Wow! It is so nice to have so many wonderful people caring for us! In our “no room at the inn” entry, we were trying to keep a humorous outlook on a situation that had some desperate fringes to it. So many of you have responded with suggestions, schemes or offers that once again we feel incredibly blessed.  We do believe we have a solution. But first, let us share ….

Almost as soon as we posted the message, Mike and Fawn Read, who live in Sugar Land, offered their spare bedroom, noting “we’ve been PROMISED that we’ll have power by Monday.” The Read home is about 20 miles down the Southwest Freeway from the Medical Center.

I called the patient travel services at MD Anderson, and the folks there gave me a couple of suggestions, one of which was to “keep checking” (more later) on line and with hotels directly. 

Saturday I got two e-mails and then a phone call from cousin Chris Trusty in Honolulu, where, as she says “we know a thing or two about hurricanes.” Chris does her share of traveling, and thought that her gold premiere (or something like that) status with a well-known hotel chain might help her find something. She expressed some surprise that the her hotel system concierge could not find any rooms either.  Undaunted, Chris started plying her VRBO (vacation rentals by owner) connections, and actually made a connection for us north of town in the Woodlands.

Saturday night sister-in-law “Cilly” sends an e-mail  with an RV solution spelled out in some detail about how long you can get along with your own water and gas. 

Our solution: We will be staying in a Howard Johnson hotel on South Main near the Astrodome. It’s not my first choice of hotels or neighborhoods, but it will do. We had to make three separate reservations (and three separate rooms) to cover the entire time we will be there. The third reservation was for Sept. 24-26. We did this on a “Priceline” type of site called Hotwire. You do not know the specific hotel you are getting until you have paid for it. You are told (in this case) it is a “two star” hotel near Reliant Park / Astrodome. At the end it turned out to be the same hotel our at which our other two reservations were. It appears that Saturday mid-morning they were the only game in town. 

I suspect more rooms will become available as the week proceeds, but we are “locked in” now. We will be there for the duration of this trip.

The operation is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 25.

As soon as we got that news on Thursday, I started working on the idea that maybe we could go home for a few days and pay bills, free the dog from the kennel mow the lawn, tend to some matters at the office, and sleep in our own bed for a few nights.

Southwest was totally booked up for Friday but had two seats on a flight through Dallas that would get into Lubbock Thursday evening. We scrambled and made the necessary connections. Had a late dinner at Rosa’s, unpacked, and crashed. Picked up the dog in the morning, started on the mail, and began making return arrangements.

Surprise! There’s not a hotel room available in Houston, as near as I can tell. Those hotels that have electricity and water (all five of them 😉 ) are full of service personnel — communications workers, electricians and such — from other areas in town to help get Houston up and running again. So I’m trying to get on a wait list, and Nancy is wagging her finger saying “I told you so.”

It turns out that we have to go back to Houston Tuesday because I have pre-operation appointments starting at 8 a.m. Wednesday.

The second reading of my CT scan is consistent with the first: “Spots” in liver (and elsewhere) are benign. That means we can go ahead with scheduling the operation to remove the eye. However, the doctors here want to monitor my spots/cysts/lesions closely; so that means a CT scan every three months in the near term. Those scans will be done in Houston.

Scheduling the operation is the next hurdle. Because of Ike, they have a backlog of cases. Operation will be no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 23. We should hear later today regarding a date.

We did get better information on the surgery recovery process. For the operation itself, they will keep me overnight. They want to keep me “nearby” for a week under a compression patch. If the one week progress is good, they release me to go home and give me a referral for follow-up. Bruising and such should dissipate in 2-4 weeks. Some follow-up can be done in Lubbock. They then will want me back for another scan and follow-up in three months.

On the Ike aftermath report, more than half Houston remains without power. Traffic patterns in the Medical District appear to be back close to normal. We had breakfast at Cafe Anderson this morning. The area around our hotel remains without power.

So the plan now is to get the date for the operation. I really want to get back to Lubbock.

Wednesday night. We know nothing further.

We had been told Dr. Gombos’ office would call. And so we waited “patiently” (?) part of the day Wednesday to hear from Anderson. Then at 12:20 I left a voicemail for my advocate. She called back, apologetically, at 4:31 p.m. and said Dr. Gombos’ PA (Megan) would call in three minutes.

Note: Power was out in the hotel again; they were changing generators.

I walked all over the hotel parking lot looking for a spot with a reasonable signal so that I wouldn’t drop the call. (Nancy followed me every step.) The call didn’t come in three minutes. Or thirty. I tried calling, but, but after 5 p.m. they answer only to emergencies.

By this time they had the new generator back online at the hotel, so we headed back up to the room. At 5:24 p.m. one of those calls with ID blocked (Anderson?) came in, but it dropped as I answered. No follow-up. So we know nothing more, and we remain a captive of ignorance in a city in the early stages of recovery from a devastating storm.

Next time bring hiking boots and shorts. If the woman comes along, you don’t need a compass or GPS; she can find any Ross store or Target within five miles unaided.

More seriously, MD Anderson will resume “regular operation” Wednesday. I heard from my patient advocate at MD Anderson Tuesday morning that my scans were read last week before Ike arrived, and that someone from Dr. Gombos’ office should be contacting me Wednesday. That gives me hope that we might get some resolution this week … unless the second reading concludes I need a liver biopsy. That would mean another round of tests and analyses, which we are hoping to be done with.

Even though the hotel is running on a standby generator, they opened the restaurant on a minimal basis this evening. Nancy and I had $10 cheeseburgers (that included chips and soft drinks) as a way of saying “thank you” to a staff and manager who have just been golden during the Ike ordeal.