Wednesday, January 1, 2020

CC-220 is working

Happy New Year everyone. Ours is off to a good start.

The first round of CC-220 seems to have worked very well. It cut my "M-Spike" in half. That is great news. Horray! The bad news is that the drug has now been given a new name that I can't remember, but I think it has 30 or 40 letters.

This means that we will continue with the clinical trial. It is a relief to have a good idea of what our schedule will be. The cycles are typically every four weeks with different things happening in different cycles. No matter. I can count of visiting Dana Farber every Wednesday for blood tests and pill taking. Pills are better than shots or infusions, but I guess that once they stick me with the needle for the blood draw, they might as well pump some other stuff into me so maybe it does not make that much difference once I am there.

I say that the cycles "typically" start every four weeks, but they skipped a week before starting Cycle 2. I had a bad cold last week. I was thrilled.  My brother, his wife and his daughter (Ken, Yoko and Izzi) joined us in NH for Christmas. Skipping a week meant that I did not have to take my dreaded "Dex" which prevents my sleeping. It also makes me even talkative than "normal" which as you all know is pretty talkative.

We all had a great Christmas. I cut a scraggly white pine tree from my woods (scraggly being a Clark Christmas Tradition). Izzi did a great job with the decorations. We cooked a turkey dinner and did a gift exchange, I say "exchange" but my favorite gift was one I bought myself.

(I have still not gotten over the year I figured that Santa no longer delivered gifts to me. It could be due to that whole "naughty and nice" thing. )

I got myself a drone that has enough automatic features so that I can actually fly it. It was reasonably priced, but works best only indoors where there is no wind. I find that it works well for terrorizing fellow residents of Fox Hill Village. This photo was taken by the drone at our home in NH. Izzi is driving.

So, we are looking forward to the new year. The chemo seems to be working and side effects aren't too bad, though there are some. Worst is lack of wind. Just to be clear, by that I mean getting out of breath I get tired on stairs. I also have an itchy thing going on plus some neck pain. Not too bad. I can still operate the lathe and work at the computer. I am happy with that.Also, you can see from the photo that I am still shrinking. This makes it easier to sleep on a couch.

Oh - and if anyone has not had a chance to view our holiday newsletter, feel free to check it out (or not) at: http://photos.wc1.us/newsletters/2019_Newsletter.pdf

So, Happy New Year everyone. Our wishes are for good health and happiness for everyone.