Sunday Update

Trish had a lot of visitors today and a lot of time to relax on her own. Aunt Mary, Barry, Marian and Lauren (from Alabama) and her Mom all came to visit today. Trish was feeling pretty good and went on several walks on her own today. Her blood counts are doing great!! I updated the counts page with her numbers and some of them are in the normal person range (low end for you and I). She has really been through a lot and we haven't even gotten to the real deal --- the transplant. Our parents have been through a lot -- having to spend time raising teenagers for the second time so I can take care of Trish while working from Baltimore. Many people are given burdens similar and even more weighty than ours, but until you travel in these footsteps it is truly hard to understand.

I often tell the story of the retired minister we met during our first round of chemo. He pulled me over one day after getting some bad news about his wife's condition. He needed to talk with someone - someone who understood what he was feeling. I was happy to be at the right place, at the right time. One of the things he told me was that he was going to go home and write a letter to everyone he had counselled or ministered to over the years who had dealt with a family diagnosis of cancer and he was going to apologize to each of them. Now dealing with his own wife's Leukemia diagnosis and bad news, he understood for the first time what these folks had been dealing with and he knew that nothing he said or did could have really helped them. It was a sad and serious realization for both of us.

My wish for all who are reading this, is that you may never truly understand this feeling.