The past two weeks have been stable on the medical front and that has been a very welcome sign. There haven’t been any unexpected surprises in terms of Michelle’s counts. It’s been over 6 weeks since Michelle relapsed, and the odds were that these cancerous cells would multiply rapidly. I’ll give you an example of how quickly moving or “acute” Michelle’s AML is. Prior to Michelle’s 1st relapse last April, Michelle had a quarterly checkup and blood draw on a Thursday, and everything checked out okay. By Sunday, Michelle started to get pounding headaches that indicated she had relapsed. So we are definitely concerned with Michelle’s AML proliferating rapidly.

However, blast cells have not spilled over into her bloodstream which means there is something working in Michelle’s favor that is presumably fighting back her cancer. As mentioned in previous posts, Michelle is now completely off of her immuno-suppressants which, in theory, should enable her donor cells / immune system to attack leukemia cells in her body. We will know for sure what’s going after Michelle’s bone marrow biopsy on Monday, April 27th.

In addition to this, we’ve started seeing an Asian herbalist with the hope of boosting Michelle’s immune system. Every night, we heat up a concoction of herbs in water for 2 hours in a special claypot, and Michelle has to stomach the drink that pours out. Actually, Michelle has the bad habit of determining ahead of time whether she will like any food or drink, so I thought she was being a drama queen when she made faces and sounds as she drank her medicine. I tried a sip of her drink and can attest that it’s pretty bad.

Historically, we’ve resisted going down the path of Eastern medicine. Not because we don’t think there is value to herbs that have been recommended to us. It’s been more because we have had no way of determining who to trust and what to take. More importantly, we didn’t want to interfere with any medications, especially chemotherapy, that Michelle was on. In fact, we were given specific instructions to not take any herbal medicine in Seattle. Since Michelle is not currently on chemotherapy, we felt that it was worth a shot. We’re not sure if it’s a coincidence, but Michelle started feeling a lot better pretty much as soon as she started taking her herbal medicine. Her energy has been a lot better and her nausea has subsided quite a bit. She still has some recurring headaches and some generally bad days, but these are less frequent.

We’ll probably never really know whether it’s the Chinese herbs truly working or it’s just the placebo effect. At this point though, I’m not going to question the source of these positive outcomes. Instead, we are focusing on taking advantage of the days Michelle does have energy to go out and have some fun. On top of eating out a lot and getting a very welcome visit from a good friend, here are some of the things we’ve done the past couple of weeks…

Confused at the Mystery Spot:

Stuffing our faces with funnel cake in Santa Cruz:

Going to the shooting range:

Feeling like kids at the Jelly Belly factory:

Celebrating Michelle’s Dad’s Birthday with the family:

Celebrating Mabel’s heritage at the Cherry Blossom Festival:

Truly embracing Mabel’s heritage by taking ridiculous Japanese photo booth sticky pictures:

And of course, obsessing over our lil Marshawn:

Yes, he really fell asleep like this.