Many Thanks to So Many of You

It is Ellen’s ‘week off’ from chemotherapy.

As I think most of you know, her current treatment regime is weekly chemotherapy for three weeks, then a week off. And she is really enjoying this week, and having more energy, and walking, climbing, washing, doing all kinds of things. We are so happy at this.

And because of the whole global pandemic experience, which I know many of you are quite affected by, it is really just the two of us, and kind of romantic in its own weird way. We like being together. We like it very much.

The early flowers are starting to bloom in the hills around us.

I tried hard this morning to keep up with Ellen as we climbed the mountain behind our house. I couldn’t, which made me very happy.

We are going to try to do without the Meal Train, which has been so incredibly helpful to us, and which has frankly been there when even the basics like feeding ourselves seemed like a hard stretch.

But there are now so many people needing so much support that we hope that some of the energy and kindness that we have experienced in the last year and direct it to people who need support in our community. Not that we aren’t happy, even delighted,  when friends step up to help us. But we are going to try to do for ourselves for a bit.

Sadly we have also retreated from the great tradition of walking in a group to the hospital on chemotherapy days. We are serious about distancing. When and if things are relaxed, we will reevaluate.

So this Thursday, April 30 Ellen will go by herself to the hospital. The current plan is for two more rounds of weekly therapy, each consisting of three weekly sessions, with a week of between them. That takes us to mid June. After that the most probable next step is to return to Houston for a further evaluation at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. But how and when that will happen is not yet entirely clear.