When I landed at Miami International Airport on Thursday morning en route to Cancun, I made a call to the nephrology office in Charlotte to return the voicemail they had left on Wednesday. They had my latest CMV results. Despite my intensive course of Valcyte, my CMV level of increased. If the next lab result didn’t show any change or got worse, we’d have to consider “other options”. Well, #*&$, I thought. And then I put it out of my mind and went on with the getting busy living stuff.

I called back today to ask what my level is at now. And just like that, I’m now negative for CMV.

So this is good.

Now if I can only come off the damn prednisone. Everyone’s got these great wedding photos, and I’m looking like the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man (which is partially my own fault for wearing my size-too-big guayabera shirt from a 2004 wedding), but my face is looking moon-like, if not full-moon-face yet.