August 18 (happy birthday, William!)

Three weeks ago Jimmy finished his four rounds of mollecular chemotherapy. Although his paraprotein levels (a marker for myeloma) decreased significantly, they didn't come down as far as we wanted, so Dr. Lonial has decided to schedule an infusion of cytoxin, a more conventional form of chemo. This is the bad stuff that really makes you sick and your hair fall out. This was scheduled for last Monday, but when they did the bloodwork, they discovered that his cell counts were way too low, so they stopped it and have rescheduled for this coming Monday, Aug 20.

These low blood counts probably explain why Jimmy has felt so awful lately, so weak and tired it is all he can do to get out of the bed. He woke up this morning feeling better than he has in a long time, which means that his blood cells are building back up, just in time to get knocked back down on Monday. Because he was feeling better, boredom set in with a vengeance. Around noon, with the walls closing in, we looked at each other and said, "Let's go to Highlands!" So we did. We're going to spend the night and go back to Atlanta tomorrow. It's a delicious 77 degrees here instead of the sweltering 100 that we left.

Right now our dear friend Kenny Youmans, one of Jimmy's best buddies from UGA, is sitting on the porch with him, the two of them solving all of the world's problems. It's the best medicine Jimmy could be getting.