For this final chapter Mike will be the narrator.  Jojo is such an amazing writer, I apologize for the let down in advance.  Get ready for some over comma usage.  

As you may have gathered from the title, we did it, we eliminated the dust!  I was scanned on Tuesday and met with my doctor Wednesday afternoon.  They did a Pet scan of my whole body except my head and did an MRI of my head.  No sign of the dust anywhere.  There are just marks in my bone where the dust was present.  Obviously this is excellent news.  It gives us a sense of relief and closure on the fight.  It was a strange feeling being done with treatment but not positive the scans would be clear. I was in limbo between fight mode and recovery mode.  It is good to be fully immersed in recovery.

The new chapter is active surveillance.  I will meet with my doctor every three months and they will do blood work.  There are no more scheduled scans in the future.  A recurrence of the disease is detected by the scans only 10% of the time.  So it is better for me to be very in tune with my body and report anything out of the ordinary to the doctor immediately.  The chances of relapse of the disease are the highest in the next couple years.  After two years the odds drop significantly and after three years they drop to very low levels of recurrence.  However, we are not scared of another fight.  If the dust stumbles back to its feet then we will knock it down again.  

The coming months we are looking forward to spending more time together as a family and healing.  One major silver lining from the fight iis the amount of time the three of us have had together.  We are looking forward to more family time.  Dr. Tees, my oncologist, says I can expect to  be fatigued for three to six months, possibly even up to a year from the treatment.  I notice the fatigue with sleeping.  I sleep 9-11 hours a night and need to take a nap here and there in the afternoon.  We plan to keep our nutrition and health a focus so hopefully the fatigue will clear before too long.  My back continues to get stronger but it definitely gets sore and tired.  I do my exercises and walk daily but what I am learning from PT is that I need to push myself around 60% instead of 100%.  This will allow me to make gains quicker because I will not be aggravating those lower back muscles as much.  Trying to tell myself not to push as hard as I can is difficult but I am doing better with this strange concept.  

Finally, I want to pay tribute to all of you.  All the people that have supported me in this fight.  I never felt alone in this fight, not even close.  I can’t explain in words how much the support has meant to us.  I started getting the support in the hospital back in July and I remember just getting so much strength from it.  With that strength I made the choice in my head that I was going to win.  I didn’t even know the opponent yet but it didn’t matter I was going to win, I knew it.  I was fighting for all the people that were in my corner.  People were so generous and I knew one way I might try to pay them back was putting 110% into this fight, so we did.  So thank you from the bottom of my heart, thank you.  

I say ‘we’ because in reality there is a true MVP here, it is not me, it is Jojo.  I try to explain to people Jojo’s level of work ethic but I don’t do it justice.  Jojo gave birth to Marley and that same day was caring for me because I just received my first treatment right after Marley was born.  She raised a newborn and cared for me as I went through this extensive treatment.  She wakes up every morning to care for Marley then prepares my juices, smoothies and anything else I need.  Throughout the day she alternated caring for Marley and myself.  She did it with a smile on her face and with love.  Jojo is an amazing person, even more amazing mom and partner.   

A special shout out to our housemate, Ben.  Ben and I coached football at Fairview for many years.  We were tight before the dust but going through this fight together has brought the four of us together as a family.  Ben is Jojo’s main conspirator in this dust elimination operation.  Ben did so much for us.  He did all the needed extra work around the house and alternated cooking meals in the kitchen.  The level of cooking and eating that has happened in our house over the last few months is extraordinary.  Ben and Jojo have pushed the culinary levels to a new high.  I am very spoiled.  Thank you Ben.  

With that we are signing off from this journal.  Hopefully this never gets fired up again and we encounter each other in life through the old fashioned way of personal interaction.  We look forward to seeing you on the other side of Covid experience.  Love to all of you and thank you!  CTD