A Couple of Updates

It has been a week since I last posted, and although there are no monumental events to share, I thought I would give everyone a recap of some things that have happened over the last 7 days.

On the medical front, on Tuesday, I started another cycle of chemo.  This means that I'll visit the docotor's office four times over 14 days for infusions of several different drugs.  I'll then go for 7 days with no treatment and that will conclude the 21-day cycle of treatment.  The next 21-day cycle will start at the end of my 7-day rest period.  My blood counts are still pretty low, so I got a blood transfusion yesterday (2 bags of whole blood and 1 bag of platelets) to boost those levels back up (don't forget to donate blood and platelets if you can...people actually use them!).  This pattern of chemo followed by transfusion might continue for awhile until the chemo takes hold and knocks back the myeloma far enough to allow my counts to rise.  The photo below shows me at the end of a bag of blood...you can see that the bag on the rack  looks pink instead of red as it gets to the end.

Now that the boring stuff is out of the way, here are some other things that happened this past week:

My smart, beautiful and all-around awesome wife celebrated a birthday.  You'll have to ask her how old she is...I'm not dumb enough to spill that information.

The Gators (once again) looked shaky in their season opener against Bowling Green.  This Saturday they travel to College Station to take on Texas A&M.  They'll have to play a lot better to win this week.

I shaved off my beard.  It seems like a shame since it took 3 weeks to grow it out, but the novelty had worn off.  No way was I going to take the time and effort to keep it trimmed.  Plus, it was getting harder and harder to get any kisses from Jen and Shannon.  For the record, Aaron was the only who noticed that I had shaved.

That's it for now.  As always, thanks to everyone for your prayers, your visits, your gifts, your food and all of your support (thanks Uncle Jim for helping out during the transfusion).  I can't tell you how much easier it is to deal with all of this with such a great group of family and friends.  I feel extremely blessed to be so lucky.