February 6, 2017

Another sleepy day today. The highlight: a visit from the kiddos plus Tricia and my dad which involved hugs, snuggles, chats and a board game.

I also (just now) made a few talk submissions for the Agile2017 conference in August. Tonight is the deadline for getting submissions into the system, but I still have a few weeks to edit and refine them. Given my overall reduced energy and focus since December, I pretty much just dropped in some placeholders which will need lots of love and iteration in the coming weeks. Hopefully the conference chairs will sympathize.

Numbers-wise, my prognosis continues to look excellent. The doc said that I’m very nearly past the point of risk of complications, and he’s very happy with how I’m continuing to progress. The sleepiness may just be the chemotherapy finally beginning to catch up with my body after nearly two weeks. Still no pain; still feeling very fortunate.

One notable bummer from the day: it appears that I won’t be getting a discharge this week as hoped, but will still be in hospital for another 1-3 weeks yet. Ironically, this isn’t because I’m doing badly; it’s because I’m doing so well. Until the cancer reaches full remission, I still need daily intravenous chemotherapy, seven days a week. There are facilities in town that can do that on an outpatient basis five or six days/week, but apparently none at all that provide it on Sundays. Thus, the only “package” in town that provides the ~2 hours of IV plus observation that I need each Sunday is the same package that has me living full-time in a private hospital room with round-the-clock nursing service. Because it’s so rare for a cancer patient who needs daily infusions to also be mobile and stable enough to be at home, the market simply hasn’t provided an economical path for daily outpatient infusions. I cringe on behalf of my insurance company.

And that’s the news from ANW E3065, where all the visiting kids are cute, all the nurses and doctors are awesome, and all the patients count their lucky stars, with wonder, every day.

Bedtime for Markus. Good night and love to all.

-Markus

This post originally published to Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/markus.silpala/posts/10212124508414681

 

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