Life is good.

Gil's biopsy of the tumor remnant shows it to be his old hombre a fibromatosis, aka dezmoid tumor.  

The good news is that it probably is slow growing, though that will need to be confirmed, and as non life threatening as a ball of gristle growing amid the nerves to your right arm/hand can be.  

And there really is no bad news!  It's spring and we live in beauty and bounty,  and we know it; a gift in it's own right!  Gil's sleeping better and productive with all his large and noisy "toys". (he was just given a new one, a chipper leaf vacuum)  Our progeny are well and progressing with their next phases of life.  What more could we ask for?

Energy.  I have so little these days I feel like a limp dishrag.  Lots of naps seem to be helping.

And Adventure!  Gil and his brother Bob are going to take a two week meander West ("go West, young men!").  Ostensibly it's to visit Chris and Miya, but actually it's to be open to what ever adventures the blue highways they're going to take west may offer!  They both are in 7th heaven planning it.  And I'm "kinda" looking forward to two weeks    alone.

Also BIG news!!  We are getting a solar photo voltaic tracker system installed next month.  This is the culmination of a 35 year old dream of mine and profoundly satisfying.  

So.  Life is good.

all blogged out

  Excuse the long blog silence; I've been waiting for all "the other shoes" to drop.  

In February an MRI showed a doubling in size of the dezmoid tumor remnant in Gil's bracial plexis (neck/shoulder area). There was some concern that the dezmoid (a clod of fibrous gristle, benign, but in a lousy spot wrapped around the remaining nerves for his right arm and hand) could have morphed into a malignant type of tumor called a sarcoma. 

  

And then we waited, and were on vacation, then the surgeon was on vacation, then the other surgeon who was needed to weigh in was on vacation.....   you get the idea.   We dealt with it initially with our old standby, denial, but as time passed, the  unfairness of some other potentially big time destructive tumor blindsiding us  got both our undies in a bundle.

Today we learned that it's very unlikely that it's morphed.  We'll get a simple needle biopsy sometime in the next week (no more knives in that area, thank God!) and should get the results within a few days after.    

So, though not all the shoes have landed, we're in process and been reinforced in our belief that "no way, Jose" could there be any more malignancy than we're already dealing with!

Speaking of which, after one set of labs where Gil's Myeloma numbers rose, they've returned to relative stability and we're on course for doing his stem cell transplant next Oct/Nov. (after the golf and garden season and the first round of grandparent bonding with the young Hirsch morsel!!!)

So that's all the news that's fit to print.  I may get back in to regular blogging, but, I'll confess, I'm exhausted, beat, have zero energy and am basically all blogged out.  So until all the shoes have dropped, consider no news is good news.