This month brings us yet another health update. Short summary: everything is fine. My immune system has recovered and all my other counts are in the normal range. I’ve been off the dex for two months and off the sleeping meds for the past week (after tapering off for a month). I still have some residual fatigue from my monthly infusion of the primary chemo drug, but it’s not too bad.

As for the multiple myeloma itself, the latest test shows that my cancer load is slightly up from last month:

This is nothing to worry about. We expected the number to go up a bit after I stopped the dex, and 0.36 is still lower than the readings I had for two years on the old medication. As long as the M-protein number flattens out below 0.5, I’m doing great.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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