Jake: Jimmy's little clone

Happy 60th, Mac!

It makes you feel old when your younger brother turns 60.

The unexpected joys in life

I had expected today to be miserable, but it turned into something wonderful that I will cherish in my mental file of happy memories. The latest splinter of bone that has been plaguing me recently managed to work its way out of the gum during the night, to my profound relief, and I ended up going to Ocean Pond fishing with Jimmy, Rosey, the children, and Susan Kerns, Rosey's mother-in-law.

It was one of those picture-perfect fall afternoons: the fish were biting, the excited children beyond delightful, and we all had a marvelous time. It was the first time I'd been with the children since I got sick, and I didn't realize how much I had missed them. And to heck with germs.

Jimmy, unloading his gear in front of the beautiful old Ocean Pond clubhouse

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When I woke up this morning, there was something sharp on my tongue, and when I fished it out, it was this piece of bone. It's the jagged little white thing to the right of the dime. It's called a sequestering bone fragment, or something like that, and don't ask me to explain this, because I can't. It is bizarre.

Update

I'm doing a lot better and my mouth is healing, although there's still some discomfort. That was SO not fun. I'm just surprised that it happened now, three months after chemo.

Jimmy caught a cold last week, and was getting worse, so he started on Levaquin Friday and we've kept the vaporizer running at night. He seems much improved today. I fret about his getting pneumonia again.

In August, his paraprotein level showed a slight movement, and Dr. Lonial put him back on a low dose of Revlimid, a chemotherapy drug. He's tolerating it well, although it has lowered his blood counts and made him more susceptible to infection. He loves the grandbabies more than anything, but small children ARE little germ factories, and we'd both like to get out more, but flu season IS starting. What does one do?

Pure Love

I'm feeling much better today and my foul disposition is sweetening. Jimmy and I were talking about it last night, and decided that in a lot of ways, our situation was easier when we were in Medical Land in Atlanta: we had a goal and a mission and were focused on that. You EXPECT to feel poorly in Medical Land. Now, we are so happy to be home in the Real World, and these medical annoyances don't have any place here.

Although I have been ailing a bit, Jimmy has had a fine time seeing the grandchildren often: they've been fishing at Ocean Pond, to the Halloween Carnival, to a football game at Valwood, and have had lots of lunches together.

Today when they met for lunch, four-year-old Jake handed Jimmy his favorite truck and said,"Here, Papa. I brought this truck for you."

"Oh, no," said Jimmy. "That's your Spiderman truck - I can't take your Spiderman truck."

"But I want YOU to have it, Papa."

"Ok. I'll take it home with me and play with it for a few days, then you can come get it and you can keep it for a while. We'll share."

That solution pleased Jake, and when Jimmy came home this afternoon carrying his new Spiderman truck, he was smiling like somebody had just given him a million dollars.

Ouch

It has not been a pleasant week - for me, anyway. Jimmy's doing fine. I think that the bottom line is that I'm having a hard time rebounding from all my cancer treatments, and that I'm just rundown.

The most bothersome problem has been mouth sores - ulcers, I thought, but it turned out to be small areas of exposed bone. At some point I injured my gum - maybe doing something like eating pita chips- and it couldn't heal properly because my of debilitated condition.

A week ago Fernando Alvarado removed a sliver of bone from an ulcer, using local anaesthesia, and we hoped it would heal but the pain kept getting worse and worse. Jimmy took me back yesterday, and Fernando put me to sleep with general anaesthesia, and cleaned out another piece of bone and some infection and sewed it up. I'm on penicillin and pain pills and feel better.

Fernando has strongly assured us that this is NOT osteonecrosis. The jaw looks very healthy and the tissue is healing.