Tampa...by way of Nashville

We started this trip to Tampa a little early and a little special... Ruthie came up on Wednesday and we took off for Nashville, since Kik would be there as a speaker for the ADL. We got in that afternoon and had a great visit and dinner with her! Thursday morning we got to go hear her speak in person, before we all headed to the airport, where Kik went home to Houston and Ruthie and I went down to Tampa for fun, merriment, and relaxation!!!! It was great to get to spend time with both of them!!!

Chillin' in the garden!!
The speaker with the mostest!!!
Ardent audience members!

The Tampa adventure went ok. Dr. Weber informed me that I am the second person in my cohort to get mucositis (irritation to the mucus membranes). We did learn that all but two patients, who had rapidly advancing disease early on, in my group are still in the study, now 9 months out. (Poor people!) Even the group with my treatment and non-resected disease seem to be doing fairly well. We did not learn any more about the 3 mg/kg group who, 2 weeks ago, had only recently begun with about 8 patients enrolled at that time. We were told last time that one patient had to be withdrawn because of extreme vision loss due to inflammation of the optic nerve that had been improving with the withdrawal of the medication and steroids. Anyhow, no new news about me. IV went well. Injections were a bit sketchy and painful with large amounts of my elmer's glue peptides leaking back out of the injections sites! Makes you wonder why you must go through the pain of the injections if you don't get the full dose!!! Anyhow, got that done, made our way back to the Tampa airport, the Atlanta airport, the Nashville airport...and then we drove home! Rosie and Brent were already there to greet us since Brent had gone down to Atlanta and picked up the Roo and all her stuff for her week off between semesters!

Saturday was Rosie's birthday!!! My baby girl has been with me for 19 beautiful years! I can hardly believe it!!! Her Aunt Ruthie was super cool and gave her an amazing hair dude before she left us on Saturday. Pics to be posted later!!!!

Happy Mother's Day! c