You can reach Sue at (314) 452-3685 or (314) 726-2032. You can write to her c/o Rose Holt, 905 Barnard College Lane, St. Louis, MO 63130

This is ding (chris) giving a guest editorial. First of all, let me thank everybody for their support and understanding. I can not thank people enough. Aunt Rose has already gone on about how poor people without insurance get along, how about people with very few friends and family. And certainly I can not thank Aunt rose and Shirley enough for all they have done for everybody.

Now enough of that. Let's talk Mom and Denny. Shelly and I arrived in Chicago on Wednesday just in time for rush hour traffic. When we got to the hospital, my mama wasn't doing so well. She was having hallucinations where she thought everybody's head was swelling up. It was terribly frightful. We needed my buddy Chuck, who has talked me through such predicaments before. With all the talking I had done, she just didn't do well with hallucinations. I told her how people pay big money for such a "trip" and if she could just channel and enjoy, she would be much better off. She just didn't get it. It ended up being a reaction to acyclovere (my phonetical spelling) which, ironically, Shelly also takes. The doctor said it can cause such side effects in 10% of the patients. Regardless, shelly is thinking of doubling her dosage for recreational purposes.

I will say that everyday Mom improved drastically. And honestly, we laughed far too much to be appropriate. One story in particular made mom laugh so hard that she almost pissed herself (in fact afterwards we had to untangle her IV's and take her to the restroom) The weekend before, shelly and I had gone to the lake for a conference (shelly's). We also knock out lots of Christmas shopping at the outlet mall. One place we stopped at was the Polo store. I thought that it was ironic that all women employees at the store were "low boobed" Mom didn't get that. So I explained that meant they all appeared as though their breasts were growing from their abdomen. It didn't matter if they were young or old, big or small. They were all low boobed. On Friday in Chicago we went to the Polo store in Chicago, on Michigan Avenue. It was comically expensive. $24 to park for three hours. A fur throw for your bed....$8000. a marble card table....$14000. Shelly like one leather skirt in particular...$1500. Anyway, it seems when you charge that much, you can also afford an entire staff of highboobed women. And sure enough the entire staff was either young hot high boobed women or gay guys. It seems that really cuts down on interoffice dating.
Also Auntie is always going on and on about how tough it is to park around her condo. I have always poohpoohed that notion as I have never had a problem. Until Friday night. We drove around for 1 hour and 7 minutes until we came up with a spot that was still some 7 blocks from her condo. We could have paid $12 to park in Aunties parking garage, but after paying $24 to park during the day, I was feeling even cheaper than usual. So instead we drove around for hours.
We drove back on Saturday, but first brought Starbucks to mama and then stopped by Denny's apartment to pick up the mail. I really don't drink much these days, but that never stopped Denny from accusing me of drinking his beer (an accusation that had lots of truth to it seven or eight years ago). It gave me great pride in stealing his last beers. Shelly and I made great time on the way home despite the fact that I drove.
I stopped by the hospital to see Denny on Sunday. I couldn't stay long, and just wanted to see what he needed. Dale, denny's brother, was there visiting. Denny was lamenting that in his current state, he couldn't even tie a fishhook. I told him he was just going to have to use swivels. ( to further explain, swivels are the devils instruments to denny. "weakest part of your line, don't you know"). It is the equivalent of a computer guy such as myself using AOL. In fact Auntie paid me a great compliment this weekend when she was on my laptop and called it the first computer she has ever seen without AOL.
Anyway it looks like we will be getting all of Denny's stuff from his apartment this weekend...probably a friday and/or saturday trip. Email me at dingspreitler@hotmail.com if you have any questions or would like to volunteer. Doug is going to need some help with the heavy stuff.

More Later,

Ding