Mrs. Dewar's 23rd Birthday

Jimmy's mother, Dorothy Herndon Dewar, was born February 29, 1916, which makes her ninety-two years old, but since she was a leap year baby, today is only the twenty-third time in her life that she has been able to celebrate on her actual birthday. On the years in between, we recognize February 28th as her birthday.

Jimmy has not been going out at all, but he did go to see his mother today, and he loved being with her. She had a very nice birthday: she enjoyed a birthday luncheon with friends and family at the country club, and got lots of cards and calls and flowers and balloon bouquets. Everybody loves Mrs. Dewar.

Cute old Jimmy pictures

It's a heavy burden to always be right, but one that Jimmy has shouldered with stoicism, so when he insisted that being at home would hasten his recovery, we all meekly bowed to his infallible wisdom. Although never one to stoop to smugness, he's had a distinct hint of "I told you so" in his attitude of late.

He's sleeping better and eating better, and this springlike weather has been conducive to puttering around the backyard and walking on the golf course. When we were in Atlanta, it was often too cold or too rainy or windy to enjoy being outside, and walking at the malls didn't work out very well. For one thing, it seemed foolishly risky with all the illness going around.

Hard-hitting flu is all over Valdosta, and Jimmy has acquiesced to my insistence that he stay at home and avoid outside contact. Boredom is sure to become a problem, but that's tough: he's grounded until it's safe.

Home

His mind was made up: claustrophobia had set in, and he could not abide the apartment for one minute longer. Such were his powers of persuation that Jimmy had Jamey and me out in the drizzling rain Thursday morning, loading all of our wordly possessions (in Atlanta, at least) into the back of our blue Buick van. We were going home.

We had managed to accumulate a fair amount of stuff in the eight months we had rented the apartment, and by the time we had piled it all in, it was raining in earnest; we had barely accessed I-75 at 14th Street before it had become a deluge. The entire trip home was a white-knuckled effort to avoid being blinded by jets of water spun from the tires of the endless procession of eighteen-wheelers.

Jimmy feels better already, sleeping in his own bed, and even though I feared that we were pushing things too quickly, I'm glad to be here, too. Jimmy has given notice to vacate the apartment, so when we go back to Atlanta in two weeks for an appointment, we'll stay at a hotel. But for now, there's no place like home.

We had an appointment with Dr. Lonial, and Jimmy's blood tests show that his counts are continuing to improve. We've passed the 30 Day marker now, and for the next two months, the order of the day is to get Jimmy healthy and strong again.

The 100 Day appointment has been scheduled for the latter part of April, and that is when we'll have some idea of where we are with the cancer. Another bone marrow biopsy will be done, along with a complete evaluation. We are optimistic that the transplant put him into remission, but we won't know until then.

Jimmy wants to go home, and I'm anxious about it: I have more control over him here, and I'm afraid that if he gets home, he'll try to do too much. And I understand that flu is rampant in Valdosta. We'll see.

Good riddance to the line catheter

10AM We were at the clinic at 9, and Jimmy has already had his labs done, and now we are at the hospital, at interventional radiology, waiting for Jimmy to have his Hickman line catheter removed. This is a tube that goes through his chest into his jugular vein; attached to it are three other tubes, or lumens, with clamps on the end: a red, a white, and a blue one.

An indwelling catheter is used for the various intravenous procedures Jimmy has been undergoing, eliminating the need to insert IV's into his arms. He has had it since last August, and it has been a colossal pain. The lumens have to be flushed daily with heparin to prevent clotting, and the dressings changed at least weekly. Since he has had it in for so long, he has become allergic to some of the adhesives and cleaning solutions, which have caused his skin to blister. We are thrilled to see it go.

Chemo brain

We're OK. Today was good, yesterday less so. Our days are very quiet. We try to get out for an hour or so every day, although it is taxing for Jimmy, but we feel the need to push him to exert himself. Nausea is still an intermittent annoyance, as is his lack of appetite and energy.

One of the more subtle side effects of chemotherapy is "chemo brain", a form of cognitive dysfunction, manifested in slight memory lapses and difficulty concentrating. The most noticible evidence of this in Jimmy has been that since he took the first dose of Melphalan, he has not read one book; I daresay not one page. He has always had at least one book on tap, and in the last year was often reading a book a day. He's improving rapidly, and in a few months will be completely back to normal, but is nevertheless frustrated that it isn't happening overnight.

This cold and windy weather has made outdoor walking uncomfortable, so we decided that strolling around Phipps Plaza was a good alternative. Weekday mornings are usually quiet and uncrowded.

Frivolous missions can be entertaining, so on our drive to the mall, I mentioned that I needed to look for a new handbag. As we wandered around Saks, Jimmy helpfully pointed to a simple leather item, and said,"That one looks nice." But when he looked at the price tag, he gasped. "$3000 for THAT? Let's get out of here!"

On our way home he was still shaking his head in disbelief. "It should have told me something," he said, "when they had an armed guard watching the women's pocketbooks."

A Happy 65th Birthday

Jimmy had a lovely, lovely day, and was so surprised and touched by all of the birthday wishes he received. He loved the cards, and the messages written in them and in the emails. Thank you SO MUCH!

Although the best part of the day was the birthday part, there was more good news. We were at the clinic all afternoon, and Jimmy got an excellent report - his numbers are amazingly good. It's only Day 25 of transplant, and instead of the month we had expected to be in the hospital, we were there for a mere sixteen days. Jimmy is so far ahead of schedule, we may get to go home in a few weeks!

