Dry and cracked

It occurred to me that this is an apt portrayal of my existence right now.  The landscape is pretty barren; everything is dry around me.  But I'm still here and still green--thanks to sunshine that keeps peeking through and the occasional refreshing shower. I'm thankful every day for my blessings--every ray and every drop.  

Life Goes On

Do I have any readers left? Thought I'd better post an update before I forgot my password.  My apologies for disappearing for months at a time...seems like just yesterday I was sitting at this computer attempting to explain the upheaval of being in a dual-cancer home.

So much has happened; don't really know where to start.  I'll revert to my business mode of bullet points for the sake of brevity.

• Mid October thru mid November I spent in-patient at the NIH (National Institutes of Health), the first participant in a new immunotherapy clinical trial--a protocol for a specific genetic mutation from HPV related cancers.  I fully intended to document the process here, because it's really quite fascinating and because I really believe that immunotherapy is the future of cancer treatment. But the reality of the experience was that I felt so crappy for so long that I couldn't even stand to look at a computer screen, let alone try to relay the experience in a positive light.  Suffice to say that when I finally returned home and recovered, I literally felt like I had died and come back to life. That being said, the tough road is one I would gladly travel down again because it gave me HOPE!  And although subsequent scans have determined that the wonderous new T cells within me weren't quite enough to cure me and won't save me from the fate of this disease, I have no regrets.  I feel better than I have in a long time and because of that (my) cancer is not always front and center in my consciousness.
• My nephew and his wife lost their precious little boy during the holidays.  Cancer robs another family of their loving circle; hopes and dreams die an agonizing death when a child dies. The grief that these young parents are dealing with is heartbreaking, and has rocked my faith in the grace of a heavenly entity.
• Days, weeks and months have gone by and I stand as a bystander watching my husband go from a robust male to a shadow of what he used to be.  It's painful to watch and as much as I try to be an advocate, it's frustratingly fruitless.  I have come to realize I still love him very much; I'm scared of what life will be like without him, and I wish that we had done more to be the perfect mates to each other earlier in our many years together.

Each of these deserve much more attention, and I have so much more narrative circling in my head on all of these topics.  Yet each of them is so painful that its like slowly ripping off a bandaid to write about them.  So I'll avoid that for now, and wish you all peace and beauty in your world.