Hold Tight and Pretend It's a Plan

Not to get too carried away with a metaphor, but we are certainly heading in a forward direction now and there have been no unexpected detours or stops in recent weeks. Even Jon himself says he is getting better. His blood counts continue to improve (we are just a few numbers away from the platelet count that lets him take a blood thinner), his energy is slowly improving, and he is cooking just about all of our dinners now. Hallelujah! And he hasn't really even noticed that he is not getting any treatments at all for cancer, as there is no measurable cancer at the moment. There are some unsolved or undiagnosed ailments but they have been acknowledged by the Kaiser doctors and he has more appointments to try to figure out the cause of the pain in his arms and shoulders and back. So many scans. Even though we don't look back too much, I think the last year was one of the hardest and worst years of Jon's cancer experience, and now it feels like the CAR-T worked. He is still th...

The good news continues to accumulate, even though the pace of improvement is ever-so-slow and meandering. Recent bloodwork shows that there is NO measurable myeloma in Jon's blood.  He is balancing his various domestic responsibilities with naps. Cooking is real again. He is continuing to off-load his complicated contracting job, with daily Zoom calls with a very patient programmer who is trying hard to understand how Jon's brain works. The granddaughters are a steady and uplifting presence. Jon is now up to carrying Thalia around because she still prefers to be up and mobile, not left by herself on the floor. She weighs about 15 pounds and never stops wiggling, so carrying her is work. The older two always make Jon feel loved, running in for a hug. He went out to Loudoun today, protesting that his schedule is way too busy now. He went to meet a potential new mechanic. Our mechanic of many years retired, alas, and we need to figure out how to keep everything working. When Jon ...

Most of Jon's physical ailments are now mostly unrelated to his cancer, although I am sure they are all partly caused by the last 17 years of treatments and coping. The thing that is worrying me the most right now is the cough that will not go away. He thinks it is all about his sinuses draining, and maybe it is, but coughing is such a disruptive and tiring thing, night and day. The various medicines he has tried to combat the drainage have not been effective. He has an appointment with his PCP this week and he will he go through the list of things that are still not so great. As I have said so many times before, all the varieties of pain and discomfort are taking a toll on his mood. However, we also see that he is able to do more every week. He is shopping more, fixing things more, working for Al a little bit more, cooking more, and watching no more TikTok (he decided to go cold turkey).  If he doesn't want to do something (like go to a third seder in a row), he doesn't go...