Greetings everyone, if you're still out there.

It's been a long time since I've added to this journal, but there have been some developments (one scary one and one good one) and I thought I'd share them.

First off, it's now getting close to six years since my fateful Christmas morning fall from the ladder (like a knucklehead) that fortunately led to the early diagnosis of my light-chain multiple myeloma cancer. It's just another 70 days before the 5th anniversary of my successful homecoming from my stem cell transplant.

As you may remember, my oncology doctor, Dr. Bernstein, told me at one point that the objective was to keep me alive for five years after the transplant. Five years is the median life expectancy for stem cell transplant patients with multiple myeloma. As you can imagine, I'm very happy to be in the longer-living half of the group.

In Europe, they take people off the maintenance dosage of Lenalidomide, the mutagenic chemo drug that keeps this cancer at bay. In the US we do it for about four years. I've now been taking it for five and a half years. My body is getting tired of it. My blood counts are low, so I'm more prone to light-headedness (more about that in a minute) and my digestive tract is touchy with diarrhea being a weekly visitor.

There's a new oncologist at the hospital's oncology department and we met a couple days ago. He thinks it's time for me to discontinue taking the lenalidomide and see if my system rebounds. I'll be checking in with him in three months to see how my vital signs and blood chemistry looks. So this is obviously the good one. Related to this is him telling me that there are several new and very promising treatments for multiple myeloma that can be used if the cancer returns and the lenalidomide is less effective.

So, on to the scary news. I've been feeling pretty great for a 70 year old, hiking with Kristi and the dogs, doing physical work around the property, etc.. I got a little cocky a few months ago. We did a four-mile hike with the dogs; lots of up and down in the morning as the day heated up. I then went out and spent about 45 minutes around noon weed-whacking the last of the tall grass that was closer to the house than we like in fire season. It was 85 degrees out and I was sweating pretty hard. I finished up, came in for lunch and decided to have a frosty beer with it to celebrate completing that chore.

About three hours later, I realized that Autumn was coming over to spend the night without the grandkids and we had no beer! So I went out, hopped in the Prius, cranked up the AC and drove to White Salmon to pick up a six pack. Walked across the hot parking lot, into the cold store, back across the hot lot, back into the cold car and headed home. About 30 yards before the Husum city limits sign at 53 mph I suddenly saw multicolored sparkles in my peripheral vision and in two seconds was completely unconscious. 

Less than a minute later, I came to hanging from my seat belt in the car which had crashed into an eight-foot-deep ditch. Amazingly, I was basically okay. Some bruised muscles in my chest. I climbed out of the car, which was totaled and with the help of a couple young folks was helped out of the ditch and across the highway where I sat down, drank the water they offered me and called Kristi. Her first words when I said I'd crashed the car were, understandably, "Dammit Dave!!... are you okay?"

Everyone agrees I was incredibly lucky and stupid. Today's lesson is HYDRATE yourself, which I am now very good at. And we both really like our new Toyota EV.

I apologize for the long length of this. I'm also sad to note that a couple dear friends and family members have passed on since I last wrote. So please take care of yourself as best you can and don't be a knucklehead when you're driving. I wish you all well always and think of you frequently; always with affection. With love and hope; Dave W