April 21, 2015

Tales From City of Hope #2: Chemo Has Started

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It is 10:43 am PDT on April 21, 2015. It is Day -2 (Day 0 is Thursday, when the actual stem cell transfusion takes place) and my final round of chemotherapy has officially started. Oddly enough, it only lasts about half an hour. The rest of my 8-hour stay in the hospital today is taken up with prep and about 4-6 hours of IV fluids.

Right now I am manically chewing on ice chips. Apparently they have discovered that this constricts the blood flow to the mouth and therefore reduces the amount of Melphalan that makes it into your mouth and gums. This is pretty effective at minimizing mouth sores, so I’m sucking on ice chips for all I’m worth. The photographic evidence, along with all the usual machines that go ping, is on the right.

UPDATE: Keeping up the ice chip routine gets old pretty quick. But worth it if it keeps the mouth sores at bay.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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