Ups and Downs

Two days ago I was feeling pretty down. Today things are different. Even though we don't have the results back from the PET scan, Dad is feeling pretty good. He fell and hit his head Tuesday morning and he sustained a minor concussion. Turns out it appears that along with a him reading his dosage wrong on a couple of his meds was contributing to his general sense of malaise. Once we got the meds figured out and the concussion wore off, he's doing much better.

He was discharged from the hospital night before last so he could have his PET scan yesterday morning. Apparently if you are scheduled for cancer treatment, you can't be in a hospital. I have no idea if I got that right or not but they discharged him. I spent the night with him at his house and he began showing good signs of regaining his strength. Yesterday he managed to do most things for himself although it was a long and difficult day, he managed to work through it with a good attitude and commitment to doing what he needed to do to get well. Since he can be a bit pessimistic sometimes, this was encouraging.

Next week is a week of doctor appointments. He sees the cancer doc for the final diagnosis and what his course of treatment will look like and I think he starts chemo next week as well. Not looking forward to that at all but if he gets better at least for a few more years, then I guess its worth it. At this point, we are concerned more about quality of life vs quantity of years.

Regardless of what happens next week, he's moving into an assisted living facility. That will take a huge load off our shoulders and allow them to do all the mundane daily tasks and allow us to focus on just being with my dad and helping him get better. And if its his time to step off this earth, then the remaining time will be easier and we can just be with him instead of spending most of our time worrying about daily tasks and all the other logistical issues you deal with at this time in a persons life. We did this a year ago with my mom and while it went well, it would have been nice to have someone else manage all the day to day tasks and just let us spend the time with mom.

I may or may not trade next week. It looks to be a pressure cooker of a week between dad's doctors, moving him into the assisted living place, school and all the rest so I may just let it go for now until the pressure is off a bit. My wife is encouraging me to trade to help preserve a sense of normalcy in my daily routine and she might be right. Haven't decided yet. I am a creature of routine and when that routine is broken, I tend to get a bit stressed. Not OCD stressed but just out of sorts. I have a hard time focusing on a string of tasks if the first one is broken or out of order. So we will see.

Interesting times to be sure.

More updates

It's 5:20 AM as I write this. I've been up since 4:30AM. Checked my phone for any messages from my brothers about my dad. He's getting much worse. I suspect he's not going to live much longer. The mass they found is cancer and they think it may have spread very rapidly to the rest of his body. Doing a PET scan today to see how far its spread. My heart is very heavy today because my dad and I have been close for a very long time.

I ditched the MBS fraud case to help take care of my dad and his medical situation a day or so ago. Time seems to be slowing down in some respects and the days are starting to all run together. It's like I'm living in a fog right now....very unpleasant.

I've been watching charts off and on during these last few weeks. I haven't had time to do any real analysis or over thinking. Just take a look now and then and say, "buy or sell" and then on to other things. I've come back to the chart a couple hours later and sure enough, those calls have been mostly winners. Funny how that works. Just go with it and then let it go and it seems to work out. Proves that all the analysis and overthinking and second guessing is just crap. All you need to do to be successful is just have a decent sense of what you want to see, make the trade and leave. It's not rocket science. It may not be science at all, just the probability that one thing will happen before the other thing....profit before stop....

I'm head to the hospital in a couple of hours to see Dad. I have a bad feeling in my gut that I might not have very many more opportunities to tell him I love him and I'm proud of him....so I'm gonna do that today.....and tomorrow if he's still here and the day after that and the day after that.......

Do what's right today.......let the rest go. In life and in trading......

Best laid plans

I went live and almost instantly my life went crazy. First of all, my dad is in the hospital again. This is his third week there. Should get out next week. He went in for heart related issues and they found some cancer in his pelvic area. More test on that soon. Along with that, a law firm hired me to do research on a mortgage backed securities fraud case from 2006 they are litigating. Its temporary but the work load is intense. I'm working 10-12 hours a day doing that along with my class schedule. Its killing me already. I'm to old for this crap! But its paying VERY well and I didn't want to turn down the money. Its only for three weeks so I can handle it. I'll make about 4 months of living expenses in these three weeks so its worth it for me.

All that means I haven't traded since the first day I went live. And I won't be until after the litigation project is over on the 27th. I'll probably take a few days to decompress before I hit it again.

So until then, cheers.