His numbers are goooood

The new chemo Revlemid with it's sidekick Dexamethazone are indeed kicking the myeloma cancer's butt!! His # were good enough this month that his Doc offered him one month off of either the Dex or the Revlemid to see what would happen. Gil chose the Dex because he thought the lack of sleep night or two were what was causing his deep fatigue. Unfortunately, it's likely that it's the Revlemid which is doing it and the Dex may have a secondary gain of reducing inflammation in the knee (aka "there's no great harm without some small good") so next month, if she offers him the same deal, he may take off from the Revlemid, instead.

But, it is a delight !! to have a Friday night where the guy goes to bed with me and actually stays in the bed, asleep for most of the night. And we are both grateful that he responds so well to medication.

Unfortunately, the cold I spoke about last month which he seemed to largely have shaken on our trip, has come back with a vengeance since we got home. As the low grade fever and wooziness appeared, we decided to start him on the antibiotic his doc had sent with us on our trip for just this eventuality. But I do find it uncanny that he takes dives which need medical intervention on Friday nights or Saturdays, when all we can get ahold of is the on call doc.

But we do feel blessed with the doctor we have, her competence, flexibility, and her letting us make some judgement calls with her as the safety net. And she truly feels like a friend, glad to see us, interested in our lives outside of the clinic, and very open to naturalpath kind of remedies (like neti pots and elderberry syrup etc) As one of Gil's docs, years ago, said, "for a guy with bad health luck, you sure have good health luck!"

And you know, he's right.