She is doing remarkably well under the new therapeutic regimen: in November she was down to eighty-nine pounds (forty fewer from the weight she had steadily maintained for decades), and reported feeling that she was “circling the drain.” At year’s end she switched from the former drug, steadily less efficacious over 2023 while carrying with it progressively direr side effects, to a new approach, which targets a dodgy gene and blocks its production of a protein on which the cancer relies.

She is feeling sufficiently nribust that we are shortly to put out to sea with a mind to catch next week’s total eclipse off the Mexican coast.

cordially,