Sharon and I hope you are well in this New Year of 2023. In Sacramento, we have survived a series of severe weather-related storms knocking down scores of trees and causing widespread power outages. For the first 10-days of January we were without power for five of them. We have resided in our Land Park home for 40-years and never experienced anything like this.

I want to share my medical update with you. I continue on my clinical trial of one, now in my third cycle of the medication, Pirtobrutinib. Just after Christmas I had my follow up at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center. This included blood testing and CT scans. The blood tests were good showing the treatment was suppressing my white blood cell production within my bone marrow.

The scans were encouraging. The enlarged lymph nodes in my neck are no longer seen. Honestly, we are not sure if it is a result of the medication or the radiation treatment I received to my neck this past October. At any rate, a good sign. The cancer lymphoma in my liver and kidney are smaller by millimeters in size. As an example, if one of these was 3cm in size this past October, they are now listed as 2.7cm. This does not sound like much, however, in 2-months’ time the trend is positive.

My next set of scans will be in March and from that we will have two points-in-time of response to therapy. Given those results, we hope to extrapolate when, and if, these lesions will resolve. The option for a bone marrow transplant is still on the table, pending progress with this current treatment.

We who have chronic illnesses grab onto any thread of hope. At times the threads weave into a lifesaving rope. That is our goal.

Larry and Sharon