Good morning John.

I just find myself in this situation of having so much good news I don't really know what to do about it. I don't even really know where to begin. Usually the beginning. So I guess this week, you made a video about how there's a drug for multidrug-resistant called bedaquiline, it's been around for 20 years, its patent is expiring. And it looked like Johnson & Johnson, the owner of that drug, was gonna figure out a way to extend that patent for another four years, during which time a lot of people wouldn't have access to it. And you were mad about that. And you're not the only person mad about that, but you were the only person with a fairly large internet audience who'd spent the last year establishing themselves as a person who's very passionate about tuberculosis who knew about it. And I have to be honest with you John, there were times in the last year when I'm like, “Maybe this guy is a little bit over investing in his dedication to tuberculosis.” A sensation I no longer have because, of course, as you get deeper and deeper and deeper into something, you start to see that there are people working really hard on solutions and that those solutions really do exist and that there are things that we can do now that will make the world better.

So you made this video. And then nerdfighters went nuts on Reddit and on Twitter and on other social media platforms that I don't use as often probably. There were letters, there were phone calls. I hope that everyone was polite. And then Johnson & Johnson put out this statement. Classic first line. "It is false to suggest—as some recently have—that our patents are being used to prevent access to SIRTURO (bedaquiline), our medicine for multidrug-resistant TB." It is false to suggest, as some recently have, that I misplaced my normal lens for vlogbrothers and that's why this video looks a little weird because I'm shooting on a 50 millimeter. You're very far away right now!

And look, here's one thing I know. There are people at Johnson & Johnson who have worked way harder on multidrug-resistant TB than I ever have in my life. And so I don't wanna be mad at the entire institution of Johnson & Johnson. People who work on infectious disease research do that when they could be working on stuff that probably would make them a lot more money. Like cures for baldness or cancer research, which is very profitable. And so, like, writing off an entire company is the wrong thing to do, but this statement was bad and it was misleading and I didn't like it. And then this morning—as I'm recording this, so yesterday morning—and this happened in a week, John! You made a video on Tuesday, it's Friday right now! Stop TB Partnership released a statement that said, "Following lengthy negotiations, Johnson & Johnson has granted Stop TB Partnership's Global Drug Facility a license that enabled GDF to tender, procure, and supply generic versions of bedaquiline for the majority of low and middle-income countries, including countries where patents remain in effect."

So they aren't canceling the patent, but they're allowing generics to be used in places with a high burden of TB. Everybody agrees that there should be less tuberculosis in the world. Now we don't all agree on how exactly they get there or what the right things to do are. But John, you got into the rooms where the people are right now talking about how to deal with drug-resistant tuberculosis. And you found out that there was a barrier that didn't need to be there, and we then as a community asked whether or not that barrier could be eliminated. And in the course of a few days, it was. That's very weird and it's not something that can happen every day, it's not something that I don't think we'll ever achieve anything of that magnitude again. It was a particular circumstance that was only possible to take on because you have been focusing on one of the world's greatest problems that a lot of people don't focus on or think about very much for a year, more than a year now. You've been a little hyper-obsessed, but in the right thing!

I'm really proud to be a part of this community and I'm really proud to be your brother and I'm really proud of all the amazing memes that I saw over the last few days, both the ones that were critical and the ones that were celebrating the actions that Johnson & Johnson has taken to make sure that we can live in a world with less TB as fast as possible, maybe someday a world with no tuberculosis.

So that's the first piece of good news, and that's enough for like one of the best vlogbrothers videos of all time, uh, but I have more good news. So completely shifting gears, I feel like this should be a whole other video, but completely shifting gears since I only do one a week, I don't wanna like not say. The situation with my lymphoma is that we started out-it looked pretty good, it's Hodgkin's lymphoma, it's a treatable disease, um, and in the majority of cases. It responded well to treatment, mine did, and so I have had my last chemo of my treatment plan, so I only had to do four sessions of chemotherapy. The result, I'm actually going to show you pictures of scans now. If you don't want to see those, you can close-you can just listen to my voice.

So here's me before. So obviously, the dark is areas of high glucose uptake in a PET scan. Cancer cells use a lot of glucose and they use it bizarrely, so they use it way more than normal tissue and so that looks very dark. Those are my lymph nodes, super swollen with cancer cells, and then here is now, which looks like nothing. Now it's not nothing. If you look at some of the more high resolution PET scans that the doctors look at, there's a little bit of glucose uptake in in two of my lymph nodes, still not all of them. Most of them have shrunk back to normal size, two of them are still swollen. This is very common, it's normal, and this is exactly what they want to see at this point in treatment.

Now, we do radiation because the idea is there's probably some cancer cells still in there, which my immune system might take care of on its own, but it might not and so you do radiation. So in a couple of weeks I'm going to start radiation. I have a meeting with my doctor next week to sort of plan that out. After that, like unless something goes very weird, I will be in remission. And then, we will monitor me for a long time, years, to make sure that it isn't coming back. And if it happens, then they've got things that they can do to take it on. Now, those things suck. They're like worse than what I've been through so far, but there are still things I can do even if the worst case scenario, I relapse and have lymphoma again.

But for now, clearly my particular cancer is responsive to the chemotherapy. I have killed and pissed out so many cancer cells, and I will not tell you the chemo is fun. It's so not fun. It is the least fun thing I've ever done in my life. I hate it, but it is also amazing. It is so powerful, and I feel so lucky to live in a world where I get to have access to this, where the hospital is not far away from my house, where there have been decades of people working to refine these treatment plans so you can get the best result with the cancer with the least potential long-term side effects, which is also something that I will continue to have to monitor for because there are chemo drugs I was on can give you other diseases that aren't cancer. It's always a trade-off. Every medication is a trade-off for the side effects, but with chemotherapy, there's a particular understanding of the need to maintain a balance between the long-term side effects of the treatment and the long-term side effects of the disease.

In short, it's very good news and barring something very weird, I will officially be in remission in maybe two months. So that's where we're at with everything. It's the best news video of all 15+ years of vlogbrothers. What a moment. Um, I'm feeling good and also I'm just so grateful that I don't have to get chemo today. Today would be the day when I would be getting chemo if I was still on chemo. And I would absolutely do it! But I don't have to, which is exciting because I didn't like it.

John, I'll see you on Tuesday.