Team Kennett

It’s August recess here in D.C., which means while the majority of the South are wrapping up their vacations and starting back to school, our summer here has finally arrived, and we are just getting started.  August is also a time for what I like to call “life maintenance.”  You know, finally getting the shit done that you needed to get done but haven’t had time to do.

As part of my August life maintenance, I went in for a routine cleaning at the dentist earlier this week.  Now I know most people hate the dentist, but I love it.  I love the way my mouth feels afterward and how nice it is to run my tongue over my smooth, clean teeth.  It reminds me of what it felt like to lick my teeth for the first time after getting my braces off both times.  Yes, I wore braces twice and still rock with pride the same permanent retainer placed behind my lower front teeth in the 8th grade.  I still get super excited when the dentist tells me I have no cavities and secretly wish they had a treasure chest in their lobby, like Dr. Henry did when I was growing up, full of plastic spider rings, fake tattoos and bouncy balls for me to choose from.  I still call Lady Linda from the parking lot to report “no cavities, Momma!” because I know she’ll be so proud of me.

The one thing I do hate about going to the dentist is how you get trapped by the hygienist in a one-way conversation for a half hour.  While putting the paper bib necklace on me, my very young and single hygienist inquired about my breakfast and I responded that I had just enjoyed my daily green juice.  She reclined the seat, adjusted her overhead light about 27 times, and there I was–just lying there in reclining baby bird pose for so long that my jaws actually started to quiver while she started to yap away.  She launched into how she could never juice, because she hates going to the grocery store, doesn’t know how to select produce, some stupid story about buying a bad watermelon because she didn’t know if she was supposed to smell or thump it, she didn’t have the time for that, it had been a horrible summer, the weather had been so awful, blah, blah, blah.  She even asked me questions!  WTF?  Is it part of their training or something?  I mean my eyebrows were going all over the place desperately trying to indicate she should thump, and I’m making these guttural sounds from the back of my throat trying to respond while she’s scraping, spraying and sucking, polishing, spraying and sucking and flossing, spraying and sucking.

After spending a few more minutes lying there defenseless against her relentless barrage of statements and questions, I finally succumbed to my fate like a horse with a bit, and as I listened to her going on and on about her lousy summer, the thought actually went through my head that what she really needed in her life was some cancer.  Maybe not a stage IV diagnosis but, you know, just a little touch of cancer maybe.  Just a little dash?  Not really.  I truly wouldn’t wish this on anyone, but I did think she needed some perspective, because I was sitting there thinking to myself that my summer thus far had been MAGICAL.  My husband is feeling really well, is working full-time, is playing golf and in the backyard with our son, our kids are happy, healthy and growing like weeds, we have taken some really fun weekend trips together as a family, I had the privilege of working for the kindest and most loving and sincere Member of the U.S. Senate for six+ years and am about to start this amazing new job next month and the weather?  I haven’t even noticed the weather.  Haven’t even felt it.

Cancer and perspective are often synonymous to many who have been newly diagnosed.  Chip has always said he didn’t need cancer to gain perspective or to teach him to be grateful and appreciative for what he had, but I guess I did.  I have always known I was fortunate and living a blessed life, but sometimes life still just felt hard.  After Joe was born, life often felt overwhelming.  The work week felt hard–the unpacking and repacking of diaper bags, unloading the dishwasher, bath time, bed time, cooking dinner and laundry were never-ending and exhausting.  I often tried to rush through reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear for what seemed like the one hundred millionth time.  Come on, Joe, you KNOW what he sees by now.  Yes, you can turn the pages.  Sweet Jesus, the pages aren’t stuck together.  It’s a BOARD book. Ok, night night.  Just one more song.  Seriously, last one.  OMG, just go the F to sleep!!

But now, my time with my family is just so dear.  I used to live from one big event to the next or from one trip to another and would simply go through the motions of the mundane day-to-day living, but now what once was just background noise in my life has suddenly become the sweetest sound.  What once was overwhelming and difficult, now feels pretty easy.  Flying down to Destin with two kids, two car seats, golf clubs, a stroller and luggage was suddenly a piece of cake, because we were getting to go to Florida together as a family!!!  I now savor every time we can have dinner together, go to church as a family, and every night Chip and I can simply go to bed together.  When you stop to think about it, aren’t the Tuesday nights what life really is all about?  Our childhood, our marriages, our adulthood are all really just a series of dinners and bath and bed times all strung together, which turns into days and into years and eventually into a lifetime.

