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And all is back to .......

...

....the new normal.

Turns out I didn't update this when Dan left the hospital last year (one year tomorrow). And not since.

My apologies - kept meaning to, but ...

Since Dan left the hospital after surgery number two, he has:

[] recuperated at home with Netflix and Witcher III
[] turned 40! with a surprise birthday party at a Musical Comedy show (he wasn't THAT surprised because I'm really terrible at that)
[] had his blood taken 13 times
[] had at least twelve different scans/ultrasounds and met with the doctors almost as much
[] returned to work after only 8 weeks
[] work near continuously the rest of the year
[] have a mini vacation in Victoria with JUST me at the Empress Hotel!
[] do a small family vacation at Wolf Lodge in WA, showing off for the first time his zipper scar
[] work on a boat!
[] squeeze in a short film
[] see some musical theater and learn the girls are die-hard ABBA fans
[] READ A BOOK
[] gain TWO new nieces!
[] see a few of his movies already hit the top spots and get more viewers than HBO!
[] go to CUBA!
[] tear apart the kitchen and put it back together with brick tile
[] take some well deserved time off over the new year and then receive more than one phone-call to return to work

On the kidney cancer side: all the scans show the tumor not growing. But they also don't show it shrinking.

He continues to take his medicine (the pill chemotherapy and few others things) and deal with the side effects because, the scans might not show growth for a few reasons... The cancer could be dead. So: not growing, not shrinking. The cancer could still be alive: not growing because of the medicine, but not reacting well enough that it's not shrinking. What they're seeing on the scan COULD be cancer, or could be regular old blood clot / Deep Vein Thrombosis -- and that can't give Dan and 100% sure answer unless they went back in and, ya know what, he just doesn't feel like going through that again. Can you blame him?

....or not.

So for the mean time, he exists in a sort of weird status quo where it doesn't appear he has cancer, he's not got any side effects that really allude to having cancer, but he remains on cancer drugs because he may actually still have it and the drugs are doing a good job at keeping it in check.

Thanks all for your friendship over the year, and all those that check in on Dan through me. It means a lot!


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