Jordan and I decided to participate in Story Corps’ National Day of Listening, which will take place on Friday, November 28th. Though the audio is not the best, you can hear summarys in our latest podcast.

She is intolerant of sniffles. When her nose runs, she is mad with contempt. – Why is my nose always running? – It’s just a cold, Jordan. We all get them. – I don’t understand why my nose gets so cranky. And there you have it: Jordan’s personification of the world. Her runny nose is not a symptom of a seasonal cold, it is an insubordinate appendage caught in an insurrection against her body.

MRI Day We’re relieved. Though the radiologist has not delivered the report yet, Jordan’s oncologist has completed a preliminary review of the scans and reports that she is continuing to make progress. From his read, it appears her condition is stable, which is much better than we feared. Jordan’s persistent headaches, back aches and nausea worried us. We were all expecting that the tumor might have won this battle. But it seems Jordan is still kicking its butt … or at least holding the battle line.

She heads to CHLA in about an hour for her quarterly MRI. I’ve never seen her this anxious before. She’s really worked herself up into a bundle of nerves. To top it off, she’s had a nasty headache since she awoke. When you add that to the mandatory fasting before anesthesia, you have an uncomfortable, nervous, somewhat dramatic patient on your hands. But she has reason to be nervous, so we sit with her, hold her hand, share encouraging stories, and try to keep her comfortable.

A few years ago, I decided to take a slightly objective point of view to this blog site. Although it is nearly impossible not to inject my feelings, I wanted to chronicle Jordan’s story so that she could appreciate it years later. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to distance myself, but more that I wanted the site to be about her, rather than me. This post is an exception to the rule.