Bad hair day no more

A person spending all of her time caring for a very ill loved one tends to neglect her appearance, until an innocent glance at a mirror produces shock and dismay. A recent encounter with my own reflection inspired me to call Jamison Shaw Hairdressers post haste for an appointment. Jamey stayed with Jimmy this afternoon for me to go, and the diligent efforts of Suzanne the stylist have rendered me presentable.

There was a young woman in the chair next to mine, who had brought her small dog with her. The dog, which looked much like my darling sorely-missed Andy, had on a sweater, and sat quietly in her mistress's lap, immobile but to give a shy tail-wag to passing patrons who cooed at her. I couldn't resist taking a surreptitious photo of the little pooch, with my trusty phone camera.

Jimmy has some good days, and some that aren't so good, and that's just the way it's going to be for a while. Yesterday he felt great, and today he has dragged around, washed-out and lethargic. He gets lab work done Tuesday, and something is probably out of kilter, like his hemoglobin or his potassium. That can be easily remedied. Or it could be the Melphalan; it has only been a little over three weeks since he had high dose chemotherapy, and time will cure that. He's doing fabulously, considering.

Who is that masked man?

Weather permitting, we suit Jimmy up and take walks around the apartment complex, but other than that, we stay at home. We're not bored. It's inexplicable, because for the last year we've been as inseparable as conjoined twins, but we always seem to find something new and interesting to talk about.

Right now, we're watching the first day of the Pebble Beach golf tournament, and we've decided that when Jimmy gets better, we're going to go back out there, and rent a golf cart and play nine holes. We just listened to Neil Cavuto interviewing Clint Eastwood on Fox News, at the tournament, and that made us want to go back to Carmel, and stay at the Highlands Inn. Drive up the coast. Maybe while we're in that part of the country, we'll swing by Las Vegas, stay at the Bellagio, catch a show or two.

Up until a few weeks ago, we couldn't see past the transplant, and now we're beginning to think of our little pipe dreams as real possibilities. It's wonderful.

Day19

From everything we'd read, and all the people we had talked to that had undergone stem cell transplant, we'd anticipated the experience with considerable dread, but it turned out to be not as bad as we had feared. Not to downplay it, because Jimmy was very sick for several days, he has withstood it very well.

We won't know where we are with the myeloma for months, until the bone marrow grows back enough that it can be tested for the presence of cancer cells. An interesting thing: it was Sunday morning, Day Two of transplant, and out of the blue, Jimmy turned to me, and looked me straight in the eye, and said, "The cancer's gone." "Well, I hope so," I answered, indulging him. "No. No, I mean it's GONE. It's a physical thing. I feel different. It's gone."

Jimmy felt so badly during December, and we just assumed that it was taking him a long time to recover from the chemotherapy, but in retrospect, we now think it was the disease itself working on him. Even after those three chemo bombs he had three weeks ago, he feels better today than he did before he got them.

Multiple myeloma is incurable. So far. And we are not deluding ourselves that we killed every last one of the cancer cells forever, since even one survivor can mutate and multiply, but we do think they have been seriously decimated, at least until Dr. Lonial figures out how to wipe them out for good. And who knows? Maybe Jimmy will be the first; it has to be somebody, so why not him?

Day 18

We had an appointment this morning, and Jimmy's doing great: all of his numbers (blood tests; we won't know where we are with the myeloma for several months, although we are very optimistic) are excellent, and he is greatly exceeding our expectations for where we are in the process.

Day 15

We were at the clinic by 8AM, expecting to spend the better part of the day there, but when Jimmy's blood was tested, all of his numbers looked so good they sent us home. Neither platelets nor blood were necessary, as he is making enough on his own. He had a little fever last night and this morning, and blood cultures are being done as a precaution, but no one is concerned. His body is in overdrive, manufacturing millions of brand new cancer-free blood cells, and that can cause one's temperature to elevate.

While we were waiting for the results of the blood tests to come back, I was idly looking around the room at the other people there: they appeared to range in age from their twenties to their late seventies, but it's hard to tell with cancer patients. I started thinking about my parents' experience, when my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer, in the late 1950's, when she was a relatively young woman. She, like Jimmy, was treated at Emory.

Mac and William and I were at Sallas-Mahone elementary school: William was in the first grade, Mac in the third, and I was in the fourth. It was around lunch time, and Mrs. Allen, the principal, came and got us out of our classes, and took us outside to where Mama and Daddy were waiting in their car in front of the school. They were both crying, and they said that Mama was sick, and that Daddy was taking her to Atlanta to the doctor. They kissed us goodbye, and drove away, leaving the three of us standing there on the sidewalk, staring after them in stunned bewilderment.

When Mama had gotten her diagnosis that morning, Daddy, an Emory graduate, had called an old friend and fraternity brother, who was by then a doctor at Emory, and who told Daddy to bring Mama to Atlanta immediately. Knowing Daddy, he probably had Mama in the car and on their way within fifteen minutes of hanging up the phone.

Back then, Mama's prognosis was considered to be poor, but she had great doctors (I think I remember that her doctor was a Dr. Scarborough) and innovative treatment, and not only did she survive, but she lived for nearly fifty more years. I was thinking this morning of how different Mac's and William's and my life would have been, had our mother not been saved, and that it's one more blessing I owe to Emory Hospital.