11/29/2010 After Thanksgiving weekend

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend - even though many of us came down with cold and sinus issues we dealt with for most of the weekend. It was cold in Parowan - but not as cold as Panguitch and other places in northern Utah.

Amanda and Ryan came up to Coral Canyon on Friday and we all went ATV riding with Bruce, Cara, Chris and Tyler on Saturday out on the the Arizona Strip. It was a great ride until the front passed, the clouds came over and it turned off very cold for the last hour or so back to the trucks and trailers. Bruce led us on some exploring trails to areas that hadn't had too many tracks before until we found the power line road that took us home. It ended up being a 3-1/2 to 4 hour trip and other than recouping from fighting our colds and a little soreness the next day, everyone had a great time. We saw some side trails we want to go back to take next time.

I had a very good weekend. I had very little fatigue issues because I was nearly a week off my meds so didn't have any issues. I started the Revlimid again on Saturday evening and to my weekly Dex last night at bed time. I'm about over my cold, but Josh and Matt were just getting to the deep part of theirs, hope they recover quickly.

I got my blood results faxed to me this morning from Dr. Te's Office, the number everyone is looking at dropped again to 1.45, down from 1.69 the last time. The 1.45 was from 11/18 at the end of Round 4. my next blood draw is now scheduled for 12/16 at the end of this round 5, hopefully everything keeps dropping. On 12/16 we are going to press Dr. Te a little harder to find out what numbers have to be where before we can begin to talk seriously about going to Salt Lake for the transplant, hopefully he will answer those questions for us when we go up on 12/16 & 12/17.

11/22/2010 Here comes Thanksgiving

We had a good trip to St. George and got to see mom and dad and Bruce and Cara for dinner to celebrate my birthday - thanks to all that wished me well on facebook.

I got my Arida treatment and was suppose to see the doctor to talk about my blood results and what comes next, but he was tied up doing a bone biopsy on another patient so we saw the nurse practitioner instead. I'll order a faxed copy of my blood results next week to see where the numbers are going. The treatment went pretty well, we ended up staying in Coral Canyon on Friday night and then went home on Saturday. I finished round 4 of the Revlimid on Friday night and I'm looking forward to a week off to recoup a little of my strength and stamina in preparation for starting the next round 5 at the end of next week. this round has run me down a little bit, I've had more fatigue and nausea than before, I assume it's because it builds up a residual in my body that keeps fighting the bad, but also drags me down some too.

We're looking forward to Thanksgiving to spend time with everyone. I'll do another update after the weekend. Thanks again for every one's good thoughts and prayers on my behalf and I wish all of you the best of times for this upcoming Holiday and Christmas season.

11/18/2010 Long Time no Blog

I am really lousy at this, it shouldn't be to hard to type a few lines every few days, but it is a struggle for me for some reason.

It's that time of the month again, we'll be heading for St. George this afternoon first for the blood taking tonight and then for the Arida appointment tomorrow and a meeting with Dr. Te to go over the progress of my last blood tests. Last month the number that they want to be around 1.0 and was 2.3 the previous month went down to 1.69 so everything is still moving in the right direction. Hopefully this month's number will keep going down.

I'm in the 3rd week of round 4 of the Revlimid and I can always tell when it's the 3rd week because the fatigue factor builds up, next week is my week off, so I hope to rebound a little bit to be ready for the next round.

We are planning on seeing mom and dad and Bruce and Cara tonight, that will be good.

10/29/2010 Went to Phoenix instead of Dr. Te

It's Friday Oct. 29th and we should be in St. George going to see Dr. Te to get the latest blood results - instead we headed for Phoenix - actually Glendale Az to see Josh for the weekend, we drove down yesterday and got to go over the new bridge that bypasses Hoover Dam which opened up a couple of weeks ago.

The trip over the bridge is a little anti-climatic. You go onto the new road just after the casino on the Nevada side and then before you know it you're on the bridge, but you really have to know what you're looking for because the barrier rails are so tall you cannot even begin to see the dam below, about the only way to verify where you are is to know that the power line towers hanging off the side of the canyon lead down to the dam.

We spent a very nice weekend with Josh and Addie, we went to a museum and saw some very interesting exhibits on the Native American Tribes of Indians that come from Arizona. We headed back to Vegas on Sunday around noon.

10/23/2010 Back from St. George

We went to St. George Thursday evening, I gave the vials of blood, six I think and then met Bruce and Cara for dinner, it's a little strange only seeing them a couple times a month instead of twice a week like we did this summer. Friday we got up and Patty took me to Dr. Te's office to drop me off for my Arida treatment while she has to go to work at Smith's for a while. I did my treatment, everything went well.

We met with mom and dad for lunch at Applebees, they came down for a Costco run to stock the house and trailer before they move the trailer to Hurricane at the end of the month. It was good to see them and we should see them a little more since they will be close to Coral Canyon all winter.

We headed back to Vegas in the afternoon and made it back OK. I'm scheduled to go back up for the blood results next Friday.