"I'm going to have my Milk of Magnesia with a prune chaser"

Ok, enough about that....

One of the plans we had this summer was to head down to North Carolina when my sister Sarah is due to give birth in early August.  Then we learned that life had made other plans.  Instead, Sarah came to see us for the past several days.  Special thanks to you, Sarah, for being who you are and bringing such compassion.  It really was wonderful to have you here.

Today marked the third week of treatment for Carol.  Her white blood cells have responded like the champ that she is, keeping up with this weekly regimen.  Next week should be a week off from treatment to give her immune system time to gear up for the next round.  Emotionally, her challenge continues to be to live within each day, within each moment, without letting her mind get too far ahead of her body.

Thanks so much for your thoughts, your prayers, your dinners, your mantras, your stupid movies, your ways of getting her out for a run or back into the studio, and every other manner of graceful sharing that reminds Carol that she's got a big team behind her.

My favorite C word: Carol

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the first Carol Update.  If you don't know what the hell these updates are even about, please contact me (stemadden14@gmail.com) and I can just fill you in.

Feel free to share these updates with others who might be asking how Carol's doing, or invite them (by having them contact me) to be part of these mailings.  Also, feel free to drop Carol a note of support if you like, but please don't feel offended if she doesn't get back to you -- she's always had a hard time keeping on top of emails under normal circumstances, and these are anything but normal circumstances.  They do mean a lot to her, though.  Thanks.

To everyone: thank you so much for your support and encouragement.  It means the world to us.

A quick lesson in vocabulary:

CANCER -----> CONDITION

CHEMOTHERAPY -----> TREATMENT

There -- that's out of the way.  

Carol had her second treatment today, administered by the fair Margaret.  In the week between the two treatments, she ran 3 days, biked 3 days, and pooped once -- in the whole week.  Another undesirable "C" word....  Just one of the side effects of the treatment -- the others haven't been that bad, as of yet.

Easy to say, difficult to put into practice, but it is so worth it: learning to take things one day at a time.