*** BREAKING NEWS ***

Just received MRI results from Dr. O:

Nathan's tumor has shrunk!!  After only two months!!  It has gone from 18 x 14 cc to 14 x 13 cc!!  We were told that shrinkage was probably not in the cards, that the goal was to keep it from growing, and yet - IT SHRUNK!!

Who has two thumbs and and wishes she could hug the stuffing out of every single one of you?  Yeah, this girl.

No news is good news. Really.

So Elizabeth and Melissa have both let me know that while it may have been OK for me to be a slug about keeping in touch with people in my pre-blogger-celebrity days before Nathan was diagnosed, I now have  a fan base  an adoring public  a compelling reason to keep my friends informed about how our journey is progressing.

So here's how it's going.  I worked last year with a woman who was battling some pretty heavy-duty personal and professional issues.  And regardless of what new fresh hell visited her on a given day, her standard response to "How are you?" was "I am BLESSED and HIGHLY FAVORED, my SISTER!!" That is how we're doing.  We are ridiculously blessed and highly favored.

Nathan has completed 5 chemo treatments, and his side effects have been as minimal as you can imagine.  On Nathan's I-Feel-Like-Crap-o-Meter, getting braces beat chemo side effects by leaps and bounds.  He has not lost the first strand of hair, and according to the nurses, if it hasn't happened by now, it won't.  Nausea makes a half-hearted appearance infrequently, but it retreats in the face of meds within a few minutes.  Nathan's experienced a little loss of appetite, and he lost of couple of pounds one week, but we have discovered Carnation Instant Breakfast and whole milk, and that is a hit (regular dinner vs. chocolate milkshake?  hmm, let me think about this...).  The cocktail Nathan receives can cause some hearing loss, but he passed his first audiogram yesterday with flying colors ("superior hearing," thank you very much, so there will be no more of this "Sorry Mom, I didn't hear you tell me to ______.")  He is having the easiest imaginable ride through Chemoville, and we are shocked and awed (but in the good way).

As for Dan and me, our ride is a little more like a roller coaster.  On up days, we look at Nathan, and we shake our heads in amazement at our Teflon boy and his ability to always, always see the bright side of any situation.  On up days, we open envelopes stuffed with gift cards and Mass cards and thinking-of-you cards, and we marvel at the thoughtfulness and generosity of our friends.  On up days, we hear from characters from our past lives who bowl us over with love and support and brisket and origami cranes and the greatest hits of the 80s and prizes of all shapes and sizes, and we wonder what we ever did in those past lives to deserve such enduring friendship.

Then there are down days.  On down days, Grouchy, Bitchy, Impatient, Thoughtless, Selfish, Self-Pitying, and Congested stop by, and they are nowhere near as fun as the other Seven Dwarves.  On down days, we poison the pot of what-we-have with toxic amounts of what-we-don't-have.   On down days, we forget that we are blessed and highly favored and loved to pieces by all of you and by the One whose strength is made perfect in our weakness.

Those down days are fierce, but they will be no match for the latest elaborate black-op our Angels have cooked up.  Next weekend, Dan and I are headed to Cedar Key for the weekend - without the kids!  The covert team behind this surprise has arranged for us to stay in a friend's home and eat at the best spots on the island, while Matt and Nathan hang with a Big Cousin, and Clare heads to Camp Nana & Papa.  I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it - honey, I am all three Pointer Sisters rolled into one.

So, that's how we're doing.  How are you?