Weekend Update

Pablo stayed up late last night. He and Grady watched 'Ghostbusters II' and shut their eyes at midnight. Total party animals those two.

Waking at 11:30 a.m., Pablo was happy and smiling. The perfect demeanor for greeting the pain management team who came by to remove the epidural from P's spinal column. The thing was removing itself-the sheet of plastic film that covered his entire back was rolling up and, like the bandage over his abdominal incision, caused a blister. All is good now. Rather than a continuous drip of high-octane pain med, Pablo now has to ask for Morphine when needed. He did ask for it the minute I got here this afternoon. Then he fell asleep. Like any guy on junk, he has the itches, and he tends to sleep with his eyelids half-mast. When he's on Morphine, Jo Ann and I are constantly pushing his lids down. It's another of the strange things that one faces with a cancer kid.

Can't wait for this to be a distant memory. But, like a gaffer on 'Apocolypse Now,' we can only wish....

I rode this morning with brother Joe Scully. Many topics of conversation carried us through our 48 mile ride. I hadn't ridden since last Saturday (a rarity for me), so I was feeling clunky and slow. Together with my heavy heart and uneasy mind, I was phoning it in. All that aside, I am grateful as hell to Joe for getting me out there, and scouring the tough topics of the day along the way. This week, I have to ride-Sunday is the Malibu Triathlon! Adam Harrison from Dangerbird is running, I'm cycling, and a buddy of Adam's will start out our relay team with the ocean swimming part. The Malibu Tri benefits CHLA (specifically the cancer treatment part, I believe), so it's a deeply personal event for me and Adam. I have not done a time trial all year. My brand new TT bike is hanging in the garage with less than five miles on it. It came in at the start of the Summer of Cancer, and you know what I did last summer. The time trial is my strong suit as a rider, and I am gonna have to get out there and do my best. I did the event last year on a regular road bike, and hundreds more miles under my belt, and did pretty darn well. With my fancy new bike, and thousands of hours of pent-up aggression to kick out, who knows how well I can do? The course is PCH, from Zuma to Leo Carillo State Beach and back. And, like my walk to school back in Milwaukee (Jo Ann and Grady were just making fun of me at dinner for this), it's uphill both ways. Seriously!

The main point is, our team will be supporting CHLA. Almost all of Pablo's docs will be competing as well. I know that Drs Mascarenhas, Stein and Austin will be there. Can't wait!

N0w, while Pablo's sleeping in his room, we have been feasting on a Wisconsin dinner from Lauren, Chris, Milo and Desi. They just returned from their summer home in my home state (L + C are O.G. Chicagoans), and brought back a cooler full of the high calorie cuisine I left behind almost a decade ago: Italian Sausages (they grilled them!), German potato salad (not to be confused with the American and Polish varieties), cheddar cheese curds (Grady freaked out at the sight and thought of them) and horseradish mustard. All we were missing were seven-ounce bottles of Blatz beer with a little pepper sprinkled on top! The bow on the gift was an assortment of gift shoppe goodies from the Brat Stop, an actual beer hall / sausage stronghold off of I-94, at the midway point between Milwaukee and Chicago. Cheap Trick played there the day their debut album came out. I'm not kidding. The BoDeans signed their deal with Slash Records there. Seriously.

Pablo just woke up. Gotta run.