Well hello there. I had started a back to school post back in September, but then life got really crazy and it didn't happen. The kids are doing great. They just turned six and they are growing like weeds and losing and growing teeth right and left, and loving their new school. We seriously won the lotto.
We lost my step-father in mid-October at the age of 64. I still haven't fully come to terms with his passing, as it was very sudden at the end. He was cruising along with his (stem cell inhibitor) clinical trial and chemo (though he'd lost a lot of weight) and then in late August, he got his first bad scan since January (when he first got into the trial). This indicated that his aggressive cancer was not going to cooperate and since a bad scan gets you kicked out of a trial (insult meets injury), he wanted to qualify for another (this one immunotherapy) at Mayo, that he got into in September. But it was sadly already too late. He was willing to do whatever he could to get to watch his grandkids grow up.
We got to be there at the end. It was eerily like my grandmother, who passed when I was pregnant with the twins, though she got an extra 30 years. Within a few hours of our arrival, he was gone.
Dave became my step-dad when I was 8, a role he took seriously for the second half of his life and the vast majority of mine. He loved us like his own, which was no small feat. He saved us.
He met my mom when I was my kids' age and starting kindergarten and she was starting her new life. She's doing as well as can be expected. We just took her and my eldest sister on vacation with us, which will likely be how we do it for awhile, maybe forever.
It's overall been a pretty shitty cancer year for us. My brother in law lost his dad and my step-mom lost her mom (both to metastatic liver cancer), and I lost a 40 year old high school friend and the twins' best friends lost their grandma who we saw every week at dance (both to metastatic esophageal cancer). My kids have been to more funerals just this year than I did in my entire childhood.
I had my best year professionally since I went out on my own, but now that the kids are in school full time, I'm thinking of going in-house full time. I will never be satisfied.
Speaking of that, we finally went to see Hamilton for our November anniversary. It was great. Get the soundtrack, it's at least half the experience.
Wait for it
Death doesn’t discriminate
We lost my step-father in mid-October at the age of 64. I still haven't fully come to terms with his passing, as it was very sudden at the end. He was cruising along with his (stem cell inhibitor) clinical trial and chemo (though he'd lost a lot of weight) and then in late August, he got his first bad scan since January (when he first got into the trial). This indicated that his aggressive cancer was not going to cooperate and since a bad scan gets you kicked out of a trial (insult meets injury), he wanted to qualify for another (this one immunotherapy) at Mayo, that he got into in September. But it was sadly already too late. He was willing to do whatever he could to get to watch his grandkids grow up.
We got to be there at the end. It was eerily like my grandmother, who passed when I was pregnant with the twins, though she got an extra 30 years. Within a few hours of our arrival, he was gone.
Dave became my step-dad when I was 8, a role he took seriously for the second half of his life and the vast majority of mine. He loved us like his own, which was no small feat. He saved us.
He met my mom when I was my kids' age and starting kindergarten and she was starting her new life. She's doing as well as can be expected. We just took her and my eldest sister on vacation with us, which will likely be how we do it for awhile, maybe forever.
It's overall been a pretty shitty cancer year for us. My brother in law lost his dad and my step-mom lost her mom (both to metastatic liver cancer), and I lost a 40 year old high school friend and the twins' best friends lost their grandma who we saw every week at dance (both to metastatic esophageal cancer). My kids have been to more funerals just this year than I did in my entire childhood.
I had my best year professionally since I went out on my own, but now that the kids are in school full time, I'm thinking of going in-house full time. I will never be satisfied.
Speaking of that, we finally went to see Hamilton for our November anniversary. It was great. Get the soundtrack, it's at least half the experience.
Wait for it
Death doesn’t discriminate
Between the sinners
And the saints
It takes and it takes and it takes
And we keep living anyway
We rise and we fall
And we break
And we make our mistakes
And if there’s a reason I’m still alive
When everyone who loves me has died
I’m willing to wait for it
I’m willing to wait for it
