Can you hear the sigh of relief?

If you're still checking in, you're waiting for this: Evan had a bone marrow biopsy last week and a CT scan. Both were good. The bone marrow was clear and the scan showed marked shrinking of the lymph nodes. Exactly what should have happened. He will now be switching to Marshfield for the routine blood draws and follow up appointments and return to Minneapolis occasionally for more tests. That fancy 3-pronged catheter isn't going anywhere just yet, but Evan gets to move home. This is most welcome to us because we were originally told that he could very need to be in Minneapolis 100 days post-transplant. Its been just over 30 days. Yippee!

Evan will return to work full-time beginning today -- a week before his three months of insurance expires. Alyssa will go back to having her own apartment. I'll go back to working insane hours during the winter next-year enrollment period and Paul will keep rebuilding the bathroom, which, of course, is more involved than we ever imagined as he finds he needs to replace nearly everything holding the room together. Still no mushrooms in our menus, still no working in the woodshed for Evan, but pretty darned normal nonetheless.

Evan's doctors told us that it will be two years before they will consider him in full remission. Yesterday's news made a giant leap in that direction.