I apologize for the long silence – and appreciate that my friends are wondering how I’m doing.  

THE UPDATE

• Lymphoma/Transplant: I’ve started my radiation “cleanup” treatments.  While my clean PET scan from about a week ago is really great, this type of scan only detects hundreds-of-millions of actively multiplying cancer cells.  Smaller numbers of those nasty guys can hide for a long time and not produce any symptoms.  The radiation is intended to get rid of the cells that go undetected by the PET – at least in the last place they reared their ugly heads.  I have completed 6 of a total of 25 planned treatments (it takes about an hour each weekday including drive time – only a few minutes of actual radiation).  It is a relatively low dose and is very focused, so side effects should be minimal. 
• Foot Function: I dumped my brace!  Range of motion is getting pretty darned good. Strength is improving, but a bit more slowly. I’m driving without the brace and have been increasing the distance I can walk.  I still limp a bit, but I don’t expect that to last much longer.  I get tired, but it sure feels good.  I’m hoping to be walking Sophie again (sans Segway) in a month or two. 
• Foot Pain: still the biggest challenge…but the pain seems to be coming later in the day.  It varies in severity and is still a great mystery.  That said, I’m optimistic that as my strength improves the pain will subside. 
• Bug Avoidance: so, as you may be aware, my immune system is still on the mend.  I’m told it can take a full year post-transplant to regain my strength and a reasonably functional immune system. I have to be extra careful about hand-washing, exposure to sick people and food-borne bacteria (have you ever washed your lettuce with soap? grilled all your “cold” cuts for every sandwich?).  I was reminded of this a few days before Tess’s graduation when I started having fevers, headaches and nausea (and what comes with it). What probably wouldn’t have even been noticed in a person with a normal immune system put me on the mats. I ended up at City of Hope in their outpatient triage center, where they pumped me with antibiotics and tested me for “big things”.  Well, they didn’t find anything big and the antibiotics started working within a day…so I made it to graduation! It took me 8-10 days to fully recover to where I was before getting sick. I don’t know what I got or where it was from, but it sure made me get more careful.

I should also mention that I’m back working at Ixia – about half time (between physical therapy and radiation and afternoon fatigue) – which is about right for me anyway!

THE MUSING

Tracey probably doesn’t like/want me to write about her at length, but I think I just have to recognize a few things here among my friends and family on the day before our 27th wedding anniversary.

This blog is primarily written in a first person singular style. Whenever writing ‘I’, though, I am conflicted. There is hardly a single part of this “journey” that has been experienced by ‘I’ alone. Even my pain, which must be the loneliest of sensations, seems to be felt by my wife, friend and companion of 32 years (5 years before we got married!). She is my strength, my hope, the one who took the “hardest thing in my life” and made it seem, somehow, like not such a big deal. She has shown me what it is like to never feel alone. She has shown me what love is.

So, it is true that ‘we’ would be more appropriate in many instances…but then Tracey would need to review and edit each post, and she’s way too busy to do that!

WHATEVER

So, since the last post a lot has happened all around my self-centered health-oriented micro-world.  I have 3 kids all in the bay area!

• Tess graduated from Cal Poly SLO with a BS in Graphic Communications (kind of a mix of graphic design, marketing and communications). She put together a great resume working during college, has been a great networker and really hustled during her last few months of school to create lots of interest and interviews. She ended up taking a (contract) job at Apple in Cupertino, finding a room to rent in SF right near Golden Gate park in the Haight Ashbury district and, as if that weren’t enough, she agreed to do free-lance work for a small company about a mile from her new place for the 3 weeks before the Apple gig starts!  Boy, am I proud of how Tess has taken total control of her life and created so many opportunities for herself. 
• Jordie started work with an early-stage startup (Simple Emotion – they can measure different emotions in live/recorded voices) that a friend at school founded.  Their investors rented them a house for the summer in Palo Alto.  They’ll be working there in close quarters all summer. He’s living that Stanford/Silicon Valley lifestyle!
• Ben has been at Stanford, too, going to an AI (Artificial Intelligence) Programming Camp and having a great time with kids from all over the world. We also had an exciting moment yesterday – an Engineer from Tesla Motors emailed about the web site Ben’s built, EVTripPlanner.com.  We’ll see where that goes! Come Monday, though, he’s going to be back at home with his senior year and college applications ahead of him…