Fall has arrived, carried on the sharp wash of cool air streaming through the open window in the morning. I wish I could push it back, force the leaves to turn green again, and will summer to stay in place. Time is not our friend, and the change of seasons is yet again a reminder of the puniness of human desire to bend the world to our bidding.
Continue reading The Exquisite and Fragile Joy of Life in Uncertainty
Clouds ascend like sculptures, backlit by the setting sun. Wispy pink columns stand in dramatic array, the clump on top of one stack embellished with a viciously straight contrail that angles upward like a laser beaming from a cyclopean eye. It is a tiny thing but still audacious enough to pitch a galactic battle against an unseen enemy. The day closes over the Mississippi, with stormheads threatening their bounty of rain from the south. Colin and I have left the gentle wash of music and companionship of old friends on Mud Island, a sanctuary of gentile life only a stone’s throw from the urban grittiness that awaits patiently on the east shore of the mighty river.
Continue reading Same as it Never Was
Saturday morning was a lazy one, but I determined to hit the loop inside of St. Jude’s campus before it got too hot for this Yankee girl to even consider it. The sun was already insistently warm before 9 am, but I figured I had enough time to squeak in a reasonable run before it became unbearable to my delicate constitution. The previous 24 hours had been full and draining, leaving me an exhausted heap curled around Colin in the blessedly comfortable bed at St. Jude’s Tri Delta House on Friday night. He had asked me to snuggle with him and I happily obliged, but in the morning I woke up still wearing Friday’s clothes. Continue reading Plans and Perseveration
Going into surgery, we knew that we would learn valuable information that would drive treatment decisions. The surgery itself promised to be rather ho-hum, endoscopically performed through either one or two holes, and resulting in a very modest recovery time. The anxiety wasn’t about the procedure itself but the findings. Continue reading Declaration and Decisions
Tomorrow morning, Colin and I return to Ithaca. A follow-up MRI today showed no residual tumor or suspicious areas: our first honest-to-goodness gross total resection.
His recovery has been nothing short of astounding. After walking out of the ICU 24 hours after entering it, they were ready to discharge him except he needed to start a medicine to prevent clots while in the hospital.
The wait on surgeries is a notorious combination of boredom and anxiety, though Dr. Boop significantly diminished the latter with his early morning announcement that the procedure would be much simpler than planned. Fortified with snacks and ample access to the internet, we were prepared for the long haul, but only an hour after we got the call that they had opened we got another call that Dr. Boop was scrubbing out and ready to talk to us.
Continue reading Post-Op Update
Colin is always full of surprises and has continued to not disappoint us. Continue reading Sword of Damocles
Our little fledgling has returned to Target House for good, following his last inpatient stay at St. Jude (barring unexpected events, of course).
Life doesn’t offer real do-overs, but there are times when an experience follows the parallel track of something that has come before. Continue reading Home Sweet St. Jude
On Sunday afternoon, I left Le Bonheur to pick up a few things at the grocery store, walking out of the sterile air into the openness of a springlike day. Continue reading Rising Storm