Good News, Bad News

So the good news is still good, but today when I asked the doctor what he meant by "complete remission" he said that mrguy was on the *way* to complete remission. I pressed him on this, since three weeks ago he said mrguy was in complete remission and that it was a miracle (while also saying that we were going to keep doing the same chemo) and he kinda backpedaled. Boo.

Also, mrguy's one tumor marker which was its lowest last week (28, with under 35 being normal), ticked up to 30, which is the first rise we've had.

Those numbers came in *after* our visit was over, so I can't ask about that. Again, boo. He hasn't had oxaliplatin for two cycles, so maybe he needs it. Again, it is still in the normal range, so I'm not going to sweat it.

All the news that's fit to print. Today we met the doctor for the first time in person. But it also meant that today's chemo took all day. We left the house around 9:30 and got back around 7:30. I did a bunch of genealogy sleuthing during the waiting time, and have found a new book, about food, that I have absolutely no recollection of downloading. It helped the almost two hour drive home go a little more smoothly.

Now we're home, the cats are fed, the cans are out at the curb and I have the yelling people (CNN) on the tv. I do not know why there are any republican strategists of color. 

Good night!

Joy. More Joy. Gotta Have It.

It's important to find the joy. In tough times, I have my question mark pendant to remind me not to catastrophize.

For today's happiness we have:

• The DNC convention, which was full of optimism
• Watching an indie film by a guy who I follow on fb. A film about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the war. Clam accompanied.
• Mrguy's tumor marker numbers went down again!
• Mrguy South bought us tickets to see Souled American in Chicago in October
• The eye surgeon is very pleased with the reduction in mrguy's optic nerve swelling post-op
• Big boy cat's sniffles seem to be under control
• I bought a new painting that is beautiful
• In honor of my 24th anniversary at the forklift factory my coworker made my selfie into a Slack emoji for "Wooooo!" which became my celebratory cry for all of the accomplishments big and small that my teammates made during the pandemic and beyond.
• I got the lady room window open (it is perpetually stuck)
• Hearing mrguy say "It's straight up raining, yo!" and having it be true. Love some rain in August
• Precious nephew is coming over today and we are going to brainstorm clearing out my mom's storage unit
• Finding that I have two copies of my favorite Juan Guzman card. The one on the left was in my 2000 day at a glance. The one on the right was in my stash, and I put it in a new sleeve

Mr Medical Mystery Cat

I took the sweet boy cat to his regular vet on Tuesday and the oncologist yesterday.

The regular vet is treating his sinus infection, which is still ongoing. He has been having these insane sneezes that are more like sneezures. They sound as if theres a deflated balloon up there. The doctor knocked him out last week and rootled around up there and she said it looks inflamed but nothing worrisome. 

Then he came home and slept in the cat box for a week. Also -- back to litter made out of paper pellets.

We tried a different antibiotic this week, which may be helping and, oh, he developed an abscess in his paw, so I'm soaking it twice a day. It has now cleaned up.

I expected that we were going to start chemo yesterday, when I took the boy to the oncologist. Instead she said that he's doing really well, is such a nice boy, and she checked him out up and down and can find nothing worrisome. He seems fine, and she'll see us in two months unless something worries us.

So where's the lymphoma? We do not know. He has had lymph issues for most of his life, so this may be unknowable, but in a good way.

Also she asked about mrguy and when I told her he is in remission the shock was so great that she jumped. Of course she's an *oncologist* so she thought that was super fantastic.

And so do we. 

Garden News

Who knew that a new garden hose nozzle could offer so much joy? I bought a new nozzle that was dead cheap and has a whole bunch of settings. I can make it rain. I can blast the leaf litter out of the cordelyne. It is so satisfying. In general, I am making myself go out into the garden and water because it is good for me. And I've been rewarded with news of the plant world.

A few weeks ago I swapped some geraniums from the aku room, these flaming pink guys that I've propagated from cuttings, into the prime position on the porch. You will notice one lemon on the blue chair. This is the basket for the neighborhood, for whom we are the lemon dispensary.

The allspice "tree" that I've been growing for several years is still making leaves, which is all I need. It's in the center of this photo. All I need in order to make the best applesauce ever is two of those leaves, so I am golden!

