#44 In Sickness and in Health

Our wedding day, September 26, 1970, as we leave the church and pictures 6 1/2 years later: Niccole, Matthew, and 28 year old Ron holding Cale and Andrew.

We celebrated our 44th wedding anniversary today! Ron had told me that he just wanted it to be the two of us; maybe he thought I was going to organize something more for today. When we are at the lake, we have good times with our siblings. Earlier this week we had dinner and a nice evening (pontoon ride on Wall Lake) at my sister's home. My brother and his wife were there, too. Then the next day we spent the day with Ron's brother and wife. We had not yet seen their new lake home. We enjoyed being together and took a pontoon ride with them on Sommerset Lake.
Ron's health status has definitely leveled off again. He is coughing more and fell once here at the lake house. I will be extra aware as sometimes these are symptoms leading up to respiratory infections. We are in Ann Arbor two days this week for ECP, so he will have blood work and see his doctor there if there are concerns. On Monday, Ron has his new patient appointment with an oncologist in Bowling Green. He also has 2 PT sessions with his final evaluation. We will be in BG for a week and then back to the lake for two weeks. This is the first month that Ron will have 3 weeks between ECP treatments. His prednisone had been tapered at the beginning of the month and one daily antibiotic was stopped.

Hope September has been good to you! What beautiful fall weather we have had in Ohio and Michigan! Living in two places is good. I look forward to coming to the lake, and I am excited about going back to BG this week. Ruth, my Amish cleaning girl, was here today, so I am leaving a clean house behind. She was in one of her brother's wedding earlier this week. When the newlyweds and the two couples that witnessed at the ceremony traveled to the site of the reception, they rode in 3 pony carts. She said the pony pulling her cart was small and chubby…thus very slow. I would have loved to have seen that! I asked her if the reception had a lot of people. She said, not as many as ours, but there were probably 700. I have learned a lot about Amish weddings from her. The bride's colors for this wedding were lavender and gray with yellow accents. They had sunflowers with small lavender flowers on the reception tables.

Falcon Fan

Overdue Post

The realization of passing the three year anniversary of the bone marrow transplant and being where we are as far as recovery weighed on me. Throw in Labor Day, Ron's 66th birthday, and plotting out all of the appointments in September brought on a mixed bag of emotions. Labor Day always feels like the end of summer, but I have always loved autumn and the change of seasons.
Ron has been "about the same" all summer; the last crisis was the mid May hospitalization. He had a check up with Dr. Mag and Tim this week. He has been taken off Vantin, one of the three antibiotics that he has taken for months and months. Starting in October he will taper his ECP treatments from every other week to every third week. It feels like a move ahead but scary at the same time. Any flare of GVHD or an infection is a setback that is hard on him. Me too.
We are moving ahead with scheduling routine dental and vision appointments back with our previous doctors in Bowling Green. Paperwork is in process for Ron to have an oncologist here in BG, so he can have his IVIG immunity infusions in the Cancer Care Center here. Next Monday we will go to AA for an IVIG, but hopefully, his October one can be done here. That will be one less day trip to U of M Hospitals.
In addition to the immediate issues mentioned at the beginning of this blog entry, our son, Andrew has been deployed to Baghdad from Kuwait. His surgical team had been sent to Kuwait as a readiness maneuver, and it was unlikely that they would be sent to Iraq. However, due to specific needs there, two of them have been sent to Baghdad. Andrew is an O.R. Nurse, and he was needed to fill that position there. That makes the little black cloud that hovers around me a little larger. I still do enjoy many things, but there is always a heaviness of worry during deployment.
Ron and I are looking forward to a trip up north to see fall colors in mid October, and we are also planning a trip to Virginia in November. Both Matthew's and Niccole's families live in Virginia. Lisa and daughters Abby and Lily continue to live in Germany where Andrew will return from his 9 month deployment. That is about 7 months away. It is wonderful to live about 2 miles from Cale's family; they helped us celebrate Ron's birthday last evening, and we are gearing up to watch the Buckeyes play Saturday together. Good medicine to spend time with grandchildren!