Dear Friends and Family,

Well, I suppose I can now safely say that John survived the current crisis. His bilirubin numbers are finally going down (from 9 to 6), and he obviously feels better. He has started to take his skinny little yellow self out to the park, the hardware store, etc. He's slowly getting less yellow, too. (Maybe soon he'll be able to wear green without it clashing horribly with his skin.) His liver function does not yet allow for chemo (it needs to be 2 or lower), but at least it allows for life today. I still have not really gotten over the irony that we now treat John's ability to take chemo as some giant treat. We believe it just as fully as we did last Spring the "chemo as a fate worse than death" scenario. Somehow, it helps to have these wild swings in perspective and in expectation all the time. They have worn us out to a large extent. We've taken on a kind of "hopeless hopefulness", or a "couldn't care less kind of optimism". We certainly still react to these crises, but we also find a lot of joy in them. Sitting with John in the hospital, the kids seeing him come home on Christmas eve, something about the slow, open aspect of time, the way people came out to connect with us, there remains something quite wonderful about these crises. We certainly would not ask for them, but we do appreciate them in their way, along with all the fear and anguish. Maybe it is just that we put a lot of energy into being both mindful and aware in a way that we don't do under ordinary circumstances. It feels good to be in such a place, even if the moments around it have such an unsettled quality. Still, it also feels really good to be out of it and doing our ordinary things. Next week, John will take another blood test to measure his bilirubin levels. I'll let you know what we find out.

Happy New Year!

Love,

Martha

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