I’m really not trying to get all DPS here or sound like a poster from Pier 1 hung in a freshman dorm room, but live deliberately.  Of course you should be responsible and have respect for yourself and others but LIVE.  Really live and appreciate it.  Be vulnerable in your relationships.  Drink the good stuff.  Wear perfume to bed.  Cut the tags off the new clothes in your closet and wear them.  What are you saving them for?  Eat off your china.  Get down on the floor and play with your babies.  Step out of your comfort zone.  Order the bone marrow.  Sing really loud in your car even when stuck in traffic and people are watching.  Be present in your life and grateful for it.

I won’t pretend like it’s always just that easy, because it’s not.  Every birthday, every Mother’s Day, every Father’s Day–you can’t help but think of what your life was like at that time last year and wonder where you will be this time next year.  But if you dwell in that space for too long, that fear can be crippling and debilitating and more significantly, rob you of experiencing that very moment, so for us, Chip and I continually choose to dig in, squeeze each other a little tighter and remind ourselves that we are here.  We are all here today and we are present in our lives and grateful for them.

We are approaching the place in the calendar year where it is naturally easy to think about this time last year. I was in Mississippi for my Tri-Delt reunion while Chip stayed home and painted the bedrooms in the new house we were about to move into. This time last year, Chip first started to complain of his back hurting, and most recently, this time last year, I was pregnant with Crosby and we took advantage of a work trip of Chip’s to Nemacolin and took Joe with us for a special weekend away before his baby sister arrived.  We took that same exact trip again this year.  One night I was awakened by Chip coughing in his sleep, looked across the room and saw Crosby sleeping away in a portable crib, then peered over the edge of the bed to see Joe sleeping in his big boy fire truck sleeping bag, and I just lay there silently crying and thinking about the prior year there.  But after some time, I pulled my thoughts back to the present moment where we were all there, sleeping together in the same room, and I was oh, so very grateful to be there.  Present and grateful is where I chose to reside for the remainder of that weekend.  Present and grateful is how I choose to live each day.

Oh, and by the way, dental hygienist, just go buy a friggin’ watermelon.  If it’s bad, then go buy another one.  And another one until you find that perfectly ripe, sweet and juicy watermelon that takes you back to eating one while sitting on the tailgate of your daddy’s pickup truck in the driveway.  And if you really don’t have time to go to the grocery store, then have produce delivered to your house once a week from a local farm.  Go ahead and get yourself one of those fancy, special boxes or place a cooler on your front porch for your cold-pressed juice deliveries and organic, grass-fed, I’ve-spent-my-whole-life-freely-roaming-around-these-pastures whole milk, sweetheart.  It’s all the rage.

– Sheila

P.S. Here’s Crosby, swinging for the first time. Talk about present and grateful.

Crosby Swinging for the First Time from team kennett on Vimeo.

Chip is hijacking Sheila’s blog for today and today only.  He does not share Sheila’s talent when it comes to writing and he knows it, so please excuse his poor prose.  – Team Kennett’s CIO

Earlier this week, on our way back from my appointment in Philadelphia, Sheila and I came to a fork in the road, and I took the road less traveled.  By less traveled, I mean a road we had never been on before.  Despite having made the same exact drive over a dozen times, rather than heading south to Washington, DC, we were flying down 476N towards Allentown, PA.  I’d like to think my error had something to do with the fact that I was concentrating on my conference call, but anyone who knows me and my sense of direction, or lack thereof, won’t believe that.

It wasn’t until I got off of the phone, after a good 25 – 30 minutes of driving, that I realized we were not on our way home.  After informing Sheila of my mistake, it became apparent we would not be able to make it home in time to put Crosby down.  Whenever we make a day trip to Philly together, it is always our goal to return  in time to perform our normal nighttime routine with the kids.  It is not only good for the kids, but it is also therapeutic for the two of us after spending hours at a cancer hospital.  Even on the days when the doctors have good news, like this past Wednesday, these visits are an emotionally exhausting experience.

I am joking about it now, but at the time, I couldn’t have been more pissed at myself and frustrated with the situation.  We obviously have a better appreciation of what really matters these days and getting lost doesn’t usually fall into that category, but we have gone to great lengths to ensure this awful disease has had little to no impact on the kids, and my thick-headedness had done just that. Thankfully, Sheila was right there beside me to reign me back in, calm me down and make me smile.  Over the past nine months we have faced a few wrong turns, but through it all, Sheila has been right there beside me providing me with the strength I need to keep moving forward.

