"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell
You just never can tell. Good day, good day, good day, bad day.
We got the scan results from Barnes and overall they are pretty good. "No PSMA PET evidence of new or progressive disease," and "consistent with favorable treatment response" are nice phrases to see in your test results. However, Ernie is having increasing inflammation in lungs and the great diarrhea adventure of 2023 continues. The words 'worry' and 'worrying' are not words you want to hear come out of your oncologist's mouth but there you go. These things happen no matter what you want. Vasireddy is holding off on more Keytruda for the time being so we instead headed off to the infusion suite for a couple of hours of fluids and potassium.
He goes back to Barnes for treatment the middle of March. In the meantime he needs to get his platelets higher. More confusion about bloodwork for Barnes and order and appointments and it's too long and ultimately boring to detail here. Suffice to say I wish I could just tuck Vasireddy in my pocket and have him with us always. I fear that won't work but it's a thought.
It was a long week. Yesterday we drove Leo up to O'Hare. Fortunately, Ernie did fine yesterday. We just darted up and darted back. Leo was off to the UK to see his beloved Tal. I hope their visit is wonderful. He's visiting her town and then they'll go to London for a bit and will see Pendulum. I'm very excited for them.
We got back home around 5 and Heather and Steve and Eva came over. We ate frozen pizza (our contribution because, uhh, times change) and that wonderful fennel and red orange salad Heather makes, thank you Heather (and Steve for peeling oranges). And we had our own little Peter Cooper memorial, talking about him and playing some videos. Afterwards Ernie tried to convince me he wasn't too tired to watch tv so I read while he slept in front of the tv until he woke up and finally admitted it was time for bed.
This morning I sat and watched videos and read accounts of Peter's memorial. I must say, I looked at the picture of everybody onstage and was pretty proud of how many of those folks have stood in my living room. Peter of course, but also Eric Brace, Irene Kelley, Kevin Gordon, Jon Byrd, Thomm Jutz, Tommy Womack, the great Jason Ringenberg, and Stacie Huckeba photographing the whole thing. These really are our people.
Today has not been a great day for Ernie so sadly we won't be the show we had planned to see. We will be there in spirit though.
Onward.
Top photo: stolen from Stacie Huckeba's Facebook page, who stole it from Wild Ponies' Doug William's page.