blood and deer

We took Mom out to Mount Vernon Hospital this evening. It wasn't anything urgent; both Dr. Royfe (Mom's primary care physician) and Dr. Meister (Mom's medical oncologist, the doc managing her Avastin and carboplatin) needed blood samples for blood work. This week, we were able to kill two birds with one stone: the samples given tonight will be used for both sets of blood tests. This doesn't normally happen: both docs are operating on their own schedules, which sometimes means that Mom has to give blood twice as often as usual (by "usual," I mean once every two weeks). The docs also tend to request different batteries of tests, which means that each doc needs a different set of blood. This time, however, one doc's tests were essentially the same as the other's, with only a few additional items.

Mount Vernon Hospital is only five minutes from our house; the drive there occurred in the dark: days here are short now, and by 5:30PM, it's effectively night. When we started back home, I opted to take some back roads that would lead to the George Washington Parkway. On the way to the parkway, we passed a deer that had just been hit by a van in front of us. The animal was lying on the ground, but was still moving as we passed it. The van that had struck the deer had pulled off the road; I assume the driver was calling the authorities. Deer are an occasional problem where we live; despite being so close to Washington, DC, we have plenty of green spaces, and the human population density prevents hunters from culling the deer population. Accidents like this will happen; I don't blame the van's driver, especially since this happened in the dark. Can't say that I blame the deer, either; it was simply doing its deer thing.

In other news: Mom's got her appointment with Dr. Mirali, the plastic surgeon who worked on her scalp, in the morning; our family friend Mr. James will be visiting in the early afternoon, and Dad has an eye appointment not long after. Tomorrow promises to be busy.

Ah, yes-- two personal notes: (1) I temporarily regained my senses of smell and taste, but only very slightly; (2) I managed to do a bit of leaf collecting. After the massive amount of work I'd done over a week ago, today's labor was easy. When I was finished, it was a relief to see both the deck and the driveway nearly leaf-free. This state of affairs won't last, of course, but in life you have to take what you can get.


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