Pictures at 11--NOT!

In the interests of fair disclosure, no pictures in this post. I haven't gotten any knitting done this week, with grading and coming down with a cold.

The intersection of a weekend with friends in the Wine Country + a nasty virus that attacks hapless teachers of young students = I stayed home, sick. DH was able to go though--hurrah! Last night, as he told me of their winery visits and the different wines he really liked, I was so jealous. He thought to console me with news of his bottle purchases, and that is nice, but wine tasting with friends is so much fun. And with Greg and Connie, we always laugh so much--they will be good for DH's immune system. 8^)

Speaking of DH, his results indicate that his lymphoma is about 95% eradicated by the six chemo sessions. [Cheers, balloons flying upward, confetti raining down.]

The remaining two areas (one under his arm and one in his gut) while not gone, are much smaller. Many factors go into the decision what to do now. They could continue for two more treatments BUT overdoing those chemo drugs means they may not be helpful at all in future. Not treating him may mean a relapse much sooner than they (or we!) would prefer. So . . . both his oncologist and the Stanford Oncology Dept. bigwigs say that he should continue on one of the drugs, Rituxan, for 2 years; this involves treatment every six months, once a week for four weeks. It's actually not of the slash-and-burn chemo variety, but the monoclonal antibody that has no unpleasant side effects for DH. The docs call it "Vitamin R." So this line of thinking sounds great.

Following that? If no new tumors develop during that time, and these areas are not changed or get smaller, then he would probably be done with any sort of drug therapy. We just have to wait and see. So he says it's time to go out and live his life, which is what he did in going to the Wine Country this weekend.

At the risk of starting to whine, I will say that I wish I was out there living life with him too right now. But there will be other weekends (maybe next weekend! maybe the one after that!) and here's some sour grapes (yuk yuk): the wineries are in the middle of the crush right now so some of their winery stops were a bit understaffed, or wines to try, limited to two or three.

Doesn't it seem that I really should go knit something and get over my funk? 8^)

Happy knitting all, and Amanda, I'm glad we were able to say hi over the ravelry fence. Missed you over the summer! Knit something and blog about it!