Tuesday I started round 3 of 4 treatment so I am officially on the back half. Apparently when the Doc says 3 or 4 treatments he means 4. June 25th should be my last day of treatment, then I get the pleasure of a bone marrow biopsy and we see if we left anything behind. Tuesday all my blood work came back looking great. White blood cells are in the normal range, which I think is not normal for this far into chemo because the Doc and Nurses always seem a bit surprised. Kidney and liver also are in the normal range. I keep telling them that my ancestors have been training for this for generations. Any McLaughlin with weak livers died out of Cirrhosis centuries ago and natural selection has provided me with a liver that has been battled tested.

The last week I had a lot of progress towards getting back to normal or as normal as I can while doing treatment. I started working from home last Wednesday. While it isn’t my dream job of lead guitarist in a Grammy winning rock band, it’s been good to have something productive to do during the day. I got my home office all decked out.

I am also (hopefully) done with the brace. I haven’t used it in over a week and while I still get a little sore from time to time I am more mobile then I have been in months. I started physical therapy this week and got my first couple of exercises to build my core back up. Next week I plan to go into the office for a day and if that goes well I will be able to commute the days I don’t have treatments or PT. My goal is to get off any lift restrictions by the time I am done with treatment. Then I can start doing real exercise to get in shape for whatever comes next. My work is having a jam mid June and I hope to be able to stand and play guitar.

I am still getting tapered off of the steroids and the cankle situation which resolved itself last week has come back for another tour. This time it isn’t messing around. I have the ankles of a 400lb diabetic elderly woman. I put a call into the doc to see if this is anything to be concerned about. The only painful part about is the pain I feel when I look at what used to be my ankle and see that it’s been replaced by a elephant hoof.

That ankle belongs on this guy

That’s about it for this week. Probably going to be updating this less frequently with work, physical therapy and the ability to drive myself I don’t know if I can keep the twice weekly posts going. Especially now where everything is really rinse and repeat of previous treatments. Next week I get my third transfusion of the bone density meds. This week no one offered me muffins. They better have warmed muffins if they want to stick a IV in me Tuesday.

If anyone wants more detailed information or to donate to research for Multiple Myeloma here is a link to the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. These are the people who are most likely to find a cure. Which means no more blueberry muffins on Tuesday, but also no more shots and drugs that make demon babies. The muffins are good, but not that good.