Finally, time to do a blog post!

Another busy couple of weeks.  Three trips to Columbia for hospital appointments and another next week.

First off some not so good news.  My husband has an auto immune disease that attacks his nerves and in turn his muscles.  He carries a rare weird antibody that does this to him. Until his current neurologist decided to take on this problem previous doctors were just telling him he had it and to get over it!  He has been seeing this one for three or four years now and he has done an awful lot to help my husband and to manage this disease.  He has been on an immuno suppressant chemo drug for the past two+ years and that has been a great help.  The doctor monitors when the antibodies start repopulating and then he gives him the chemo.  My husband has been so much better with this treatment.  We can tell when they are back though as he gets weak, tired, his eyes go out of wack and get gets lots of dizziness and tiredness.  He is currently going into that cycle.

A couple of visits ago, the doctor told us that there have been some cases of people who have been on this drug developing PML which literally turns your brain to mush and you almost always die or are left very disabled and sick.  Apparently, there is a virus that 50% or more of the people have been exposed to at some point in their lives but the body's immune system keeps it at bay.  It is the JC virus and if it progresses fully you develop this PML.  People on immuno suppresant drugs are more at risk for the JC virus becoming active in them.

To monitor it, they test for antibodies to the JC virus and he had that test three weeks ago and has tested positive.  The three high risk factors are:- a positive antibody test, use of this chemo drug for 2 or more years and also use of another immuno suppressant drug.

He can tick all three!

His doctor did have an MRI done on my husband's brain about 4 weeks ago and that was all good, no signs of it, so that was a relief.

The question now is whether or not he should continue with the treatment and increase the risk further.  We go to see the neurologist next week again and will discuss it in full detail then.  At our last visit he hadn't had the MRI done or gotten the results of the JCV antibody test.  The MRI result is a good thing but the positive JCV antibody test is bad so not sure what the doctor's thinking will be.

This JC virus disease apparently progresses very quickly once it takes hold.  We have to consider which is worse, the disease progressing or the risk of developing PML.  Before he started on this course of treatment he was pretty weak and had had two neurologic crisises.  It's not an easy call to make.

Meanwhile, he is still working on the dust collection system in the shop.  He is pretty obsessed with getting it done.  The problem is he is not strong enough to be doing it now.  This means I have to be with him to help and also be there in case he hurts himself  in the process as his balance is not good and neither is his dexterity.  So a lot of my time is now being spent in the shop helping him. An unexpected problem is the electrical wiring isn't sufficient to run the dust collector and say the table saw at the same time so the past fews days we have spent running new wiring which is not a simple task for two oldies like us.

The ever growing dust collection system, it evolves on a daily basis

My husband working on the new wiring

Then there is the mowing which I am doing also, and the grass is growing non stop right now.  We mow about 5 acres, which is in 5 sections.  I do one section at a time so by the time I have them all done I have to start all over again.

This is about a third of one of the five sections

No complaints about any of what I am doing I enjoy helping him and mowing so my crafting hobbies have to get slipped in when they can.

The iris are in full bloom here and they are beautiful this year so plenty to pick for indoors and still leave a lot outdoors too.  The peonies are in bud and there will be plenty of them this year too.

These are an unusual colour and have spread a lot over the winter, they are my favourite

This one is unusual too, it is a very pale yellow and very pale purple

My rose bush has started budding already.  I can't spray the weeds though this year as maggie eats them so don't want her to be poisoned.  I am working on some non toxic homemade spray but it isn't working very well.

We saw two snakes so far this week so they are out and about now.  Not sure how Maggie will react when she sees one and don't really want to find out.  She loves chasing the bunnies though but doesn't catch them thank goodness.  Turtles are also out so it will be interesting to see how she reacts to them too.

So that's been our past few weeks.  I have been too busy to update my blog until now where I am stealing some shop time to do this whilst making potato salad.

Seems I can still multi task so all is not lost.......yet!