No matter how you look at it, life is full of milestones. Learning to crawl, walk; obtaining your drivers licence; graduating from high school ... and then college (and grad/law school too, dad!!!); getting married, turning 30 ... and on and on and on!!! Through my life, I've set goals based on my age, education level and according to those peers around me. But after reaching my most recent milestone of 30 .... I've decided to take another approach to my traditional plans. After a great deal of soul searching and discussion, I decided to leave my position at Georgetown University to not only take care of Andrew but to also work on pursuing my own hopes and dreams .... so my new plans are to be just be open minded and try not to let fear hold me back.
Andrew is also coming up on a few huge milestones in his own life .. and let me tell you, I cannot wait for them to come. For the past week and a half, I've had to hear that he is still in his 20's and I'm not anymore. The words 'robbing that cradle' have been used more than once when describing our relationship. But May 26 is the big D-Day ... I mean B-Day for him too!!! Thirty is not so bad, or at least that's what I'm telling myself for now. This year is going to be different for Andrew. The hope is that he will be in remissions soon and able to return to the things that he loves most. His most recent milestone, finally finishing his last 5-day outpatient treatment, gives me great hope that life returning to normal is soon to follow.
After an exhausting week last week, Andrew finally made it through what was definitely his most challenging 5-day outpatient treatment. To date, Andrew has had 61 rounds chemotherapy and 33 rounds of radiation. With only two, 1-day treatments on June 1 and June 21 to go, I'm sure you can all understand that the anticipation is almost to much to take. Regaining so assemblance of normalcy is going to be a big adjustment from the 'firefighter approach' (ready to attack at any given moment) we've been taking for the past year.
And speaking of the past year, today is actually the anniversary of our first doctors appointment with our oncologist, Dr. Felice. Andrew wasn't diagnosed until June, but today was the day we found out something was wrong.
All in all Andrew is doing great. He continues to go to work as much as he can and has now begun to start studying to take the Virginia Bar exam at the end of July (see him studying at chemo in the picture above). His bar review class begins next week and is actually a nice destraction from chemo ... but I mean what isn't at this point in his life.
We have also decided to take our health very seriously from now on and we will both be starting P90X very soon (me probably sooner than him) with the help of our wonderful consultant Liz Wildes, who was a classmate of mine from high school. If anyone else is interested in doing it with us, sign up with Liz and take charge of your health too https://teambeachbody.com/signup/-/signup/free/43419
So as we travel down these last few weeks of treatment, we cannot help but thank everyone who has come on this journey with us. We feel very loved and cared for by everyone who reads our blog, sends us cards and messages and prays for Andrew's speedy recovery every day. We hope that all of you will continue to support all cancer efforts taking place all over the country and will continue to support all of the efforts and Andrew and I cannot wait to embark upon so that no family has to go through what we have had to endure over this past year.
Early detection and gene therapy save lives!!!
