Halloween 2025

Happy Halloween, Phin phans!

It's Dustin, just back from trick-or-treating with Phin and some of his friends, and ready to dump a sweet little update for October into your attention sack. 

That...didn't come out right. 

Anyway, here we go!

Medical Updates

There isn't much to report, and that's awesome! 

Several times this month, minor upper respiratory infections and other sicknesses crept up on Phin, but thanks to his donor's bone marrow, his immune system rolled right over them and he barely noticed. He's still getting sick a lot because he's had the pathogen exposure of a wee baby (in fact, even today he's been coughing and complaining that his throat feels scratchy since he woke up this morning), but so far his system has been able to fight off all the germs it's seen.

As of his last clinic visit on Oct. 10, his counts looked great, his donor's bone marrow was still cranking out blood cells, and he remained in remission with no evidence of disease. He is scheduled to return to CHOA for another clinic visit on Nov. 4. 

We're still waiting on clearance to redo his measles, mumps, and rubella vaccinations since all of those were wiped out when his old bone marrow got nuked. He took this year's flu shot like a champ, though.

Graft-versus-Host Disease (GVHD) symptoms persist in terms of joint-stiffness, but they don't seem to be advancing. He might be keeping the stiffness at bay by staying active. Two thing have recently helped with this--losing most of his iPad privileges and cooler temperatures that allow him to play outdoors for longer. Another factor: He learned how to throw and catch a football this month, spurred by a desire to play catch with his classmates at recess. When he's not practicing his taekwondo techniques and forms inside, he's out in the yard tossing the football with Neesha, his sisters, and me. 

Phin On the Daily

A reader of this blog suggested recently that I try to express a little more of the joy I feel at how well Phin is doing right now. I'm trying to do that, just like I'm trying to open myself to feeling it while I'm wide awake. 

What I mean is, every morning--every single morning--when I wake up and discover that I'm at home, and that Neesha is at home, and that Phin is still alive and at home with us, I feel the purest, most transcendent, most luminous joy. I float for a few ecstatic moments, detached, like a falling leaf slowly spinning toward the forest floor as golden sunlight spills through its tissues from above. Soon, my waking mind engages, and the leaf flutters and settles into the shadows of frustration, fear, sadness, grief, and guilt that darken my experience of consciousness, but for those first fleeting seconds, I am brilliant, weightless, ablaze with the euphoric knowledge that my son, for the moment, is safe. 

But wait, I'm supposed to be talking about Phin and what he's been up to this month. I've digressed. 

Phin and his buddy passed their promotion test at taekwondo and belted up. He was very excited and proud of himself, and he ought to be. He's worked harder at taekwondo than at anything else I've ever seen him try, drilling his techniques and the movements of his form tirelessly on the days between classes. 

I'm very proud of him, too. 

He traveled to CHOA for his clinic checkup, and then he went to Florida for his cousin's birthday party, where he got to play laser tag and do a ropes course. He went to North Carolina to celebrate Diwali. A lot of traveling for one month! All of it's pretty normal, kids-doing-life kinds of stuff, but it's noteworthy. A year ago, during his long post-BMT convalescence, he had to miss out on everything except the CHOA visits. 

It was at his cousin's birthday party that the person told me to show a little more of the positive stuff and how it feels, and she had a point. It's appropriate to share how lovely it feels to watch Phin have a good month. I can only guess that it’s refreshing for others to see him thriving. After all, childhood cancer makes for grim reading, and the wins, when they happen, are always conditional. 

Always conditional, and never clean. 

It's also good to leave a record of the positive stuff. Dark days may be coming. When they arrive, may the memories of the brighter moments carry us. Let us preserve those happy memories so that, when we need them, they in turn might preserve us.