J. Michael Jones

I’m trying to do this from a dialysis machine. There’s not a good place to sit my tablet and I have one hand tied up. But we will see how this works.

I finished my first round of chemo yesterday (4 treatments). I sailed through the first three treatments with very little as far as side effects. Yesterday was different. While I got up and drove into town and did errands with some energy, after my chemo, things went down hill fast. It was like the stomach flu from hell, which lasted through much of the night.

Yesterday, I was very happy that I had 9 hours sleep, plus a 2 hour nap. I figured that until day before yesterday, I had been averaging 2-3 hours sleep per night for almost 4 weeks. That new sleep was a godsend. Then last night, due to feeling like crap and having to go to the bathroom, every few minutes it was back to 2-3 hours.  I’m feeling better today (unless dialysis wipes me out) so I think I can sleep tonight.

Please keep praying for my kidneys. Again, they are functioning 80%, but not enough, yet, to get off dialysis. Having to stay on dialysis  will profoundly change my life and greatly reduce my chances of beating this cancer.

Between dialysis and my kidneys, my toxins (creatinine and BUN) are almost to the normal level, after being 10 X normal for who knows how long. My neurological symptoms have improved (these were caused by the toxins in my blood) but I pray they go away now that the toxins are down. These symptoms are muscle weakness, twitching, jerking and a few more.  Day by day, they are getting better.

Denise has returned to her busy job. Yet, my treatments are taking much from her. She is doing a run while I’m in Oak Harbor doing dialysis.  The two of us use to run 6 miles on Saturday. Now, my goal is to walk 100 yards.

Many people have asked me how they can help. Here is one thing. I promised Denise that I would build her a garden this spring (mostly fencing). I don’t see any way I will have the strength to do that alone. I would love to have some help in a “Garden fence raising” toward the end of Feb. If I had 2-3 people to help, we could do it in a few hours.  Mike