He will have no fear of bad news, his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord. Psalm 112:7

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Houston and 6 month anniversary

It was a fun filled weekend and very busy.  We left for Columbus late Friday evening and stayed with Carla and Jamie at their house and we got to catch up some.  Carla used to work with Michelle and our families have become good friends.  We had to fly out of Columbus because believe it or not, there were a few people flying out of Kentucky to go to the game.  I'm glad the excuse was given for us to go to Columbus because we got to spend some time with the two that made this weekend possible for us.  We flew out of Columbus Saturday morning and got to Houston around 2.  Thankfully all of the planes we flew on with Southwest didn't have part of the roof blow out on us and thankfully none of our flights were cancelled.  We rested at the hotel before the games, Michelle by poolside.  We got down to the arena and of course there were lots of blue at the game.  Big Blue Nation was in full force.  The stadium was very cavernous and in my opinion, there weren't very many good seats; basketball in huge dome like stadiums aren't made for basketball.  Our seats were very good and were in the 2nd level on the sideline side.  It was really surreal and cool being at the Final Four.  It was neat to see the other teams fans.  The attendance was 75,000 and was a record for the tournament.  And then there was the game.  I don't know about you but I didn't have a very good feeling about winning, couldn't seem to hit shots.  I was glad to see it go down to the wire and there were some intense moments near the end.  It just wasn't meant to be, UConn has been on one one heck of an impressive run.  After the game was a lot of fun as we waited in the taxi cab line for one hour forty-five minutes of pure heck.  We got back to the hotel room at 1:30am and set the alarm for 4:45am to make our 6:20 flight.  We made it back to Columbus and got to have lunch with Carla and Jamie again.  To say the least, thank you again Carla and Jamie!  We drove back and got to hit up the outlet mall on the way back in Jeffersonville, OH; my favorite part :)  The coolest thing about the weekend was getting to hang out with my wife away from all the distractions.  It seemed like reconnecting in the sense we don't get to do that very often, at all.  It was a weekend I'll always remember.  I did get to meet CL Brown at the game who wrote our article in the CJ, he came up to see us at our seats.  We were happy we did the article and pretty happy with how it turned out. We wondered if they'd put God in the article since we talked about it's Him that gets us through this mess and he included that.  The only weird part was the article obviously served as a reminder about how unnormal we are these days.
My 6 month anniversary was yesterday.  This anniversary marks my probability of possibly not being here.  Stats say 50% with the diagnosis don't make it past 6 months.  That's a lot "brothers and sisters" that have now gone on.  Now I've got to get to one year and be in the 25% that make it one year.  I'm feeling a lot better these days and I don't see why I can't make a good run at this.  The scary part for me is I remember 6 months ago saying to myself, "6 months is a ways away."  6 months just came and went.
Tomorrow morning (Wednesday) is my 3rd opinion appt with Dr Sharma at the James Graham Brown Center at UofL.  Next Monday morning is 4th opinion appt at Vanderbilt in Nashville.  The Vandy trip will also let us know what the status is on my qualifications for getting on a clinical trial.  They are very cutting edge and do lots of trials so we'll either find one or we'll be plugged into their system so when something promising comes along, we'll be ready to jump in.
I thank God for the day and hope you thank him as well.

1 comment:

Kim Smith said...

Glad you had a goodtime and got to reconnect. God is good, he gave us today! I have been called a "praying fool" before. So I am sending them all your way!

Stay strong...