I'm finding it hard to sit down and update about Annie's journey. Odd since things have not been this good for her/us in seven years. Odd since every day feels like a miracle compared to where we were a year ago. Odd because she passed her one-year battery of tests with flying colors. Odd because she had the wonderful honor of playing her ukulele while singing "The Rainbow Connection" to an audience of survivors and their medical teams just one year from when she played it to an audience of three while in isolation fighting for the honor to be a survivor.
Maybe it's because we lost a fellow traveler since our last posting. Not every kid makes it. Many of the people whose lives furthered the science that saved Annie did so without their lives getting furthered. There are many, many angels keeping us aloft.
Maybe it's what a cancer survivor friend meant when she shared advice she'd been given. "It's all about getting it into the rear view mirror as fast as possible," she was told. So much of our lives have been structured around her illness that it's such a treat to just let it slip away into the past, at least for a little while. But then there are parts we don't want to let go. Silver linings that are still precious. I's still to be dotted and T's to be crossed. The story isn't finished. There is still medicine to be tapered, hair to be fully grown back and a few more immunizations to finish up. Then there is the huge realization that a year from now we have the chance to contact the person who shared a part of himself to save someone he knew nothing about. There is more to be written. So the posts may get shorter and later but we'll finish this travel log until reaching that destination.
