Sabbath Aug 25

My infusions the last two weeks have gone smoothly. In and out pretty fast. Lindsey accompanied me. I had her take a picture so you can see how I've been spending my Tuesdays for the last 5 months. The room is bright and airy with large windows overlooking the "Healing Garden". We have large comfy recliners. In the picture, though you can't really see it, I'm hooked up thru the port in my chest. The good news is I only have 5 more infusions!

Last weekend Ryan, Michael and Ashley were here. On Sabbath we went out on a small boat to go whale watching, although we knew the orcas were not in the area. We saw lots of sea birds, seals (one eating a salmon), and a minke whale. It was a calm day and it was just nice being out on the water. That evening we celebrated Ryan's 22nd birthday.

Only 2 weeks until the wedding. Yikes!

Hope

As many of you know, today is the one year anniversary of the death of my brother Ted. It is still so hard. After what happened to him, lately I haven't had a very positive attitude about my own disease. And I want very much to have a positive attitude, for my own sake and for the sake of those around me.

I was reading in The Desire of Ages this morning, the chapter "The Centurion" which includes the story of Jesus raising a widow's son (Luke 7:11-17). She ends the chapter quoting 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 which I found very comforting. "Our friends, we want you to know the truth about those who have died, so that you will not be sad, as are those who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will take back with Jesus those who have died believing in Him...So then, encourage one another with these words" (Good News Bible).

Someone I have met only twice gave me a beautiful bell with the word "hope" written on it in several languages. Webster's defines hope as "desire with expectation of fulfillment". This word means a lot to me right now, both in relation to my brother, and where I am at in my own journey.

I am thankful that I have hope.

Count down #8 and fatigue

After an uneventful weekend (except for John who was in the hospital most of the weekend delivering babies) fatigue hit me on Monday. Why, I don't know, but it did. On Tuesday Lindsey was giving her project presentation, so John went with me to my infusion. Once again, towards the end I was the only person in the room. Nice and quiet. The fatigue continued Wednesday and Thursday. Today I have a bit more energy, even vacuumed and cleaned a bit. Lindsey had her last day of school at Rosario on Thursday. That went by unbelievably fast! After many cloudy days, we finally got some sun today. If it holds, we'll spend the weekend sitting on the porch! That may be all the energy I have.

2/3's of the way thru!

Counting down infusion #9. I almost didn't get it because of my blood work. My ANC was too low because my white count was down. So back to taking a few shots this week. Hopefully it'll come back up and stay up. I also had to have another shot to get my red blood cells going. My hematocrit is down to 30 (started out at 43.5). No wonder I feel so tired. Afterwards Lindsey and I went and tasted wedding cake and got that ordered. One more thing down.

On Wednesday Lindsey and I, and Dr. Cowles went to Double Bluff and Freeland Beaches to look for varnish clams for Lindsey's project for her class. She is seeing if there are pea crabs in the clams. We had gone to Long Point a week ago, had dug up 50 clams, and there were no pea crabs. Took us awhile to find 50 clams at Double Bluff. Found them very quickly at Freeland. Dr. Cowles got some ghost shrimp that he was after. Later I measured the clams, and Lindsey cut them open and looked for the crabs. There were crabs in most of the clams from Double Bluff, but only 2 crabs in 1 clam from Freeland. They are tiny little soft crabs that live inside the clams. In case you are interested, the varnish clam is an invasive species to our area. Lindsey did her senior project on them.

Last weekend Ryan, Michael and Ashley came. We went kayaking on Sabbath evening out in the cove. Oh, Tim came too. Then on Sunday the first 3 tore down the fort (it was falling apart) and Tim worked on the waterfall. Almost finished. Slowly but surely things are coming together.

John is on call this weekend, and is in doing the 4th delivery of the day. Hopefully that will be it for the weekend.

Have a good weekend and a Happy Sabbath.