Being forced into the situation I now find myself in has caused me to do a lot of reflecting and taking stock.  I have been truly blessed and am grateful for all that I have been given, but one gift, specifically one day stands out amongst all others.  It was six years ago today that Sheila and I were joined by some of our closest friends and family in Georgetown where we laughed and danced the night away celebrating our marriage.

That night I gave a toast to Sheila.  It was unprepared and spur of the moment, but I nailed it.  I told everyone there about Sheila’s infectious personality, how, if you are in a room with her, you can’t help but want to be around her; how she has a unique quality of making those who are close to her feel better about themselves; how she can, and takes great pride in, not only making you laugh, but usually doing so in a slightly inappropriate manner which usually catches folks off guard – I really love it when she does this. And I obviously mentioned how breathtakingly beautiful she is.  In other words,  I nailed it because it was easy. All I had to do was describe the Sheila everyone knows and loves.

Six years of marriage hardly makes me an expert, but in my humble opinion, getting married is easy.  Staying married and more importantly, staying happily married takes a lot of work. And as I have learned, staying married in the face of serious adversity takes at least one extremely special partner.  I knew how fortunate I was to have found Sheila long before I was diagnosed, or at least I thought I did.  Over the past nine months, she has demonstrated a level of strength and love that is truly inspiring.  I would like to say I wasn’t in any way surprised by her, but no one ever really expects they will find themselves in the situation we ended up in.  Last October I knew there was no else I wanted to be by my side during this journey, but what she has done for me and for our family has literally been life saving.

I pray no one reading this blog is ever faced with the set of circumstances we are currently facing, but I do sincerely hope you have the opportunity to experience the unconditional love and support Sheila has given me.

july 2013

On July 1, Team Kennett and our blog (!) were featured in The Washington Post, in an article about how people are using the Internet to raise funds for medical costs.

You can read the article here: A growing number of patients turn to crowd-funding sites to defray medical costs

You’ll also see some photos of us taken by our good friend Alison Hathaway, Red Shoes Photography. Note that the caption on the first picture is incorrect – Crosby is still our sweet little girl.

(For reference, and to reiterate our gratitude, here’s a link to the post I wrote after the GiveForward fundraiser: We Don’t Deserve This)

– Sheila

I know, I know, I know–I am basically the worst blogger known to man, but as I wrote in “Get Up Off the Couch,” this whole thing was Chip’s idea in the first place, so I am going to blame it all on him.  I actually started back to work six weeks ago, Crosby started daycare this week, and the single best excuse of all for having not written lately? We have just been busy doing some hardcore living!  Thankfully, things are going quite smoothly in both our home and work lives, but it all continues to be quite an adjustment for us.  Chip and I both find work to be a great distraction, and personally, it’s been fun getting dressed up again and engaging with grownups about something other than the C-word or how Mickey and Donald can possibly swing their legs and arms over to each side that far making the Hot Dog Dance essentially impossible for any real live human to do without falling down.  Since my return to work, I haven’t been able to find the time to write or exercise, so I am going to continue working on making both of those a priority, because my little world just doesn’t feel right without having those two things in it.

Chip is thankfully in an amazing place both physically and mentally right now.  Since he resumed the trial six weeks ago at a lower dosage, his labs have continued to be normal and stable.  We are now on a schedule where he goes to Philadelphia every 21 days, which is huge considering initially we had to go up once a week for six straight weeks.  Blood work is performed and the next cycle of his oral chemo, LDK, is distributed at each appointment, and he alternates between receiving a bone-strengthening injection, Xgeva, and having MRI and CT scans performed every six weeks.  Make sense??

And then he has to have lab work performed locally the week prior to us traveling to Philly, and he sees his ocular oncologist at Johns Hopkins every eight weeks, so we manage to have one “free” week every six weeks.  I still have to give him a shot every night to prevent blood clots from forming and although I have gotten used to sticking him, I HATE it when I walk in the bedroom and he has already fallen asleep.  It just makes me sad to have to wake him up to stick him.

