Good Grief!

I must be cursed with bad luck this summer or something. Nothing will go right for me at the moment--nothing!

First of all, there's my research. We're now going into the 5th week of work and what do I have to show for it? A week's worth of hair-pulling days, all of which ended in more confusion than they began and yielded no results, and the previous three weeks' work is currently in the fridge, quite litterally chilling, until I get a break from my fluorescence hell.

You see, I've been trying to run this one--ONE--experiment for like two months now. I was supposed to get it up and running before finals... in April. The buffer was bad, so we just decided that would be what I'd start with in the summer. But oh doesn't it just figure, that while we have perfectly good buffer the sample and 800,000 other things have screwed up in the meantime. So now, instead of running a new experiment everyday or every other day, I have been fighting with the same one to start. Not even to get good end results, just getting the damn thing to run! Ugh!!!

And then there is my man Tyler. He also just cannot get a break. Just when it looks like he's back on track and going to finally get better, he either gets another fever or the pressure in his head spikes up again so back to the steroids. And lately, they've found tumor cells in his spinal fluid. Not good. Not good at all... times infinity. Hopefully, he's getting his shunt in either late this week or early next, so he will at least feel better. And depending on how things go, his mom asked me to come stay with him for the weekend like I did a few weeks ago. She needs a break and to get plenty of things done around the house since no one has really been there for about a month and a half now and I'm more than happy to go spend some time with him and the other kids. The baby! I'm still not sure if it will be hospital time or play at home time, though, but I'll take either. I wish we lived a little closer together, so I could see him more. Another companion said at training that he sees his camper about twice a month, I'm so jealous!

Mostly, though, I just really hope that he gets everything smoothed out in time for camp. Poor Ty-guy hasn't really done anything fun all summer long, so he really, really needs to get out and be a kid at camp, which he is really looking forward to. Well, minus the showers apparently. Meg said that he's got this major issue with taking a shower again this year, which from last year's standing there like "omg, why can't camp have a bathtub?!" performance, I can't say that I blame him. Five year olds take baths! So I really, really hope he's well enough to go and dig in the dirt by our "cabinent." Luckily, it is cancer camp and they can accomodate quite a lot, so that should help, and at this point, I think his parents are willing to do anything to get him there.

Fluorescence and brain tumors, good grief!