Well, it’s that time, time to travel to Chicago and have Suzanne’s quarterly checkup. As you remember, a part of her clinical trial is to have scans and meet with her oncologist every three months for two years. This time, our appointments were a little later than usual, 9:00 am. It used to be that getting to Rush that early in the morning meant that the majority of Chicago rush hour would be over. During the last six to eight months, it seems like it’s always rush hour. The trip that commonly took two hours is now almost three. I hate to say this, but I miss COVID-era traffic

A matter of routine, blood work and scans went off without a hitch. For the first time ever, they removed her port access after her blood draw as there was no other use for it today, or so we thought.

New on her agenda was dermatology as she is looking for a solution to the splotches on her body that occurred during the clinical trial. We met Dr. A, no not surgeon Dr. A, but a new Dr. A. He confirmed that her condition is probably due to immunotherapy, so that helps solidify the idea that she got the clinical trial drug and not the placebo as we still have not been officially informed of that. As it turns out, there are two types of this reaction, the easy fix, and the not-so-easy fix. To know which Suzanne has, a biopsy and more blood work were needed.

The biopsy was, well, think of a leather punch that you use for the holes on your belt. The Dr pushed that in her arm and as he pulled it out, snipped off the punch, twice! Then, not expecting this today or we would have left the port access in place, another blood draw. The regular lab at Rush doesn’t access ports, and the oncology floor doesn’t send labs to the right processing agency. We pushed, pulled, and begged to finally get the oncology floor to draw the lab from her port, then have someone run it down to the blood lab and toss it in the right bucket to get it to go to the right place. Working within such a large institution is like working with the Government, such an easy task becomes piles of paperwork and red tape.

Dr. J walked in and quickly said “The scans are clean”. For those of you who have been in this position, you know those words mean so much, it’s hard to explain. For one thing, life can continue at a regular pace for at least three more months. Her blood work continues to be in good shape and the rest of the time he spent asking about all the places we have been. Commenting, “you’re living a good life” to which we both agreed.

The best thing I saw today was on the way home. I’m on I-94, dodging traffic, eating my Chick-fil-A, and glanced over just in time to see my wife steal a french fry out of my lunch bag. In days of old, I would have given her a hard time. But today, it brought sheer joy to my heart watching her eat a fry and say the words “mmmmm. . . . . salty grease”

In the top basket were all kinds of baked goods for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating them out of the basket . . . .

Genesis 40:17