He Is Getting Better

This is my own assessment, not the doctor's, but I see him a lot more than they do. The doctor saw Jon for about 3 minutes today and said, "we will see you tomorrow." 

Jon asked the nurse how many attendings there are who rotate through the IPOP. This nurse has spent his entire career in the IPOP and he knows them all. He counted them up by name, and he said he thought there were 14, including leukemia doctors. We asked how long Hopkins has been doing CAR-T and he said about five years, and that Hopkins is conservative and they were late adopters. But they have been doing transplants for 30 years. 

Last night at about 11:00, Jon took a long, steamy shower. It was the first time in many weeks that he didn't have any tubes sticking out of him, so we didn't have to wrap him in Press 'n' Seal. The shower did him a lot of good. He really did not cough that much last night. Ironically, I couldn't go to sleep -- waiting to hear whether he was coughing, or just too keyed up. I have a history of random insomnia: if I don't go to sleep when my head hits the pillow, then there is a chance I will not go to sleep at all. But I have learned to stay calm and behave like I am asleep, and the night will go by, especially if I go get on the couch.

Anyway, we went to the IPOP on the shuttle and they did all the things: putting a line back into his port (they took it out when he left the hospital, because that's the protocol, even though he needed it again today), doing labs, waiting for the results. Today his numbers inched up a little more, and that is encouraging. If he can recover from this RSV, I think they will start to talk about letting us go home. But nobody said that, I am just hopeful.

It was a chilly day. We contemplated making the walk home for about two seconds, and then Jon called an Uber again. And then we were home for the rest of the day, talking on the phone, joining the weekly family Zoom call, texting. Jon only had one nap. While he was napping, I went out to get some more food so we can have leftovers tomorrow if the world gets buried in snow, as predicted.

My heart is much lighter tonight, listening to Jon talking on the phone with a strong voice, and pretty cheerful. He gave specific and lengthy instructions to Benjamin and Stephen and Michael about emergency preparedness at the farms. I was in the other room with the door closed, and I couldn't quite tell who he was yelling at, but it was Stephen this time. 

We can only hope that this report will get even more boring in the days to come. Thank you all for reading and caring and texting. This is one surreal existence. 

Anna just sent a picture of the family dinner. Here are all three grandchildren in one picture, as a prize to you for reading all this.



Comments

  1. Betsy Murphy EricksonJanuary 25, 2026 at 4:47 AM

    So glad to have even a slight self-assessed uptick in optimism. You are a good judge of how Jon is doing, Hana, so I choose to believe that he is getting better. Hoping to welcome you home soon. Meanwhile, we will all be working here today to deal with the snow and, of course, we always do our best to keep those grandkids fed.

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