Happy New Year!  Jim and I had a great end to our year of 2019 as his Dr. appointments in Mayo could not have gone better yesterday.  His white blood cell counts dropped again, and his inflammatory markers dropped considerably.  The inflammatory markers are not yet in the normal range but were very encouraging.  After reviewing his lab work and many questions by two different infectious disease doctors, I think Jim surprised them on his improvement and they decided at the end of the day to discontinue the antibiotic infusions and as a precautionary measure have him on oral antibiotics until he returns in mid-February.  They explained that with everything that has happened since October it may take Jim a few months to gain his strength back and they will want to monitor him closely for the next six months.   As to his pulmonary embolisms, time will tell if this is a lifetime concern or if this was something that came about due to the hospital stays and the acute infections.   No news is good news so we are hoping that this will be our final entry on CaringBridge.   We are excited for the New Year and wish everyone a Happy and Healthy 2020.