Keep Calm and Carry On

Saw items with this design in the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance gift store recently. Design came from a poster stockpiled by the British government for use after a German invasion, so was never used.

It certainly effectively summarizes Meg's attitude towards her disease. She continues to get very tired and often needs naps, and goes to bed early, but still manages to walk to and from the lab every day.  Her sense of taste continues to be very erratic, and often surprises us: she generally finds mild foods acceptable but unexciting and is slowly losing weight. We didn't do much very active last weekend, though we did get to have lunch in the sun on the back porch. High point of the weekend was an excellent dinner cooked for us by a long time neighbor and friend (René) at his lovely and airy house. He's off on adventures soon, so it's available for rent, if you're interested. Photo below and one of René preparing dessert.

We visited Meg's physician's assistant last Friday: no obvious explanation for the symptoms, but no great worry either  - chemotherapy patients often have such symptoms. Some thought that things might start getting better after this next chemotherapy cycle. It appears (to me) that she's not as tired as last week, but it's a bit hard to tell.

Yesterday (Wednesday) she had another mystery infusion, and started the second cycle (5 days out of 28) of the chemotherapy, which has now been raised to its highest dose. She seems to be tolerating it well, taking an anti-nausea pill and then the chemotherapy pill just before bed, with the hope of sleeping through any resultant nausea.

Next weekend Meg will be off to visit her parents in Santa Barbara, and then we'll be getting ready for out trip back east in May, for Nick's graduation and our visit to DC.