I just realized I missed commemorating my ten year anniversary on BF. Back in May. I guess the next milestone will be implicit permission to post in the 50+ forum in about three and a half years

So pursuant to my post in October, here's what is going on in Darth Lefty land. In September, we did a big vacation to Italy including a cruise around Greece and Turkey. During the vacation my younger boy (6) started complaining about fatigue and even in little situations like going up the stairs. We had a really bad day at the Acropolis where he screamed and cried nonstop, and because he was dragging we missed a train to Florence when we finished the cruise. At first we thought he was not enjoying the trip and was acting out through his autism. But he got more and more tired and started not eating much, barfing up, sleeping all day. We started talking about neuralgia, fibromyalgia, something weird. We couldn't figure it out until the last day when we found a lymph node in his neck was horribly swollen. We got him back home to the States where he was diagnosed with B-ALL leukemia.

He spent about ten days in the hospital getting transfusions and chemo. Since that he has been on weekly chemo treatments. In the first phase of treatment called induction he was on a steroid for a month that made him hangry and he gained about ten pounds - probably really a few more considering the loss of fitness. He is out of school and has to go to the doctor once or twice a week. I'm better able to WFH than my wife so this means I have spent a lot of time at home.

On top of this my wife had a really large skin reduction surgery in mid October stemming from a weight loss a couple of years ago, that was already paid for before; and we have two large remodeling projects that had deposits before all this came about, so October-November has been pretty tough.

Going forward I foresee mostly WFH for the rest of the school year at least

Edit: B-ALL leukemia is very treatable with high success rates. So far kiddo has tolerated treatment very well. He's in the middle group for genetics and they've not seen any in his marrow or spinal biopsies. But the doctors have to keep killing the cancer long after it seems like it's long gone or it will come raging back. The entire course of treatment is two years or so and there are times during it when he will be pretty sick from the chemo and it will be dangerous for him to get infections. It's still scary.