March 26, 2019

Health Update

This month brings us yet another health update. Short summary: everything is fine. My immune system has recovered and all my other counts are in the normal range. I’ve been off the dex for two months and off the sleeping meds for the past week (after tapering off for a month). I still have some residual fatigue from my monthly infusion of the primary chemo drug, but it’s not too bad.

As for the multiple myeloma itself, the latest test shows that my cancer load is slightly up from last month:

This is nothing to worry about. We expected the number to go up a bit after I stopped the dex, and 0.36 is still lower than the readings I had for two years on the old medication. As long as the M-protein number flattens out below 0.5, I’m doing great.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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