Dear Friends:

Just quick, for those of you with whom we haven't been able to communicate directly in the last month, know that Jeanie came through the surgery well. Thanks be for brilliant surgeons, medical mysteries, and communities of intercession.

The news on the tumor (and it was a malignancy, not dead tissue) is that they were able to get ninety-five percent of the mass because, strange upon strange, this most aggressive tumor normally diffuse in its boundaries was surrounded or encased in a firmer, lower-grade tumor that made the borderland quite distinct. Much less of a judgement call on how much to take and how much to leave. Nobody has been able adequately to explain the pathology, but the strange circumstance was a welcome grace.

Her short-term memory has taken a bit of a hit -- or at least is slow in being recovered. She did have a seizure in ICU (completely unnecessary by my lights) so has been bouncing back from that, plus being weaned out from under the additional meds they piled on in consequence. So she's not been tracking as well as prior and suffers errors in judgement -- some involving minor cooking disasters, some, which send me into a panic, like getting separated for an hour in a monstrous big hospital (at noon no less on Good Friday when we were headed for the stations of the cross walk), and some, more serious, risking the port they put in so we can up the dosage and delivery of the Hungarian vaccine. On the latter, we're pulling together the medical accouterments to mix and shoot the more concentrated form of the virus.

Since the surgery, Jeanie has spent a lovely week with her sister Rene, while Lucy and I went west for an Easter week of speaking and sun. Good days all. Tomorrow is tax day -- so many reasons to refuse to ante up. I thought we were going to need to actively resist this year, but we came in under again. Meanwhile, the daffodils burst last week and are standing in a line of glory. Now the tulips are considering. Thanks, dear friends, for breathing intercessions. Jeanie and all send

love, Bill