His most recent set of scans was very encouraging.  The scans showed up to an 80% reduction in the number and size of tumors than the previous set of scans performed during our interview for the drug trial at Fox Chase two months earlier.  Smitty and Dave Cuzzi flew in to accompany Chip on this trip so I could stay at home with the kids.  They were able to view a side-by-side of the scans, and they all reported the results were truly amazing to see.  Two disclaimers:  1.)  Even though I love and trust both Smitty and Dave to share mine and Chip’s mindsets and approach to this, I was still quite anxious not being there with him, but Chip is quite anxious with us both leaving the kids overnight when Lady Linda isn’t in town, and it’s far more important to serve Chip’s needs than mine, so I obliged and stayed put knowing I was still helping him by providing him with peace of mind on the home front.  2.)  We never knew how much the tumors had increased after the Xalkori played out and he was off chemo for five weeks, so we don’t know where we are in the overall standings, but any way you slice it, an 80% reduction is pretty friggin’ huge and moving in the right direction.

The one majorly disheartening bit of news was the spot on his brain remained the same.  Record scratch.  Back up.  “Spot” on the brain??  Thanks for the great news and all, Dr. L, but we never knew he had a spot on his brain in the first place, so we both appropriately freaked out over this news.  After sitting with that bomb over a weekend, we just had to delve into that new development a bit further.  To our knowledge, the lesion first appeared on the MRI performed two months ago, it hasn’t changed in size, and it’s technically too small to be classified as a tumor so yeah for that.  #silverlining  Inhale, exhale, deep, deep breaths.  We just have to grab on to whatever good we can.

On the night the boys were in Philadelphia, I walked upstairs to find a note from Chip sitting on my pillow.  Of course it made me cry my eyeballs out, but it also prompted me to pick up one of my old journals, and I started reading through it.  Over the course of our dating life, about Chip I had written, “He loves SO well.  He loves me, his friends, his family, and he’s not afraid to show it.”  “He cries.”  “We name our babies.”  “He drinks to get drunk.  He eats to get full.  He laughs out loud.  He yells at the tv.  He likes his music loud.  He loves country music.  He loves Christmas music and Christmas decorations.  He loves bars with jukeboxes.  He kisses dogs on the mouth.”  “I love his charisma, his heart and his passion.”

Throw up in your mouth alert:  On our first wedding anniversary, Chip and I started keeping a journal together–I write about our current jobs, where we live, how we are celebrating our anniversary, what bottle of wine we had, etc. Then we each take the book and write down the top five highlights of the year and then we compare notes, and most often, we have identical lists.  It’s fun to go back and read, and we hope the kids will enjoy having it one day.  Chip, I apologize if I have just completely stripped you of your man card.

Last October, I popped our anniversary journal in my purse.  There were just so many blank pages left that needed and deserved to be filled.  To be filled with us.  So, on that day, on Halloween to be exact, while Chip was having a piece of his hip bone removed at Virginia Hospital Center, sitting in the waiting room all by myself, I started to write to him. I wrote of how we did have this–together.  How we were going to handle this with love and grace.  And I wrote to him of how big our love was and how big he lives his life.  Hell, in our house, we even eat big chicken, so ironically, it suddenly made perfect sense that he had really BIG, fucking cancer.  Because big is just how he always seemed to do things.

The other night, “Dream Big” by Ryan Shupe came up on my iPhone.  Chip and I had our first dance to this song at our wedding reception.  I started to listen to the words.  Really listen to them this time.

When you laugh be sure to laugh out loud
’Cause it will carry all your cares away
And when you see, see the beauty all around and in yourself
And it’ll help you feel okay
And when you pray, pray for strength
To help you carry on
When the troubles come your way

And when you dream, dream big
As big as the ocean blue
’Cause when you dream it might come true
When you dream, dream big 

Perfect.  Absolutely perfect, because no matter how big that cancer ever gets, to borrow one from the great Lindsey Buckingham, it can never be bigger than our Big, Big Love.

– Sheila

P.S. The drug Chip is on (LDK378) recently was the subject of a presentation at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting. You can read about LDK clinical trial results here: Novartis Breakthrough Therapy LDK378 shows a marked clinical response in patients with ALK+ non-small cell lung cancer

It didn’t take me too long to figure out cancer is a disease of the body, mind and spirit.  I know that totally sounds like something that would be on a cheesy cancer poster taped to the wall of a bathroom at the cancer center, but it’s true.  From the onset, Chip has struggled with the mental aspect of having cancer, but it wasn’t until we landed in the hospital seven weeks ago, for emergency surgery to drain the fluid from his heart and lungs, that cancer truly invaded Chip’s spirit and as a result invaded mine.

