Karen's Blog

Dear friends, Karen and I have quite a lot of information to share, so this will likely be a long post, and contain information that we’re not pleased to share. When compiling my thoughts for this post the list of topics kept getting longer and longer. We have many dear friends who are clearly in…

I know that people are hoping for an update, and I’ll have a detailed one this weekend. Unfortunately, the test results came back showing that her cancer has spread further. Karen is having some additional tests today here in Columbus, and then we’re travelling back up to the Clinic tomorrow to speak with the doctor….

Christmas is upon us. I don’t expect to have an update on Karen’s health for you until next week, but wanted to write a post to thank you for thinking of us. The outpouring of love over the last year has been… [Ever get stuck not knowing what word to use? Words like grateful, astonishing,…

It’s been about a week since my last post, and I’ve been sick the last few days of that. I thought I’d managed to avoid it, but alas. The repairs to the house are complete, and that’s a huge relief for both of us. Now, we’re down to the honey-do list of things that are…

Karen’s still sick, and the contractors are still in the house. The repairs are coming along nicely though. Fortunately, Karen is feeling a little better today. She’s still sick, but seems on the mend. I suspect she’ll need to hold off on doing anything around people for about a week yet. Although she’s sick, it…

Thanksgiving is over and our home is back to normal, temporarily. It looks like Karen picked up a cold or something, as she has a sore throat and is feeling miserable. The Clinic did not postpone treatment yesterday, as her blood counts were still good. We’re having some work done in the house today and…

The holidays are approaching quickly, and this year seems more stressful than in the past. The spring/summer projects around the house progressed, but many are still unfinished. Karen has been struggling with a cough, fatigue, and is having some pain in her abdomen again. The pain is the same as she had when first diagnosed….

Karen had the third dose of Opdivo earlier this week and some of the effects seem to be accumulative. She’s sleeping more, and generally more fatigued. There are a lot of things in and around the house that she’s like to do before the holidays, and sometimes the desire to take up those tasks exceeds…

The second dose of the immunotherapy meds went pretty much like the first, so although Karen is still pretty fatigued, she’s at least not experiencing the side effects like the chemotherapy. We spent the weekend with some friends and did a few things out of the norm. One of them was a trip to the…

Hello everybody, The last week and a half has been relatively uneventful, as far as side effects go. For the most part, Karen didn’t dip below her baseline of tired/icky, and she was up and around quite a bit. Over the last week we’ve done quite a bit of yard work, started building a firewood…