2 months & 5 days - July 12

Ryan got a call from his oncologist in Boston last night - he will be going there for the CD-22 clinical trial.  Awaiting "the call" later today telling us when to be there.

We also found out yesterday the Missy is not a match.  Good new for her, since she has 4 small kids including one with a serious life-long illness (esophageal eosinophilia) who can only safely eat 4 foods and gets all his nutrition from tube feedings into his stomach.  It would have been a real hardship for her to be away for the transplant.

Still waiting on the other sibling's results.

Scrambling to make arrangements for the girls for next week.  Need to put a tarp over the RV (which has a leaking roof) before I leave.  Bathrooms to clean.  Tax prep - guess I'll take that with me.

It's funny how life's little challenges pile up.  In the past week my printer stopped working (had to clean the drum to get it going), my car has been in the shop all week for repair of the damage done when it was hit at Albany Med the first week of all this, the circuits in our apartment keep breaking, my laptop charger died, etc.  As Roseanna Roseannadanna said, "It's always something!".   

The girls tested for TaeKwon Do yesterday.  The testing is every 3 months, with a make-up session a month later for those who didn't have enough classes or weren't prepared for the regular test.  Needless to say, we tested last this time.  MeiLin, who usually nails it, struggled (she had woken up at 4 am with nightmares and was tired from a field trip at camp).  Kaia got so flustered she couldn't do anything.  In the end, MeiLin passed and Kaia didn't.  She broke down sobbing.  The instructor told her she'd work with her and have her practice at home and try again next week - a major deviation from their policy.  The girls are getting to high belt levels where the expectations are higher and they don't do social promotions.  Kaia tends to be a goof-off and sees TKD as a social club rather than a discipline.  So she's got some adjusting to do.  This may be one more casualty of the leukemia, but it was inevitable that Kaia would need to learn to apply herself and not always get by on her fun personality.  But it still hurts.

Off to do laundry, call in favors for caring for the girls, cover the leaky RV roof, buy some milk and pack my bags for Boston.

Please continue to pray for Ryan and for discernment and inspiration for his doctors.  Although life goes on around us, we're all dealing with an underlying quiet desperation.
---Barb