outside seating and beer garden

Over 80 craft beers on tap

After Random, we came back to Travelers World. Hans and Lisa invited us to their 5th wheel for a nice, warm, comfort-food dinner of sausage stew, rice with quinoa, and green salad. Good stuff! We sat and chatted for another hour and a half, said our good-byes as they were leaving in the morning, and headed home. 

With Bob and I working so much, we were happy to spend as much time with Hans and Lisa as we could. They will be in Austin for five weeks, then in Fredericksburg, Texas, and South Llano State Park. We plan to see them at least one more time while they're in Texas, maybe more.

Tuesday, February 24: Today Bob went to a Mohs surgery specialist to have basal cell carcinoma removed from his neck. He had a previous skin cancer removal site scar that had been bleeding for a few months. Mohs surgery entails removing cancer cells from the edges and depths of the wound. After each excision of cells, the skin pieces are sectioned, put under an electron microscope and the edges checked for cancer cells. They keep removing skin and checking the edges of the sections until no more cancer cells are found. Bob had to have three rounds of surgery today to remove more cancer cells. During his surgeries they were able to avoid the nerve in his neck that controls shrugging your shoulders. We were in the outpatient clinic for five hours!

The doctor was able to remove all the cancer cells from the edges of his wound, but the cancer had deepened into his neck muscle. The wound in Bob's neck is four inches by two inches and about 1/4" deep. The Mohs surgeon did not feel comfortable removing the cancer from Bob's neck muscle, so Bob has been referred to consult with both a head/neck surgeon and a plastic surgeon. He will have that consultation on Tuesday, March 3, at 1:00 p.m. Before the consultation he will have a computerized axial tomography (CAT) scan.

Bob will have a new surgery under general anesthetic, date to be determined. Because his wound is so big, the plastic surgeon is needed to consult as to whether a skin flap from another portion of his neck can be used to close the wound, or if a skin graft will be needed from another part of his body. The way I see it, his wound is way too big for a skin flap. He will most likely need a skin graft. We'll know on Tuesday, March 3.

That's the news from this "neck" of the woods. More reports to follow.

Travel Bug out.