We’re havin’ some fun now.

Our daughter Deanna came in for the weekend and it’s been great visiting with her. The last time she was in town since she moved to Arizona was August 2008 after Sam was just starting his chemo/radiation treatments. So it was great for Sam to see his “little girl” and for Deanna to see that her Dad is making progress. It’s hard to see that kind of progress over the phone or by video conferencing.

Sam also thought that since Deanna was coming in, she could give us a hand with a little home repair project that we knew would soon become a problem if it wasn’t addressed. We have a well and it has produced well for us (no pun intended) in the twenty years we’ve been here. Fifteen years ago we (Sam, Max and Maddy) replaced the pump and foot valve and recently it has been making noises that indicated we were going to have a problem soon… and, trust me, it wouldn’t be any fun for the pump to stop in the middle of a morning shower.

Sam was kind of excited to have a “little project” that he could tackle (it’s a guy thing) and he thought it would take just a few hours to complete – with Deanna’s help this time. But, you know the expression, “when it rains, it pours.” This weekend we had a monsoon of sorts.

Our well is 80 feet deep and there is a little “foot” valve at the bottom of the well that keeps the pressure in the tubing so the pump can draw the water up. After pulling up the 80 feet of tubing with the aid of our Subaru and some grunt work by Deanna and Sam, we assembled the parts fairly quickly, got everything back in the ground and quickly realized that there was a problem after we poured 50 gallons of water into the tubing and it seemed to be leaking out of the tubes. We had to pull it back up again and start over. The foot valve cover came off and got stuck in the open position not allowing the tubes to hold pressure.



Without going into a bunch of details, that little 2 hour project took us two days to fix. It all seems to be working now, thank God. Sam was pretty worn out by the whole ordeal, but I know it’s a load off his mind and is another indication that he’s making progress toward his recovery.

Sam has been experimenting with a variety of foods to try to expand what he can eat with the goal of eventually getting off the food pump. We will see the Oncologist on Tuesday (2/10/09) for a follow up and to try to get a sense of when the tube can be removed. My guess is that it will stay in until after the results of the next PET/CT scan in March.

We are certainly looking forward to spring and some good news - but I'll take wrestling with a well pump over cancer any day.