Tag: Life

Summer 2024 – Full of ups and one whew

Since our marriage started with the chaos of leukemia, we decided to make 2024 our catch-up year. We had a long list of things to do, along with plenty of experiences we wanted to enjoy.

Leukemia Maintenance Life

Tracy’s leukemia maintenance progressed well. We settled into our new normal and adapted to the schedule. It brought its challenges, but we managed it as best we could.

First Anniversary

In May, we celebrated our first wedding anniversary in Branson, Missouri! The trip gave us a much-needed escape from thinking about cancer. We watched a couple of shows, sampled delicious food, and enjoyed some relaxing downtime. While there, we even checked off one of our “must-do” items—selling my home. We listed it the week before our trip, which wasn’t planned, but by the time we left Branson, we were already under contract.

As soon as we returned, reality hit hard. Tracy’s medical team called, wanting to move up his bone marrow biopsy by a month. They had discovered a chromosome inversion that could impact his leukemia. This news sparked discussions about a possible bone marrow transplant. Seeking a second opinion from another cancer center, we received a different recommendation than our provider’s. While they weren’t thrilled with the differing opinion, they listened and allowed us to follow a careful course of watch and wait.

Side note, please prayerfully consider being a donor. It literally could save someone’s life.

Meanwhile, we prepared Tracy’s home for the market. Our goal was to sell it and find our forever home together. So, we got to work—resurfacing the deck, removing wallpaper, painting, cleaning, and tackling every other household chore. We pushed ourselves to exhaustion, determined to get it all done. Then, an email from our realtor changed everything—she had found a house that fit our needs!

Now, we’re under contract on that house and working tirelessly to get Tracy’s home listed as well. We’re taking on 2024 head-on and making things happen!

August 22, 2024
Renewed Hope in 2024

As we’ve entered 2024 and passed the midpoint of January, hope fills the air. While we don’t have any grand plans of large hikes scheduled in 2024, we do however, want to get back into the swing of walking and hiking more manageable distances this year. My husband’s chemotherapy maintenance schedule has begun and doesn’t seem to largely affect his day-to-day life. His world seems to be resetting back to a comfortable normal. Hair is returning. Fatigue and general fogginess is fading. He’s able to start doing things around the home that he couldn’t before. With that, comes the muscle aches with rebuilding that strength.

This maintenance schedule, which will last three years, is meant to be much easier than what he’s already encountered. So far, after nearly a month, it’s much lighter than our fears. It’s a monthly chemo infusion along with weekly and daily chemo pills.

The one side effect that has continued a bit and now has escalated is neuropathy in fingers and toes. From what we’ve read and heard from others is that it mostly will subside once chemo is complete. He did recall that the time between the last intensive phase and maintenance, it subsided quickly. That’s our hope, meanwhile, will keep his team in the loop on that side effect.

Getting Comfortable with the New Schedule

Hopefully, we can start with slowly easing in a walking schedule here in the next few weeks. We have had a brutal weather pattern here in the Midwest with record-breaking temperatures! We’re mainly more thankful to manage shoveling the driveway instead of clocking in a couple miles. We haven’t pushed for anything more because we want to see how he responds to this modified treatment before we go 100%. But our plan is to start off slow, adding walks when it’s reasonable outside. When he feels ready, we’ll add yoga and strength training as well.

Adjusting Back to the Old, but Good Diet

We also have implemented a diet change. Now that he’s no longer immunosuppressed, he’s back to normal eating habits. (We have followed these immunosuppressed diet guidelines for the past year.) So, we have pivoted back to Keto, which worked very well for both of us previously. We’re enjoying it and have noticed that the lack of carbs make us less hungry and more comfortable.

As for me, it’s been very difficult to maintain any schedule outside of the chemo schedule we’ve had in 2023. So, I know we can rely on each other to keep each other motivated, more so with me, as I need to get my fitness goals going again. With all of this, it is a nice starting point to document how well we progress this year.

I’m starting to share these details and steps to recovery in order to help someone else, whether a patient or caregiver, to feel more at ease and provide hope with their situation. While I understand that each diagnosis is unique, I wanted to share my experience in the hope that it might help at least one person – a small victory that would mean a lot.

January 19, 2024
Proposals, Wedding and a Hiccup to our Plans in 2023

2023 has been quite a year, filled with extreme highs and extreme lows. The best part of 2023 was our wedding. It was perfect in every way, just not the way we expected it to happen.

The First Proposal

Tracy proposed to me on February 11, 2023, and we got straight to the business of wedding and marriage. Within a couple weeks, we had the date set and most of the things scheduled. We were ready. We also were trying to figure out meanwhile when we could fit a hiking trip in before the wedding in August of 2023.

The Hiccup and the Second Proposal

In early April 2023, Tracy noticed symptoms that started to become alarming – enough that we decided to go to the emergency room for tests. The test came back and stunned us both. Leukemia. They immediately transferred him to another hospital, where he started treatment right away. Everything in our world halted. Doctors informed us that nothing but treatment would be our lives for the foreseeable future. Devastation hit us. We had to start cancelling everything, including our wedding.

When Tracy initially checked in, we learned that his condition surprised the unit. He felt fine, no pain, nothing. They do believe that with the saturation of cancer in his system, he would’ve had a stroke or heart attack in the near future. His white blood cell count was 138,000 – normal ranges are 4,500 to 11,000. Immature white blood cells had essentially clogged him up.

Over the next few days, we learned what we were fighting, what it would take to fight it and what changes to our future were looking like. We learned that he had the diagnosis of T-ALL (T-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia) and given the number of white blood cells, his age and other factors, it was going to be a fight. They gave us a terrible prognosis, 50% chance of being here a year from now.

After two days of intense chemotherapy, we discussed our future. On April 4, 2023, I proposed to Tracy. We decided to get married after he left the hospital but before starting ongoing chemotherapy treatments. Marry we did, in early May 2023. It was a wonderful yet intimate ceremony with our families.

Our Goals Moving Forward 2023 and Beyond

We hope to get back out to the mountains, but for now, it’s delayed. Tracy is nearly done with the intense chemotherapy treatments and will soon begin healing and mending his body.

August 31, 2023