Guppies and a rash at our house

The last two days have brought the unexpected at our house. It started yesterday afternoon. . . . Mandy had another CT scan as part of the "staging" process (determining the stage of the lymphoma). The goal was to see whether she has any enlarged lymph nodes in her abdomen or whether they are limited to the area above her diaphragm. This determines whether the stage is type II or type III, which is important for the chemotherapy dosage and is determinative of the areas that will be subject to radiation treatment. It is also predictive of cure rate. Preliminary results are that she is type II (95% cure rate). But this wasn't unexpected.

What was unexpected is that Mandy is apparently part of the 5% of people who experience an allergic reaction to the iodine used as a dye for CT scans. And boy is she allergic! A few hours after the scan she started feeling a flush and then a red, puffy rash spread over her entire body. She started feeling *very* cold and, long story short, I had to run over to Walgreens at 12:30 AM for Benadryl. Although the Benadryl didn't help the rash or fever (she couldn't get warm in fleece pajamas a down comforter and a quilt), it helped her get a little sleep.

This morning she went in to see the doctor who said it would pass and that she should keep taking Benadryl. After spending the day resting, thanks to friends and family who took care of the kids, she is starting to feel better now and the rash is fading.

The second unexpected arrival at our house: guppies. Yes, the little fish. We've had this 5-gallon aquarium on our kitchen counter that has been the aquatic equivalent of a vacant slum house for the past year after the unfortunate demise of our last fish (a guppy) who lived for the grand total of a single day. So on a whim, I stopped at PetSmart on the way home from work last night and bought two guppies--a male and a female--along with a bamboo plant to keep them company. I plopped them into the tank and hoped they were survivors.

The kids were excited to see their new fish this morning after having finally given up hope that Dad would actually make good on his promise to deliver the new pets. We explained to them that the dark one was the daddy fish and the light one was the mommy fish and that they might have babies at some point. Little did we know it would be TODAY ... or that there would be TWENTY (20) of them. Yes, I got a call at work from Mandy this evening saying mommy guppy had five babies and wasn't that a lot. By the time I got home there were 7, no 8, no 9, no 13 babies. By 8:30 there were 20. Twenty baby guppies in a 5 gallon tank. And how could a sub-inch long fish carry 20 babies, even if they were each only a quarter inch long? We told the kids that most of them won't make it but we didn't have the heart to them that we don't know who the father is (surely guppies can't reproduce in one day?).

Anyway, if anyone would like some baby guppies swing by our house. Apparently we breed them.

Daddy guppy (mommy was hiding along the filter pump to keep warm)


Baby guppy (1 of 20--maybe)