I keep harvesting lemons for the neighbors, but if you enlarge this photo you can see that the lemon tree is pumping out fruit that will be ready in January. Wooo!!

I *just* noticed the other day that the ginger / awapuhi is starting to put out some flowers. I am soooo excited!!

And over here you can see the forest that has become our green hedge with our next door neighbor. The the middleground are the cordelyne, which are insanely tall now. Right behind it is one of our many Japanese maples that line the street, and the oak tree behind it.

It is a happy day in the garden.

In Praise of: The 2024 Election Cycle

I'm mostly waxing long here so that I remember how batshit crazy this election cycle is, because we will all forget some day...

NeverTrumpers and others have been pointing out the obvious for many years, now, and it has not mattered. Trump's racism, sexism, xenophobia, lack of empathy and unreliability are blatantly obvious. His bullying behavior is despicable. He sucks up to Christians and they don't seem to care that he's a vulgar untrustworthy heathen who has paid for abortions. Somehow people love him even though he does not love back. What is it? I still don't get it. In June, after the debate, another Trump administration looked inevitable, like it was time to just lay down and think of England.

Nothing touches Trump. Except his own tiny pink hands.

RFK Jr.

In 1980 I thought that guy was the hottest thing on the face of the earth. I heard he was going to speak on behalf of his Uncle Ted, who was then running for president, so I went to the event at nearby suburb. I was 17, but was super interested in the election. I wore a powder blue cowl-neck angora sweater, and I ordered myself a gin and tonic. I may or may not have talked an older man into buying it for me (before he realized how young I was). I looked into those amazing blue RFK Jr. eyes and was mesmerized. That's all I remember. And I ended up thinking he was pretty ok over the years until the Vanity Fair expose about how he treated his wife.

Just another Kennedy, it turns out.

But wait. It can't get weirder than it is now. He looks like he bathes himself in iodine. He's an anti-vaxxer. He claims that a worm ate half his brain. And that he dropped a dead bear cub in Central Park and tried to make it look like a bike accident. If someone tried to write that last part they couldn't because his description of the bear thing it starts with "falconing", involves roadkill-napping, followed by dinner and a forgotten appointment to fly somewhere, with a detour for a "prank" requiring a dead bear *and* a bicycle.

At no point did he think to, maybe, leave a dead bear alone. Or call Fish & Game. Or maybe leave the bear on the side of a *different* road once the bear became inconvenient or, or, or maybe keep that the bear story secret until after asking the American Public to also vote for him for president. We all want to vote for you because your judgment is soooooo awesome.

Dude.

After revealing this whole mishegoss to Roseanne Barr, of all people, he still had the guts to call Kamala and ask for a job. She did not pick up.

The Convention

Earlier in our program, the GOP convention brought back all of the people who were brave enough to say, earlier, that they would never support Trump. These folks were using tactics popularized by Susan Collins (R) and Joe Manchin (D, now I), smart enough to know that they could get a little frisson of attention for their individuality, while then coming back into the fold when necessary to get the benefit of being on a winning side. Ewww. Nikki Haley you are so gross.

The Running Mate

That guy, JD Vance, is a bad person with bad thoughts. He seems to hate women. They are here to serve him, his children, and definitely not his cat. Even when you hear him talk about multigenerational families you expect him to tell you that Grandma should live with you so that you can take care of her. No, Grandma should live with you so she can continue to take care of *you*. Oh! I get it. Lucky Grandma. 

The Debate

After the super sad debate where a good president wasn't up for it and we couldn't un-see that fact, people like me were ready to turn off the tv and make our peace with the obvious outcome of the election. That the president was later convinced to relinquish the candidacy to Kamala is a miracle. 

I Am Loving This

Suddenly Trump is the old guy (which he already was). Suddenly Trump is infirm (which we've been telling you for years is the case). Suddenly his shit stinks. At last. I don't know how his force field was suddenly pierced but it seems, from where I'm sitting, that his own party is even trying to get him to change course and he's not having it. The schadenfreude is real, people. And now the thing that can't be unseen is Trump. He is who he is. He isn't going to change. And Nikki Haley has already scuttled away, claiming her own glory by publicly telling him not to whine, signaling her own desire to be president.

