Hello all! 

Great news on the cancer front. I had my 6 month cancer scan and it came back completely clear! There's no activity in my lymph nodes, and no other tumors throughout my body. This comes just one month after my blood levels all hit normal ranges for the first time since my stem cell transplant! Meaning my platelets, red blood count, and white blood count have all fully recovered and are now at the same levels as pre-cancer. All around, the best news one could ask for.

There was a minor concern: I have pneumonia. I've been on a regime of antibiotics to get rid of my cough, and it has been going well. I will get another scan in one month to confirm that it is totally gone.

Otherwise, I continue trucking along with my maintenance chemotherapy, Brentuximab. It is every three weeks until June. The side effects have been mostly minor -- only some fatigue and appetite issues. I also have minor neuropathy (my finger tips are a little numb), but that will reverse a few months after I end treatment. Most of my hair has come back, and I hope to stop wearing baseball caps in the next few months. :) 

My snail internship has turned into a paid position with the Bishop Museum as their Malacology Collections Technician. I'm absolutely loving it. I work there part time. In October, I was cleared to start working with soil and plants again, so I returned part-time to Hui Kū Maoli Ola, the native plant nursery. Having one indoor job and one outdoor job has been a blast. I'm also sitting in on a lā'au lapa'au class at the University of Hawai'i to learn more about Hawaiian plants. And of course, I have much-needed friend time almost daily. :) 

In all, it has been incredible to have near-normal amounts of energy again. I've met lots of lovely people and been to tons of new places these past six months. It's an incredibly speedy recovery by all accounts, and I'm back in the swing of things much sooner than the doctors or I expected. 

Hopefully, things will stay pretty quiet on this blog for awhile! The next milestone is getting all of my vaccinations again in April, at the one year mark of the stem cell transplant. After that, I should finish the maintenance chemo in June. Then active treatment should be completely done and I'll go to yearly cancer scans just to monitor for recurrences.

Much love to you all, and please enjoy these pictures from the back half of 2023!
Robbie