Hi Josh,

I am about 70-80% recovered from the side effects of the stem cell transplant (essentially a specialized bone marrow transplant), which was done on July 11th. I resumed a lot of my usual activities (e.g. field dog training and clearing fallen trees on our property using a chainsaw) by late October. The last few months have been pretty good. There will be some follow-up chemo, starting later this month and lasting until March or April. I have been having radiation treatments this past week and those will continue at least through next week. My radiation therapy is painless, because it is directed at a myeloma site on the left mid-humerus and away from any vital organs; its only side effects are low red counts and mild fatigue. I am hoping that we will be able to get away to our oceanfront house in Boothbay Harbor, ME sometime this summer; we were of course not able to do that this past year. If we are able to do that, I am thinking perhaps we can find out if any classmates live anywhere near the route up there - for example, along the Mass Pike or the greater NYC area. My older brother has offered me tickets to this June's U.S. Open golf tournament, which will be on Long Island this year (I think Bethpage).

Your upcoming trip to Orlando in March sounds like a great idea - especially considering the kind of winter people have been having in the upper Midwest! We have not had any enduring snow at all this winter in our part of NC; there were flurries a couple of evenings ago, but no accumulation. The lowest highs we have had have been in the low 40s - one of the reasons we moved down here. Helen and I flew to Orlando for a spring break in about 1990, only to find that the Winter Haven motel that we had reservations for was the same one the Detroit Tigers were using during spring training! Naturally we went to one of their exhibition games (against the Cincinnati Reds) the next day. It was like going to a high school game - grass parking lots, small stadium etc. - a real blast, a lot more fun than seeing a regular season game up North. There are a bunch of other training camps in the neighborhood of Orlando, for example the Cleveland Indians'. Maybe I shouldn't be telling you this, because that may not be the direction Betty prefers to go..

While I have not been traveling much lately (being cooped up at Duke for a good part of the summer), I had some interesting mental journeys. I read up on a medical school text on cellular and molecular immunology to understand more about how immune system cancers (like myeloma and leukemia) occur. I had intended for a long time to cover some areas in physics that I had never had time to learn, and this summer and fall I made some inroads into that, reading graduate level books about gravitation and elementary particles. Next on the agenda will be string theory, though of course it remains to be seen whether I can absorb that. For lighter reading, I have been doing some history - from the first Crusade through the Thirty Years War through WWII up to the economic collapse of the Soviet empire in the late 1990s. So there's really been no lack of enjoyment over the past year. And our friends, relatives, and staff have been unbelievably supportive.

I am attaching a picture of myself taken early last September (two months after the transplant) with my older golden retriever Ivy, who was overjoyed at the reunion after a couple of months' separation. It is probably not worth posting, because it likely doesn't have general interest for the class. (And also because you've already got too much to do these days!) The only purpose in taking it was to reassure people that I had gotten through it OK. Other people have gone through worse and never looked back - for example, John Lester, the Boston Red Sox pitcher who went through a similar regimen for non-Hodgkins lymphoma a couple of years ago. He turned out to be the team's most effective pitcher this year.  

I wish you and Betty the very best for the coming New Year, and I hope things get a bit less hectic for you than they have been.

Walt