Yesterday was Suzanne’s scheduled follow-up for the PATHway clinical trial that she has been involved with. Not sure if we would be traveling to Rush this often if she hadn’t been in the trial, but either way, it’s good to know just how everything is.

On a cloudy, rainy, and dreary day, the tops of the Chicago skyscrapers wern’t visible. We arrived at Rush around 8:00 am and were out by 11:30 am. Except for the waiting, today’s appointments were somewhat routine; Bloodwork (20 Minutes), CT (30 Minutes), and Dr. J. (20 Minutes) So if you do the math, of the hour plus that Suzanne interacted with staff, the other two and a half hours or so was just sitting, but we’re used to that.

The only concerning issue for us was that the CT’s did show a new small spot, or maybe it’s just a speck, in her lungs. Dr J pointed out that we have seen these lung nodules in Suzanne from the start. This small clump of cells (granuloma) can form and over time calcify and then be seen in the CT. In her case, there is a new one, and will be watched over time to see if it gets any larger. When we asked if we needed to worry, Dr J’s response was “I’ll let you know when you need to worry”.

So to celebrate another day together, we stopped on the way home at Sunrise Greenhouse in Grant Park. Suzanne has a lot, and I mean a really lot of pots to put annuals in around the yard. Big ones, little ones, hanging ones, in front of the house, around the pond . . . . . OK, I’ll stop. Anyway, Sunrise is a great place to find all those plants you need and they didn’t disappoint this time. We also stopped for supper at one of our favorites in Kankakee, the Hoppy Pig.

It seems like there are always new wrinkles added into our mental process constantly especially for Suzanne. As she continues to expand her eating, a monkey wrench seems to gets tossed in the mix just to roam around in our heads and cause trouble. Our task is to leave it up to the medical professionals to make sure everything possible has been considered. Then, we have to give all those thoughts back to the Great Physician to heal and protect us. Based on the fact that Dr. J was fine waiting till September for her next set of scheduled scans, he’s not worried at this point. So we shouldn’t be either.

And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.

Mark 2:17