Time for some popcorn and an Abba-Zabba. It is going down, and I am here for it.

Fenestration

I love this word, and fenestration is what is happening today. To be specific -- optic nerve fenestration. Mrguy is having an operation to release the fluid that is cramping his optic nerve. I've watched the procedure on youtube. It's fascinating.

A small reminder of how we got here:

• Some cancers make your blood sticky / hypercoagulable
• That led to thrombosis in mrguy's internal jugular vein (IJV).
• Which caused a  backup of the cerebrospinal fluid in his brain
• Which caused pressure on the optic nerve
• Which caused papilledema
• Which caused him to lose some of his peripheral vision

Our neuro opthalmologist tried to treat the papilledema medically, and a change in anticoagulant medication made the blood clots (more developed) reduce in size but the papilledema remains, so we have surgery today. The goal is to stop the vision loss. If we are really lucky he might regain some vision. If we're really really lucky treating one eye might help the other eye.

Our call time? 5am. I got up at 2:45.

But the word fenestration? So good. Comes from the Latin word fenestra (window). 

back in the day we used to joke that if something was really terrible we'd defenestrate (throw ourselves out of a window). Just because we liked the sound of that complicated word. So mrguy is getting a window cut in the sheath surrounding his optic nerve. And I get to sit around and write blog posts until the procedure is over.

Zzzzzz

Procedure over at 9am!

And Now We Wait

I just handed mrguy what, in my family, we would call "the bomb" -- a laxative. It was a recipe given to us at his first chemo appointment by the nurse who I'll call "mr practical". He gave us *all* of the wisdom about what it's like to do chemo, what to expect, and how to summon reluctant poops.

I made his magic potion for mrguy: 8oz prune juice and 1 tablespoon butter, sipped over 10 minutes time. It's supposed to make it happen within 4 hours. Fingers crossed, because he has eye surgery on Wednesday and needs to be flowing freely for that.

On flipside of this situation -- last Sunday I had a cramp in my abdomen in the night. I went to the bathroom and did my business and suddenly I couldn't stop. It was like colonoscopy prep, but I also felt like I was losing consciousness. So scary. I was unable to leave the bathroom, so I didn't. After an hour it stopped and I went back to bed. I feel fine now, and I talked to a doctor and had some labs done and they came out ok. I do have to wonder whether it was an appendicitis attack. The pain was right in that quadrant of my abdomen. I have a regularly scheduled appt with gastroenterology this week, so we'll discuss it then.

This concludes the meeting of the lower intestine subcommittee of the guy family corporation.

Update: by 9:46 the issue was resolved.

What If It's OK?

A few months ago I saw an odd piece of jewelry at an auction and had to have it -- a beautifully outlined diamond question mark pendant. The flip side is an engraving of a four leaf clover.

I had a loop made for it so I could put it on a chain, and it has not left my neck since. I assigned meaning to the question mark -- "What if it's ok?" That's what I said to myself one day early on in this year of cancer and fear and juggling various concurrent maladies. I wrote it down. Sometimes I have to remind myself of this. I bring my hand to my chest and the pendant is there, and I remind myself that there is a chance that things *are* ok. It's so easy to think otherwise.

Last week mrguy had a PET scan. And a CT the next day, for some reason. And labs on Saturday prior to mrguy's chemo appt on Monday. The PET scan said that there were no worrisome lesions. And that there is no cancer in his esophagus. And all of his lymph nodes are clear. I read it a billion times. The CT report came in right before our pre-chemo doctor meeting. Also clear. 

Moments before the doctor appeared on video, the CA 19-9 blood report came in on the portal. Readers of mrsguy may recall that this is a blood test that measures free-floating cancer. Normal is below 35. The week after his first chemo, his number was 61,400something. An absurd number that I imagined was like a Raid commercial -- cancer trying to get out of every crevice once the chemo was in the system.

On Monday that number was 30.

The doctor says mrguy is in "complete remission".

Also, "I'm not supposed to say this but it's a miracle".

What now? We keep on keepin' on. He does the same chemo because it's working. He has his eye surgery next Friday. Beyond that we don't know what happens.

I will keep wearing the pendant, that's for sure.