Thursday, January 4, 2018

Happy New Year

It has been a while since my last post and I decided that it is time for an update. Yesterday, I started "Cycle 61" at Dana-Farber. Today, we are both at Fox Hill Village looking  out the window at the snow that is supposed to hammer us. We don't mind because we don't have to go out into it.

Mostly, things are pretty much the same, though I have to report that the numbness in my feet got worse all of a sudden a couple of weeks ago. It had been a slight numbness just on the bottoms. Now, my whole foot feels funny. I call it "numbness" but it is really more like feeling like there is a sock bunched up on my foot. Not that big of a deal really. It doesn't hurt. It is just very strange.

So, the oncology team talked about possibly reducing my Velcade dose, but decided against it since mostly things are going very well. I asked if we could try reducing the dose and then going back up if that did not work. They said that would violate the protocol of my clinical study. 

There are a couple of other weird things going on, but nothing too disruptive. An occasional headache-like pain in the back of my neck. Cramps at night in my legs and sometimes in my hands during the day. And of course, reasons for frequent use of Imodium. There is no way to know if these are symptoms, side effects or stuff going on that has nothing to do with the cancer.

But all these things are quite minor in the grand scheme of things. I can still entertain myself in the wood shop and I have been doing that a great deal at Fox Hill Village. Here are a couple of bowls I created over the last month or two.


I have lots of projects in mind that will keep me quite busy. And that is just wood shop projects. Let's not forget pottery and computer programming.

I also managed to send out this year's holiday newsletter. Most of you have probably already seen this, but if not, you can find it by clicking the following link:

2017 Holiday Newsletter

There is one thing that was a bit funny. In the newsletter, I said that Barbara is now a "Professional Mah Jongg Player" because she plays with some friends for money. Each of them brings five dollars and usually wins or loses a couple of bucks. So, technically, she is now a professional. But a few days ago, she overheard one woman at Fox Hill pointing at Barbara and whispering to another resident, "You know, she is a professional Mah Jongg Player."

So, that's the update. I will probably hold off on another one for two or three months unless something interesting happens.