Good afternoon everybody.
I just want to give you all a quick update on Claire, my niece.
She is finishing up her second big round of chemo. It kicked her ass. She is exhausted and not feeling too well and she has lost her appetite. Right now, she is getting supportive care to get her stomach stabilized, nausea down and appetite up. The docs are waiting until she is feeling a bit better for the tests and scans and assessments to figure out what they need to do next.
Her parents have moved into an apartment that is about 2 miles from the hospital. They are extremely grateful to all you Jackals as what you have given them has been enough to take this problem off their worry list for a year. I think the plan is for both parents to be based in Philadelphia while grandma and their younger daughter stay in New Jersey so that she can go to school on an as much as normal situation and then visit her parents on weekends. That might be still up in the air.
We have been amazed at the community support (both here and elsewhere). Claire has enough books, and art supplies to fit out several school libraries at the moment. Her parents don’t have to worry about financial toxicity at this time. My sister-in-law is a high school teacher. Her colleagues have donated enough personal days so that she does not need to worry about her job right now. We are blown away.
Fuck cancer.