Archive for August, 2008

An Amazing Update

I realize that it has been a while since I’ve updated this site. After we got our last test results, Holly and I had a huge sigh of relief and began putting our lives back together. Life has been slowly getting back to normal. Holly is healthy, but still has some of the side effects associated with chemo.

Mostly, they are digestive issues, but there are some weird ones too. She gets really motion sickness now and that is weird, especially during long trips. Even happens on flights.

Last year, when we were at the lake, Holly couldn’t swim across it due to the neuropathy. For her, this was a heart breaker as it it is a tradition that she and her sister have. They typically wake up every morning, have a light bite to eat and swim across. It is about 1,000 meters total to the close side and back.

But lately, she and her sister have been scoping out another place to swim to. They picked out a point about 2.5 miles away, across the far side of the lake, that they decided to swim to and then they were planning on running home (about 5 miles).

Honestly, I envisioned this as being all talk, but this morning, around 9:00, Holly, her sister and brother-in-law walked down the beach, into the water and started swimming. Her nephew went along in a kayak to make sure that they were all okay.

Holly’s brother-in-law, a regular marathoner, came home about an 1:45 later. Holly’s sister came home about 2 hours later. At the 2:15 point, I started out to look for her and found her half a block from our house, still running. A bit tired, but smiling like I’ve not seen in a long time.

As she was sipping a drink that I brought her, she simply said, ‘I had to see if I could still do it. I feel like it is something that I was taken away from me and I just took it back.’

I’m always proud of her, but this morning, I was especially so.