~ma for Daniel Jensen, please. He went to urgent care today with a sore toe. They sent him to the ER (the whole medical campus is connected, so technically he did not leave the building). By the time I caught up with him, the area around the toe had turned black. The other toes on that foot were red and swollen, the shin of that leg was bright red swollen and weeping. This is worse than the infection ten years ago that sent him to Abbot Northwestern for three weeks. Edited to add: They want to admit him, but there are no available beds. So they are keeping him in the ER. At the moment he does not have his phone.

Daniel has been transferred to Abbot Northwest, surgery scheduled for tomorrow morning. His pain is pretty moderate.

My mom is headed to the ER. Long story short, she's 3+ weeks into some bizarre episode that began with extreme emotional outbursts, proceeded to memory loss and inability to perform basic self-care, and now includes fatigue so severe she can hardly move. My brother and dad are with her. I'm glad she's finally going to the hospital but am still extremely worried and would be grateful for any ~ma you can spare. She just turned 74 yesterday.

So, we found out that my mom has Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, which is incurable and invariably fatal within a few months. It all feels very unreal.

Many, many thanks to everyone who helped out with my Best of DC campaign. I won! It's a huge help to my business. Cheers!

Daniel is coming home on Saturday!

Aaaaaand, they are keeping him till Monday.

Well, that was exciting. I am now back home only 17 days after going in to check my foot.

Anyway, I’m back home and I have a nurse coming to the house tomorrow to set my foot up for having a vacuum, a special vacuum that is set up to make my wound heal faster. Even though I lost part of my little toe on my right foot, I am not in much pain and probably will get a little bit more pain here and there. I am a planning to go back to work in a few days. If they let me and at this point I’m feeling OK just took long time to get to this point. Sorry for worrying everyone I will have more later

My mother died earlier today. I was with her, holding her hand, at the end.

Quick update: I finished radiation & chemo on 11/11. (They did a little ceremony & gave me a certificate of completion at the radiation center. It was very sweet & made me a weepy mess!) I'm recovering from the burns and accompanying difficulties in the radiation spot and adjacent areas. Still fighting the fatigue, unfortunately, but that's hopefully improving too. For right now, I'm in a holding pattern because the radiation & chemo "keep working" for a month-ish even after active treatment has stopped. I have a PET scan & an MRI on December 6 (and a dentist appt, but that was just an unfortunate coincidence). Then I see my chemo doc on 12/12 & my radiation doc on 12/14...to discuss where we are, and next steps I suppose. (Please send all prayers, vibes, etc. you can spare to the hope that the tumor will have shrunk enough to be removed. I want this fucker OUT!)