Jessie Blackburn

Greetings. Sorry it's been so long, but things have been rather uneventful. Which is a good thing. Jessie is now half way done with Chemo and things still going well -- aside from occasional nausea and persistent exhaustion. Next week she starts on the Taxol, so that will be a whole new series of side-effects, but most people say Taxol isn't as bad as the stuff she's been having so far. We shall see. William arrived back from eastern Congo for an extended stay, so that's been nice. Otherwise, we all went to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts yesterday for a Hopper Exhibit and she's going to exercise classes, yoga seeing lots of movies and happily having visitors. Otherwise, just putting one foot ahead of the last....

Second round of chemo yesterday. (Only six left to go....) The first round went pretty well. Some fatigue, a little nausea, but not too bad. Her main treatment doctor is back, having been stuck in Portugal (her homeland) during the first round because she lost her green card. She said that with all of the modern drugs, their goal is to have no nausea at all, so we're going to see if we can reach that goal this time around. Nothing they can do about the fatigue though. Jessie, Bunny and every dog We've had plenty of help over the last couple of weeks. Jessie's sister Sarah was here for a week, and her cousin Bunny is here now until Saturday. They've both promised to make return appearances. And William will be returning from Congo for an extended leave the beginning of next month. Thanks everyone for all of your support. Keep those cards, letters and visits coming. 

The first chemo session went quite well. All of the nurses and others were quite helpful, explained everything thoroughly and were quite supportive. We arrived  with enough snacks and reading material to supply the entire hospital for a week, but we were out by noon. Aside from a little screw up with the anti-nausea medications (where everyone at the hospital thought everyone else had phoned the prescriptions into the pharmacy), everything went swimmingly. As of 9:00 tonight, no significant side effects which bodes well for the new year. So Happy New Year everyone. We're all looking forward to a healthy 2020. 

Well, as the year 2020 dawns, Jessie rings it in by heading for her first chemo infusion on New Years Eve. While not looking forward to the chemo itself, she's envisioning the final elimination of any little stray cancerous cells that may have escaped surgery last month. The chemo goes for 16 weeks (every other week), followed by a month off, and then radiation for a month. Just starting out. Wait a month and we'll show off our bounty We're heading to the store to buy anything and everything that someone on chemo might want to eat, and battening down the hatches with lots of good books, movies and mysteries.  And thanks to a hydroponic garden from the kids for Christmas, we will soon be well stocked with veggies. (See the photo.) We had a great Christmas with all of the kids and various others (including a newly-inaugurated son-in-law who is also a nurse). Nurses Madeleine and Greg will be in the neighborhood to help out, and William will be returning for an extend...

Not too much new to report. Still healing after surgery. Still a bit sore, and still dealing with bandages and drains (although fewer). But she's walking a lot and enjoys visits from friends. Feel free to call. And thanks to all of you who provided meals. They were all excellent and we're getting fat. Future events: Meetings with the oncologist at Georgetown to be followed by chemo sometime around Christmas. Nicole is coming in for Thanksgiving tomorrow and we'll all be celebrating with Madeleine and Greg and some friends on Friday night as Mad and Greg are working on Thanksgiving and the next morning (in return for Christmas off.) We visited them today while at JHU for a follow-up appointment. That's about it for now. Thanks again to everyone for your help, best wishes and support. 

Much to the relief of the dogs (and everyone else), Jessie is back home and snuggled in.  Hopkins was great and we were very happy with the doctors and nurses (especially nurse Madeleine who spent the night with Jessie.) Happily, still not too much pain, probably with the help of lots of drugs. But she's still quite tired and not receiving visitors as of yet. Thanks for everyone's support. (And sorry if the "update" emails seem to be lagging a day behind the actual blog updates.)

The patient is out of surgery and settled into her very nice hospital room eating dinner (we sent out for noodles.) The surgery was long (~5 1/2 hours), but it went well. The main surgeon and the plastic surgeon were both happy. Barring anything unexpected, we will be heading home tomorrow morning.