My potassium was down a whopping .7 points (down from 5.3 to 4.6) overnight. This is a very good sign that dialysis is over. I’ve missed 4 dialysis sessions so far and feel great. If I can go one more week and stay out of trouble, the nephrologist will turn my central catheter over to…

Real life is messy. If I were living in a Hallmark movie (my least favorite movies) then the results of my lab tests would have been overwhelmingly positive and clear. But there is good news with caution. My potassium level did come down by three decimal points. Not much, but moving in the right direction…

Anyone who has suffered from cancer, plus a few other diseases, are familiar with the waiting game for the numbers from tests. In these cases, one digit, one way or the other, could mean that you are living or dying. It could mean if your cancer is growing out of control or going into remission.…

Denise and I were granted a 48 hour pass to come home to Anacortes and to pretend that things were normal. It was fantastic! So many things we got to do which we love, dinner with family, hikes, paddle board, campfires and deep breaths of Fidalgo Island air. An unexpected treat was that the person…

In a few weeks, I will have the opportunity to experience something truly unique. My bone marrow, the marrow I was born with, will be erased with powerful chemotherapy. We hope that it erases the part of the bone marrow producing IgG plasma cells. That’s where the cancer lives. When my own stem cells are…

After stimulating my bone marrow for 4 days and then collecting stem cells for two days, tonight we reached 10 million stem cells, enough for two transplants. I was then discharged and we are back at our home-away-from-home, home. Denise had a visit with her dentist in Anacortes for a broken tooth and a follow…

I just finished day two of bone marrow stimulation, to produce more stem cells, with filgrastim injections. The first 30 hours went very smoothly, however, the past 5 hours has been a little rough with bone pain and chills. But, it seems to be getting better. I have one more day of this, then testing…

The two-week pre-transplant work up is complete. It appears, that except for my bone marrow and kidneys, I am very healthy. This means that I’ve been cleared for the stem-cell transplant. This is a big deal with great complexity. Tomorrow morning I will be admitted to the University of Washington Medical Center. I will have…

I will start with a statement that many will take objection to. The spouse, parent, child, or significant-other of an ill person has no obligation to take care of that person. Yes, there are some societal expectations, but no, true obligations. I say this with confidence because I’ve witnessed several times where the significant-other person…

I have described some of the extremes in the social views of the stoic and hedonist. I will now look at these extremes from the individual perspectives and then try to arrive at the healthiest approach to suffering. The individual hedonist, if taken to the extreme, would find him or herself with uncontrollable sobbing at…