roughly Christmas 2008
Happy Holidays everyone!!
Well, it’s been an adventurous year for us. If we haven’t managed to keep in touch with you over the past year, our apologies. It has been a bumpy ride for us. As the flight attendant says, “place your trays and seat in the full upright position and fasten your seatbelts snugly around your midsection.”
We FINALLY moved into our house in the middle of January and started to settle in. We started working the pizza oven and having small gatherings. Wahoo!!! If you haven’t seen the pictures, you can find some at http://picasaweb.google.com/laurie.d.coleman/HousePhotos
In mid February Laurie went in to check on some strange symptoms she was having. A not too long story shorter, the doctors removed a stage 3b cancerous lump from her colon that had also gone into 2 of the 9 lymph nodes they removed with the colon. For the next 6 months Laurie endured every other week treatments of Chemo (3 hrs of IV fun followed by 2 more days of a continuous infusion pump). The good news is that she didn’t lose any hair, but it did leave her with neuropathy issues so there was no way she could work during the non-treatment weeks.
We had a HUGE open house in May. I think there were more people than our wedding party! It was a blur of a day and neither of us remembers many details, but the caterer (same people that imported the pizza oven) was amazing and everyone seemed to have a good time. We anticipated people would just drop by, but much to our joy people stayed around for pizza and wine. I think the last people left sometime after 10 pm.
In the mean time David started more seriously trying to find a job, but at the same time not wanting to start so that he could be around to help Laurie (she couldn’t get things out of the refrigerator without gloves and, as one might expect, without someone to push her she didn’t have much of an appetite). His health coverage was due to end July1, so it was really important for him to find something by then. After lots of frustration and pulling a few strings with old friends, David got inside the Cisco wall again and completed the interview process in early June. Mid July Cisco finally finished the hiring process and David began work as a Product Supportability Engineer at Cisco (his primary responsibility is to provide product input and watch support issues for products from the customer side of things). He’s happy there, although working for a big company does have its share of frustrations.
In September Laurie finished her chemo and a PET scan came back clear and she had her Mediport removed as we were DONE! Or so we thought…. In early December Laurie had a 2 month follow-up CT scan and a 9mm spot was found on her liver. An ultrasound scan revealed that there is a mass there that is not a cyst. A week before Christmas Laurie went in for a biopsy. We received the word 2 days later that the results are positive for cancer. The oncologist has referred Laurie to the Stanford Liver Tumor Board. She’ll have surgery there sometime early in 2009 followed by another 3 months of chemo therapy. Laurie maintains a blog of what’s going on if you want to follow along. It helps her keep in touch with family and others that she communicates with in the cancer forums. Her blog is at http://lauriecoleman.blogspot.com/.
In the mean time life goes on. Theo continues to be a huge source of joy and support in our life. It’s hard to greet the day negatively when you’re woken up by a 130 lb bear of a dog wagging his tail, giving you kisses and telling you it’s going to be an exciting day (even if we don’t share his joy of chasing squirrels and bounding around the yard).
In 2009 we’re looking forward to taking a trip to the Caribbean in the spring and spoiling ourselves silly.
I think we’ve reached our destination for now. You’re free to unfasten your seatbelts and exit the cabin. Please remember to take anything you brought with you.