When we learned his smart chemo, Xalkori, had run its course and was no longer effective in combating his cancer, it just floored us.  I had just started back to work the week before, Chip was feeling well, and for the most part, we had settled into a good little routine in our “new normal” life with cancer and as a family of four.  Suddenly, we were not only off the rails, but we were directionless.  All of the positive thinking, prayers, organic green juice and quinoa in the world can’t stack up against a rare and aggressive form of cancer like ours, so to literally be off chemo combined with the added uncertainty of what the next steps might be was debilitating.  Our motto has always been to live with cancer and not die from it, but for a couple of weeks, we were dying from it.  Cancer had invaded our minds and spirit, and it had become bigger than us.

(FYI, I would really like to be able to use some motivational Patriots-pulling-themselves-back-together analogy here, but then I start to think of Tom Brady, which leads me to Uggs and then Gisele and how hot she looked in that Versace gown she wore back in 2008 to the Met Gala and then more recently to that picture of her I saw in People magazine rocking this little string bikini while wearing her like 4-day-old baby in an Ergo on the beach and how she’s all like “I am a breast-feeding woman, hear me roar” and clearly she must have her Lansinoh nursing pads custom-made in order to fit into that teeny tiny little top.  Anyway, I digress, and you see why a sports analogy is just impossible for me to pull off here.)

that’s the dress.

I couldn’t even write a blog post during that time, because I felt the need to be positive and let everyone know we were fine and going to be ok, but neither of us were certain about that, so it would have been insincere, which is not my style.  Finally, I just made the decision to screw it and write “Walking in Circles” and let everyone inside the overwhelming world we were living in, and I am so thankful I did.  I don’t know if it was the therapeutic release of the actual exercise of writing itself, or if it was that we no longer felt quite so alone, or if it was the fact you all then knew specifically what to pray for, but within days of that post going up, we both started feeling stronger and things started falling into place for us again.

I have now found a counselor that I really, really love who is helping me safely navigate all of this and allocate my time and energy more efficiently.  Oh, and yes, I eat a ton of fiber and take probiotics and no, I am not on any medication other than an occasional Xanax for anxiety.  I can assure you I am being watched like a hawk by Dr. D., my OB/GYN, and my therapist.  I have been described as being “super high functioning.”  I guess cancer is my alcohol.  I by no means mention that as a point of pride but only because so many of you have asked.

So much of my role in this revolves around management. On the surface, that involves the simple yet time-consuming management of our calendar of doctor’s appointments, visitors and out-of-town guests, and social activities, staying on top of insurance paperwork, paying medical bills, tracking all travel- and medical-related expenses, filling prescriptions, and coordinating travel for us.  Luckily, I am a scheduler by profession, so I can confidently execute all of these things.

On a deeper and much more complex level, I am also managing the mood and energy in our house for the sake of Chip and our kids, defining our boundaries while trying not to step on anyone’s toes, coordinating logistics for the kids that will ensure the maximum amount of stability and consistency in their lives, learning when to respectfully decline an offer to help while on the other hand, asking for help when needed.

Through counseling, Chip and I have both learned to differentiate what is out of our control (such as cancerous tumors growing inside his body, and others’ feelings and expectations) and what is in our control (such as the food we put into our bodies, how we spend our time and whom we spend it with, and most importantly, how we react and respond to our circumstances).

We are even about to start going to counseling together.  We have an incredibly strong marriage yet we are dealing with these really big things that not many our age have experience with, so we are seeking professional help in learning how to discuss this with our kids and each other.  We both so desperately want to handle everything the “right” way but there is no how-to book for something like this.  Perhaps I shall write it one day …

The kids are doing great.  Crosby is thankfully the happiest and easiest little baby.  About five weeks ago, she started sleeping through the night, which is a real game changer for me.  That happened the week my sister Melissa and her family were here, so she would like to take credit for that happening.  Crosby just smiles all of the time and is such a constant source of joy for us.  She was finally accepted into Joe’s daycare, so we are absolutely thrilled she will start there in June.

Joe loves his Cros and is really doing well.  Joe is a creature of habit and has always been one to thrive off structure and routine – no idea where he got that from – so at the advice of his pediatrician, his preschool teachers and our family therapist, we are keeping him enrolled in preschool where he attends every day, he is still made to eat his fruit and veggies with dinner, and he still has to take a bath and brush his teeth at night. We do talk to Joe about Daddy being sick but not on a daily basis, because there is no reason to instill a constant fear him. We always answer any questions he has, and we openly say the word cancer and discuss Chip’s doctor’s appointments in the house.  Chip’s medicine is out and visible in the kitchen. With Joe, we mainly focus on all of the things we can do to keep our bodies healthy or to feel better, such as get a good night’s sleep, eat strong, healthy foods, take medicine, exercise, and pray to God.  Every now and then, he will say he is sick too like Daddy, but we never really correct him, because all little boys want to be like their Daddy.  It does tug at your heartstrings to hear him say that though.  But more than anything, we have found that Joe seems far more affected by the revolving door of people in and out of our house, which is obviously a result of Chip’s illness, than he does the actual fact Chip is ill.

I will spare you the blow-by-blow of the last six weeks, but to say we are still riding an emotional roller coaster is an understatement.  We have gone from elation over identifying a trial at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia and obtaining an interview and initial consultation there to being sent to the ER at Johns Hopkins on our way home from Philadelphia because a radiologist thought they detected a tear in Chip’s aorta to a bad EKG reading that prevented him from being able to start the trial to oh, no, wait, EKG is fine and we have been accepted into the trial to actually being on the trial drug and seeing an improvement in Chip’s energy level and cough for two weeks to a now two-week temporary suspension of the trial due to elevated liver enzyme levels.  Up and down, up and down, up and down we continue to go.

Despite the ever-changing roller coaster we are on, Chip is in a much stronger place mentally.  I am just so proud of him and even though I HATE he has cancer and we are going through this, it has truly been an honor for me to be beside him and watch him just pick himself back up over and over again.  It was so tough mentally being off chemo for almost five weeks.  Of course we both shudder at the thought of what happened inside his body during that time and to now again be back off chemo after only two short weeks of treatment, but neither of us dwell on it.  We just can’t.  It’s not a healthy place to reside.  AND, this is not in our control, so we have to let it go and not waste our time and energy focusing on it.

So many have graciously offered to babysit our kids, and we so appreciate all of those offers, but it’s just not always that simple.  For Joe especially, there is already so much change in our house: new baby, Mom and Dad are gone several nights out of the week, we are both in and out of work and still at various, local doctor’s appointments every week, grandparents or one of our siblings are almost always here, people are dropping food off and coming in, and friends are visiting on the weekends, so even though Daddy went to college with you or you have sat beside Momma at work for the last six years, that doesn’t mean Joe knows you and feels comfortable crawling in a car with you on a Saturday to go to the park or to your house.  That is tough for us, because we know he is in good hands and will be fine, but that is just one more different thing for him to handle.  I am actively working hard at cultivating my own little village with friends in my neighborhood, so I do have more emergency back-up options, but for the most part, I remain focused and diligent on consistency, consistency, consistency and keeping our home life as normal as possible for him.

The same goes with driving Chip to a doctor’s appointment.  We made a day-trip to Philadelphia two weeks ago for what was supposed to be a short 90-minute check-up, and BOOM, just like that, we are suddenly suspended from the trial and our entire schedule is off course.  On the four-hour drive home that day, I had my cancer “playbook” and calendar in the car with me, so I immediately started calling our local doctors, scheduling the appointments we needed and rearranging our travel plans, work schedules, travel for family and friends coming in, moving previously scheduled appointments for the kids, etc.  Again, it’s a good thing I am super-organized and a professional scheduler, because while the emotional aspect of the unpredictability of this disease floors me, I am used to rearranging everything on a dime, and that part of it never really rattles me.

As a control freak, I am slowly learning to let so many of the things out of my control go, and what a liberating feeling that is.  I remain focused on keeping Chip, our babies and myself both mentally and physically strong.  Besides, if we allow cancer to invade our minds, spirits, and home, then has it not already defeated us?  I refuse for cancer to rob us and our household of experiencing the joy in the mundane parts of our day-to-day life.

We head back to Philadelphia tomorrow for a bright and early appointment on Thursday morning.  With all fingers and toes crossed, Chip’s liver enzyme levels will be low enough for us to resume the trial but at a lower dosage this time.  It will then be another long 10-12 hour day filled with EKGs, blood draws, and me sitting in an uncomfortable chair, but I welcome it if that means we can get started back on the clinical trial.

I pray that once again, we will enjoy sustained mental rest and the freedom that comes with knowing we are actively fighting cancer.

– Sheila