February 26, 2013
Obama Cancer
Subtitle:When Lack of Growth is a Good Thing.
'Tis been a long day.
Michelle and I got up early, as we often do on days when we visit Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in the morning. We got up around 4:45am and left the house at 5:30. At that hour the roads are usually decent and we arrived at MGH around 6:55. We used the time to enjoy a nice breakfast at the Finagle A Bagel next door. I'd much rather spend the time with my love having breakfast than sitting on a slow moving I-93 south.
Around 8 o'clock we went back to the van, picked up our stuff — the things we use to pass the hurry-up-and-wait times at the hospital. For Michelle it might be a book, her Kindle, or her netbook. For me it's always my work laptop. Over the years I've solved a number of GPU bugs while waiting in oncology. Around 8:30 they took vitals. Around 9 they took labs via her port. And finally around 9:30 we got admitted to the oncologist's exam room.
I'm happy to report that there is the disease is stable. It isn't progressing. Its growth has stalled for now. This is excellent news and we'd be thrilled if it could stay like that. The malignancies are not measurably bigger and there's no new growth developments detectable. So far the trial is going well. In other good news the indicators that were pretty low two and four weeks ago, notably white blood cells and platelets, are now in the more normal range.
We were and are happy of course. We let dad know right away and posted the news on Facebook. When I got home we took dad, Claire, and the twins with us for lunch at Cafe on the Oval. We also stopped by DFE on the way back for coffees and to pick up a muffin for Timothy who was back home due to illness.
It was a long work day on top of all of this. I solved/fixed one bug in the morning at MGH and isolated another one tonight. I worked until 7:30 when it was time to drive with Michelle and Abby up to Manchester. Yeah, more driving! Claire and Abby have two of their good friends staying with us for a couple of nights. Unless they're really loud, I suspect I'll sleep through any estrogen induced giggling I hear down the hall.