Family Matters

We had a wonderful weekend. My parents and both sisters came out from the Boston area. Older son Jake gave up one of his last weekends at college to be in Champaign, and younger son Paul gave up being a testing-the-limits teenager and instead went with helpful and pleasant young man. Cousins Aimee and Jess came down from Chicago. Brother Karl couldn't make it, but his wife did her part by continuing to challenge (beat) me regularly in online Scrabble (most of the time).

The occasion was the Illinois Marathon, of which Jan is one of two co-directors. I am on the race committee as the webmaster, plus other duties as assigned. The race is in its fourth year, and it is a very big deal in our little Midwestern community.

The weekend was a chance for my family to share in the excitement and to help out as needed. And we put them to work: parking, hospitality suite, race number pickup, portapotty line wrangling, sag wagon driver... When they weren't volunteering for the race, my parents and sisters worked through a list of yard work: pruning, weeding, mulching... The yard looks great! We also got a black bean soup and a blueberry pie out of the sisters.

It was so nice to have my family here all together, for fun, rather than one by one to look after me as they have so often since the start of 2011.

Most enjoyable of all was to watch Jan in full event director mode. She and her co-director have built a great team that puts on one of the best marathon weekends in the country. The whole team works hard, but Jan and Mike outwork everybody else. An event of this size is not just a weekend or weeklong commitment, either. The planning and the work go on all year, building to a crazy peak over the final month.

And, for the last two years, Jan has managed to do this with one hand tied behind her back: a sick husband stuck in Chicago for months at a time and unable during those times to help much with the race, or household chores, or parenting.

It's a little scary to think of what Jan will do when she is able to put even more of her energy into the race next year. Can't wait to see it.

Notes from Monday's appointment:

• My weight continues its steady increase, up 2 pounds in the last week, for a total of 19 since the low point a month ago.
• Platelets are on the way up (32 the previous Monday, 30 on Thursday, 38 this past Monday).
• I am still in the study I thought I was dropped from, since the protocol includes "stop taking the sirolimus if it looks like it's doing bad things to you." When my platelets reach a safer level, we might resume the sirolimus at a very low dose. Or maybe not.
• I tested positive for platelet antibodies, which alone could explain the drop in platelets. However, given the way my platelet count has correlated with my sirolimus dosage, my doctor thinks it is more likely a combination of the antibodies and the drug that is responsible.