Happy Birthday, Gretta!

Happy Birthday, Gretta! Today she is 36, so we can still talk about her number! I talked to her this morning on our way out here. It’s a good thing because we have no cell phone reception out here! I hope we’ve met our quota on emergencies and nobody will need us, but if they do they can reach us by land line Camp Allen’s phone number is 936-825-7175. Tomorrow is my sister, Ruthie’s birthday. I’m looking forward to seeing both of them before the end of this month; we’re going to Gretta’s for Thanksgiving and will come by Ruthie’s house on the way home. We’re planning to go to Gina’s house on the way to Gretta’s. This is a big travel month for us! I am so thankful that we are able to travel this year. This time last year I was bald as an onion and couldn’t get out amongst people. I cleaned all the pictures off my computer before we left the house (stored them on an external hard drive) to free up space on the laptop in hopes that it would work better, so I borrowed this picture from the Magic Foundation. We’re really proud of her work with them.

I gave a lady a shot today to help her get her white blood cell count up. It was a $7,000 shot! Her caregiver’s brother died this morning, so she came without her; I guess I’m her caregiver, now! Of the 14 patients here, 4 are breast cancer survivors. One is an ovarian cancer survivor. One is is living with lung, bone and liver cancer (!), and the rest are all Leukemia survivors. Most of them have had stem cell transplants. They have some way bigger stories to tell than I do. I see, again, that I am so blessed. We all feel that we are! We all thank God that MD Anderson is here and that we can come here for our treatments; we all feel that God is the source of our healing and MD Anderson is the tool. It’s been so good and we expect tomorrow will be, too. We thank God for the opportunity to have this experience.