What's Update

 Hello everyone,

This will be a short one as I’m beyond exhausted. Happily, the medical news (Thursday night as I write this) is pretty good - Kathy’s various indicators are all indicating what they’re supposed to, although she has some detectable bacteria in her blood (not what you want with no immune system) and so she’s being pumped with a lot of antibiotics to prevent any infections. She has no fever, which is a good and important sign.

Her energy was a bit less today, and her mood a bit down - both attributable to the long hospital stay, the constant interruptions, the inability to sleep, and more. She isn’t really hungry but has continued eating, and she has none of the chemo side effects one might expect like nausea, vomiting, or hair loss. So all of THAT goes on our gratitude list for today.

Upbeat letters and anecdotes about pretty much anything can help provide a good distraction for Kathy, as I’m running desperately low on conversational fodder. She’s really not into movies, books, or other such distractions right now, and the idea of Alexa-assisted karaoke even seems dumb to ME now, and that's saying something.

And on that note, I have some chores to do before an early (I hope) bedtime - then back to the hospital tomorrow to hopefully find Kathy having a better day.

As always, your prayers and good wishes mean a lot to all of us!

-Stilton

Let Me Sleep Into Something More Comfortable

My good friends- This is just an update on the ongoing health situation with my beloved wife, Kathy. She's doing well, and has already completed her first week of chemo without any major bad side effects. Which isn't to say that it was fun, but she still has a full head of hair and a nearly intact sense of humor. She also has virtually no white blood cells, which is both exactly what we want and, oh yeah, terrifying.

This is a "rest week" to let her body recover from the inital chemo beating, then early next week she'll get another bone marrow test to see where we go from here. Also today, I was given a big notebook with information about bone marrow transplants, but I'll be damned if I'm reading it tonight. I'm exhausted and am targeting 9 pm as my bedtime. Way early for me usually, but a tough goal to reach tonight. 

So as not to exaggerate things, I actually only get to spend about 6 hours with Mrs. J in the hospital, and another two (or hopefully less) cursing at other drivers here in Texas. The time I'm physically with her is pretty much the only time of day that I'm not sick to my stomach from worry. Her comforting presence also brings my blood pressure and heart rate down to levels which my cardiologist considers survivable, after a brief dalliance with an EKG and a new prescription .

And it turns out that I really, really don't like hospitals even though I'm insanely grateful that they exist and are doing everything they can for Kathy. It's all so surreal: odd machines, tubes, wires, dripping things, people invading the room at all hours, bags of fluids to swell a body up, and other meds to make you pee like crazy to try to get rid of those same fluids. 

"Doctor's rounds" consist of a daily 3-minute visit from the doctor, and if he seems reasonably happy then we're happy. Well, happy-ish. We've adopted a day-by-day attitude which means we're focused only on what's happening right now, and not asking detailed questions about what's next. Although a few pleasant surprises would certainly be welcome about now.

Bottom line: "So far, so good" - so whatever you've been doing on our behalf, please keep doing it.

Meanwhile, I only hear jots and tittles of news here and there, and it sure sounds like the whole shooting match has gone completely to hell. Racist horses? No one caring about Hunter & Joe Biden's corruption? Generals calling Biden a liar for claiming that they unanimously told him to surrender to the Taliban and run like a scalded dog? Continuing confusion and misinformation about Covid ("The Best World-Altering Plague Your Tax Money Could Buy!"). An attempt to defund support for Israel's "Iron Dome" defense while spending trillions on every frigging wet dream the Progressive Marxist Lunatics can come up with? Entitlements for the upper middle class? A possible re-design of the American flag? And so much more.

Only a real asshole would steal powerful and addictive opioids from his wife during a health crisis, right? Right...? Well then, Clan MacGregor and I will just have to continue to fight the world on our own. But seriously, is it just my admittedly slapped-silly perspective or has everything hit the fan at once?

And that's all the steam I have at the moment. I'm going to stumble 6 feet to my trusty recliner and knock off for the night. Thank you so much for your friendship, your support, and your prayers. They all count and are all more appreciated than you can possibly know!

-Stilton

Riding the Tilt-a-World

Trust me, you don't want to be under this ride without an umbrella

This is a personal post today, although to maintain the integrity of this blog I'll pause to say that everyone in politics can go f**k themselves.

Not that I'm paying attention to news; the only thing happening in my world right now is seeing my wife, Kathy, through to a successful outcome for her acute leukemia treatment. And between you, me, and the NSA, I'm not handling things as stoically as I might wish. This is rough going, folks.

That being said, Kathy is doing well in the hospital (albeit very fatigued, which is a regular part of leukemia) and responding well to the chemo so far.  The upper limit on a normal white cell count is 11,000.  For some years she was edging her way up to the low 40 thousands. Then, over about a week's time, things went crazy.  Her count was up to 167,000 when we got that terrifying "two to three weeks to live without treatment" prognosis. I'm no math whiz, but that's WAY the hell more than 11,000. Plus the numbers were doubling and tripling in record time. 

Happily, with some chemo pills to get her through the weekend, that number dropped to 40,000 again on Monday, and today - on chemo - it's down to 13,000. Nearly normal! Unfortunately, this only tells a teeny bit of a complicated story, but as a first step on the thousand-mile journey, we'll take it.

Considering she's going to be in the hospital for a month, I'd hoped the room would be vaguely inviting. Foolishly, it turns out. It's a very hospitally hospital room, which means it has all the important stuff and no real luxuries or calming elements. There's a big TV, but we're a TIVO family who has been fast-forwarding through commercials for years. For Kathy to actually have to watch commercials in real time is torture. I've tried to come up with workarounds, but Kathy is reluctant to learn new technologies at the best of times, and this ain't the best of times. 

In fact, she called me as I was on my way to the hospital today - a very rare thing since she despises her cellphone and doesn't know how to use it. I, on the other hand, also despise my cellphone and don't even know how to ANSWER the sumbitch. So we had a brief and confusing call (while I was driving) after which I tried to hang up the damn phone. Later, at her bedside, I realized that both of us were still connected, and had each burned up about 30 minutes of Tracfone time. And don't even TALK to us about texting. If picture postcards were good enough for our grandparents, they're good enough for us!

According to the postcard, this Texas bank was never successfully robbed by anything with horns.

Still, I'm not a complete technical nincompoop, so Wednesday I'm going to try setting up an Amazon device (yes, they're spying bastards but I needed Prime delivery) which will let her listen to any kind of music she likes, play radio stations, listen to podcasts (Scott Adams' is great), or even audiobooks - controlling everything with her voice, which is handy when you're hooked up to various lines, wires, and sensors. 

Kathy was in good spirits today, actually eating a bit (despite no appetite) knowing that a storm is coming soon in which solid food won't stay down. Which is much the same effect people experience when watching a Biden speech.

I'll give further updates when I'm able, but in the interim, my whole family thanks you for your supportive comments, thoughts, and prayers. I honestly didn't know how much they'd mean to me until this very moment.    -Stilton