Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.


I’m afraid the news can’t always be good on the health front. I got my latest lab work yesterday and it wasn’t encouraging. My immune system, after stabilizing last month, weakened again. My neutrophil count is down to 1500, which isn’t quite in the danger zone but is mighty close. At the same time, my M-protein marker, which measures the level of cancerous cells in my bone marrow, went up from 0.55 to 0.61. It looks like 0.55 might be as good as it gets, and that’s nowhere close to zero. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that I can try a higher dose of my current chemo med with my immune system already so compromised.

Any single month can be an outlier, so there’s no need to panic yet. I’ll have another set of lab work in December, and I’ll see my oncologist shortly after that. If the numbers haven’t improved, I’ll try a little harder than usual to drag some actual information out of her.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate