Is it really mid-October?

Time sure does fly. It’s been a while since I’ve written anything. As you’ve probably noticed, I tend to write a lot more when things are tough, and less frequently when things are good – so if there’s a good bit of time in between posts, it’s generally safe to assume things are on the right track.
 
We had a very successful fundraising effort for the Light the Night Walk. Our team wound up raising over $16,000 which is pretty awesome. Last year, we raised $10k so this was a pretty significant increase. The first year, we really had no idea how to raise money and learned a few things along the way. This year, I felt we were much more organized, and hopefully by next year, we’ll be able to hit an even bigger number. We wound up coming in second place for fund raising for the Verona Park walk. The first place team was around $24k, so good for them… I was happy with second, and happy that they didn’t beat us by sixty dollars or something silly. We had a really good turnout of people who walked with us, and helped us raise money… so thanks everyone for being there with us and for all of the donations. The ceremony was really nice. After talking about the general fund raising, they read through a list of names of those who have passed away recently related to a blood cancer, and unfortunately it’s quite a long list. For each name called out, someone goes up to the stage and places a flower down in their memory. It’s really pretty emotional in general, but this year, we had a couple people walking with us who went up for someone who had passed, so it was a little tougher than I had remembered from prior years. After that, they move into the survivors, which is always great to see as they call out Anna’s name and she went up to the stage with TJ. For the walk itself, it was really amazing to see so many people out there. It felt like there were many more people than the prior year, and when we were about half way done, we were able to look back, and there were some people just getting started.
 
Overall progress for Anna has been great. The doctors are really happy with her progress and continue to cut back on her appointments and meds. When she first left the hospital, it was 3x week appointments, and as of now, she’s down to once every two week appointments. There are things she still needs to watch for, and may have to go to the doctors if something comes up, but thus far everything is continuing to trend in the right direction. She’s now at a point where she’s running errands and is home alone with TJ most days.  She’s also been taking TJ back and forth to Pre-K, which is great for both TJ and to give Anna a little break. The first few days were tough all around, both in terms of TJ having some issues with separation, and also for us to leave him there. It also brought me back to some of the conversations we had when Anna was at her lowest points in the hospital, and the need to fight through to see this kid grow up and go to school. The fact that she was able to be there was really important and is a great indicator of how far she’s made it.
 
We were actually able to go out on a “date” for our wedding anniversary this past week. Anna had been on restrictions to not eat out, for fear of infection. But, with her progress, they gave her the green light to go out at least for our anniversary. Even though dinner wasn’t anything overly fancy, it was nice to be able to get out for a couple hours.
 
With every week that goes by, we adjust to the new normal. It’s crazy to think that this adventure with Leukemia started over 2 years ago, and she’s now 5 months post-transplant.