Dear hearts,
First, HAPPY BIRTHDAY KELSEA ADAIR LEAMY PERSINGER! This is the newest member of the Leamy family, daughter of Elizabeth and Chris, granddaughter of Pat and Jeanne. What a great, early Christmas present!
Sorry for the short note last night. The blessing in yesterday was that we woke up this morning saying, "Ok. Today, we don't spend any energy on ANYTHING that isn't essential to maintaining our lives - and possibly getting clean underwear." In spite of yesterday, this has been a great week. Tuesday morning, Harry said, "I think I've turned some kind of corner," and by Heaven, he did! He started walking without the walker, and started getting in and out of the shower himself - a HUGE accomplishment. He also started getting up himself in the night to use the bathroom - another huge accomplishment.
Our visit with O'Rourke on Tuesday went better than we could have hoped. Harry wanted to show O'Rourke a different person than the guy he'd seen the week before, so he put on a nice black turtleneck, a black leather jacket, and walked in under his own power. He was also sporting his new NBA haircut. We decided the scraggly, half-lost hair look was not good, and we shaved his head completely. Now he looks great - very sophisticated, and like it's something he chose rather than something that happened to him. So he was looking good for O'Rourke. Through his heroic downing of chocolate malts (heroic because everything tastes like cardboard to him), he has gained 4 pounds, and all his "blood" counts are going up again.
The upshot of all this is that we are once again in the final boarding process for the next round of chemo. Next Tuesday, they will do the required bone marrow biopsy that is preliminary to the chemo. They will get the results by the next week, and if all goes well, O'Rourke intends to get him back into St. Francis and started on the consolidation round of chemo on or about Dec. 19. Assuming he is still in remission, the next round would only be 5 days of a milder chemo and 2 days of the experimental chemo, so not as bad as the first go round. O'Rourke also says he does "not plan for Harry to go through what he did before." I asked him what he was going to do differently, and he said, "Harry was sick before. Now he's not." Ironic that in the reunion video (thank you, Don - great as always ), Harry looks healthy but was in fact becoming critically ill. Now he looks ill (because of the ravages of the chemo), but is much more healthy and strong.
Harry wants very much to just get on with the chemo in spite of being in the hospital over Christmas (O'Rourke gave him the option of waiting until after Christmas, but he said, 'Let's just do this thing."). As for myself, I can't imagine a more powerful time to be being treated than the time we commemorate the seminal event in human history - the time that God came down to the planet to live among us. The season of Advent is a time for waiting. Waiting for the arrival of the baby Jesus when all things are made new again. Waiting for the renewal of Harry's life. Of all our lives.
We love you all. We offer up whatever God can use from our experience for all of you. What a wonderful Christmas this will be!
Eileen and Harry
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3 comments:
Rejuvenating news! An old proverb says: heavy rain starts with a few drops. Harry started walking and soon will be back to his 2 mile marathons. Harry’s readiness for the 2nd round of chemo is a very healthy sign of strength. While Harry is moving fast toward recovery, we may want to give him some additional therapy: joke therapy! Jokes will shake the whole body, especially the intestinal track, which leads to less constipation and ease the egress of any trapped gases! These are typical symptoms of staying in bed for a long time. Now, if the joke therapy works, we should write a patent on it and make some money!!
Here is some prospective on English for your amusement:
The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan, suggested by the German-speaking groups, for what will be known as EuroEnglish.
In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but wordprosessors kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20 persent shorter.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.
By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by v.
During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.
Ze drem vil finali kum tru.
Can't top joke therapy like that! Even an old curmudgeon (and that could take some wurk!) like me got a chuckle.
Harry's NBA haircut -- not such a big deal. I've had the natural version for a long time.
Guys in the bass club will be delighted to get an update and that it will be so positive. If you listen carefully, you can hear the freshwater fish of North America tremble.
Tim
More English!
With all the good news, I put some time to improve my English. Here is what I have found:
It's all in the punctuation:
An English professor wrote the words, "Woman without her man is nothing" on the board and directed his students to punctuate it correctly.
The men wrote: "Woman, without her man, is nothing."
The women wrote: "Woman: Without her, man is nothing."
With this short lesson, I request all the courageous men on this blog to vote for the correct punctuation.
I start: I vote for the second!
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