St Jude – Back at it

Angela and Summer made it back down to Memphis on Monday.  The weather was questionable for a long drive through central Illinois… It was a frozen mix of snow and ice that was sticking to the wipers and I think it was actually worse weather to drive in than the storm we had on Thursday.

On Tuesday, Summer got the news that her liver is not expelling the chemo from her system as it should.  Doing so its damaging her liver.  Of course, we look for ways to solve this ourselves…  “Are you drinking enough water?” is the obvious question.  The doctors know far better than us!  Just listen to them!  Summer was hooked up to her portable IV system again to keep the fluids going.

Today, Summer got her first dose of Chemo for this cycle.  I didn’t find out how this treatment cycle is weighed versus her liver.  Again, the docs know.  When I talked to Angela tonight, she said that Summer slept for a good chunk of the day.  I think she was stuck reading since she generally does not know how to work the TV.  Angela wants to go rug shopping because she says the floor sweeper at the apartment keeps pushing dirt under our front door and she can see it.  So, I would lay down money that, and being frozen in the apartment is keeping her on edge as well.

The GoFundMe met its goal on Christmas day.  That was crazy.  When we started the project, it was to help Summer pay loans, get out of leases and pay the initial bills at CARLE.  For the most part, that’s all taken care of.  We will be tasked with getting her a car this summer when treatment is over.  Angela and I talked about it briefly over Christmas and it was kind of tough to realize that our kid will “Have” to drive an automatic trans.  Two of her cars to this point have been manual transmissions but Summer has told me that she does not feel that she can handle the extra attention required to drive one now.  Maybe that will change by summertime?

Donations and the GoFundMe have been huge stress relievers.  Whenever we have to make a trip to Memphis our financial stress levels rise.  Last Thursday, before we left in the storm, Angela and I were hastily packing our bags and we got into a small fight about what vehicle we were taking.  Angela wanted to take the Fort’s Prius we have been using.  I told her we needed to take my work 4runner (Treehugger 3.0) because of the impending blizzard.  She said it would cost too much and we can’t afford it.  I pointed out that we had gotten a few hundred dollars in GoFundMe donations in the past day…  “We can afford it”.  She was was in tears and I could tell she was stressed to the max.  I can tell you that a 4Runner tracking 80 to 90 MPH gets about 12mpg.  That’s about 40 gallons of gas each way.  She was right…  The Prius would have done it in about 14.

A few days before when I sent the boys to Memphis to take care of Summer… I handed Aiden a hundred dollar bill to use for gas in our Prius and food on their trip down.  This money was a donation from work.

Its a massive relief to not stress about little things like this.

Thank you all.

If we start getting green lights for a vacation for the ages this summer in Alaska, I might run it up the GoFundMe again as we will probably be taking Nate along as well!