This week

This week, so far, as actually been somewhat "normal". John has been working, kids have been at school and I have been organizing :) I have been cooking and cleaning and picking my kids up from school and trying to enjoy each moment. It is weird though: Life seems kind of normal (when John is not in the hospital), BUT he is still fighting for his life every second of each day. The cancer is still there. There are days we don't really talk about it, BUT it is still there. Life goes on, BUT cancer is still there. Sometimes I kind of feel like it is the elephant in the room in an odd way. We are trying to live life, but it is HARD. No matter how good we all seem, or how well John is doing, we are still just beginning the fight of our lives.

Good news is John is doing very well.  He had an appointment this week for blood work. It went great. His numbers are all fabulous and Dr. Ford said they could not have hoped for a better response during the first round of chemo. Interesting thing is that John has not lost his hair at all. It was supposed to happen between days 14 - 21 of first round. Today is day 22 :) Not that it really matters, it is just hair. But good that he does not have that side effect.

 John is doing great with his PICC line. Apparently this should be good for 6 - 12 months. Right now we do not have any at home IV treatments - antibiotics are done. But here is Abigail one night flushing his PICC line. I told her she needed to learn in case I am not here one night :) She was nervous at first, but did great and now likes doing it. She got mad when I did it the following night :) John can talk her through it, but because of the angle he can not do it. Right now since we are not using it at home, the clinic did a heparin flush which is good for one week.

Yesterday we had a surprise phone call from Dr. Smith. He was John's voice teacher at BYUH. He has retired and served 2 missions. They now live in Alpine - about 45 minutes south of us. He and his wife Linda were up in Taylorsville yesterday and called to see if they could come visit and bring dinner. It was wonderful to see them and for them to meet our 4 youngest. The last time we saw them was 7 years ago when John and Abby and I went to Hawaii and they were still in Hawaii.  It totally made John's day to see them. Thank you so much for coming Smith's.

Next week John starts his 2nd round of chemo. One of his medicines is changing because it is the one they wanted to start with but could not get in time. So, we will see how well his body does and the side effects of it. These past 3 weeks have gone by very fast and I can not believe that Thanksgiving is in 2 weeks. I am grateful for every moment we have as a family and grateful that John is a fighter :)