Geneology and discovering details about my ancestors has always been a big part of my life. As a young teen, most kids would have been out riding bikes or playing ball on a Saturday. My fondest memories were spending many Saturday mornings at my mom’s cousin’s house, sitting around a table of eight to ten women, all of who had to be 5 times my age, taking notes on everything they said. Dates and places of family events; towns, and…
It’s hard to believe that we have been at this for nine months now. When this clinical trial started, we wondered if it was the right choice, knowing it will be a big commitment and forcing our personal schedule into 3-week increments. Yet here we are, still cancer-free and living the lives put in front of us. The stars were aligned yesterday as it was the quickest turnaround to date. Leaving home at 6:30, we were back on the road…
Thanksgiving today, and reflecting on what we have to be thankful for seems appropriate. Many would think that being in our current situation, it would be easier to complain about how life has thrown us a curveball, but they would be wrong. Every day, every hour we have the opportunity to continue our life together is something to be thankful for. Yesterday, on her twelfth PATHway Trial visit to Rush in Chicago, Suzanne had her third round of scans along…
Nothing in this universe brings more joy to my wife than a horse. If she can raise them, ride them, bet on them, judge them or just watch them, she’s as close to heaven as she’ll ever be here on earth. I love taking her to the horse races. Since we’ve been married, I don’t think we ever went to the track that after admission, drinks & dinner we didn’t walk out with more cash than we went in with….
I woke up this morning to news shows reminding me it was veterans day, the day we remember all the service members who unselfishly gave their time to protect you and me. I always fly the flag on Veterans day, a tradition my dad taught me, but today was a little different. The inclement weather is keeping me from doing so, a rule I had to look up. According to the Flag Code (Section 6-c) “The flag should not be…
The most uneventful trip to Chicago yet, it couldn’t get much better. We didn’t have to be at Rush till 10:00 am so we missed the heavy traffic inbound. We were out of there by 1:30 pm, so it wasn’t too bad coming home either. Actually, I could just end the post here but that’s no fun. Not wanting to just sit for the two hours between blood work and infusion, so we escaped! Well, actually, we asked our Clinical…
Tonight, as Suzanne finished getting ready to relax for the evening she proclaimed “It’s a Good Day!” For her, in the scheme of her last eight months, it was a hugely big day. Since February, she has been on a mission of proving the Dr’s wrong that she would only “eat for pleasure and probably never speak more than a few words in a row”. Today was the sixth consecutive day that she ate 100% of her calories by mouth,…
I really struggled with how I was going to approach this post. As much entertainment as we got today, it could very easily be a post about bad judgment. Yesterday and through last night we received four inches of rain. That much rain is a guarantee that our bottom ground west of the house will flood and flow over our road west of the bridge. You see, on the other side of the bridge the road takes a dip and…
Most of us were raised by our parents and had siblings, brothers, and sisters that were an important part of who we are now. For some, you had a big sister, the one who taught you all that stuff your mom was too shy to talk about. But for the rest of us, the lucky ones, we had a big brother. It’s the job of the big brother to be the protector, the one who watches out for you at…
A major failure of the Bruns-O-Matic occurred this morning as a malfunction in its internal clock was discovered. I don’t remember such a failure within the system since was put into service some 24,856 days ago. Preparing to leave for Chicago, the Bruns-O-Matic inaccurately calculated the departure time by exactly one hour. Looking through system logs, I found a time adjustment made last Monday while visiting Indiana for the Covered Bridge Festival but also found that an adjustment was later…