Well, it took almost four full weeks but I am finally walking around again!  I can stand up relatively straight and can go more than 20 steps without breathing heavily.  In fact, I even started driving this week!   I’m not back to 100% yet, but I can confidently say that I am somewhere between 50% and 75% depending on the day.  

It’s been a slow and boring few weeks.  Before this week, I only left home to go to medical associates for testing (more on that later).  During the day Leo and I sit at the window waiting for Saint Ashley to come home.  We were also napping a lot.  I watched and read all of the NFL news that I could with the thought that I would dominate my fantasy drafts.  All of the time invested helped me earn straight B’s from Yahoo!.  That is the same grade that I received for my drafts last year.  

There are a couple lingering issues from surgery.  

1. Something is up with my kidneys. My creatinine levels have been elevated for the last three weeks. Creatinine levels are used to measure kidney function. I had an ultrasound last week and they found a little extra fluid in/on my kidneys but not an alarming amount. Next week, I have a CAT scan that will (hopefully) give us some answers.

2. I’m still having some weird nerve issues. When I straighten my arms or legs I have momentary tingling in my hands or feet. It’s something that the doctor thinks will go away over time but I haven’t seen much improvement yet.

I’ll leave you with a couple of good developments. 

1. We’ve made it through the restricted diet. It was four weeks of a low fat diet that ended up being kind of fun. This is one of the miracles that helped Ashley gain her sainthood. She found a way to make delicious meals with almost no fat in them. It was no easy task.

2. Today I used beard oil for the first time since March. That means that the beard is long enough to warrant grooming. I’ve got kind of a weird two tone thing going on right now. Some of my beard is black and some of it has started to transition back to the reddish brown color that it was prior to chemo. I just noticed that change today.

Thank you all for the continued support/prayers/good vibes.  You guys are the best!