Treatment Week Two

To All-

We hope all is well with each of you.

My hope is that I'll continue to be able to post once a week giving you the chance to keep track of Ret's progress. As I mentioned in my last post my intent was not to draw attention to anyone individual or group, but again you people are making that extremely hard for me. Again as I confessed in my second blog, I must confess here I should have mentioned this from day one.

As all of you know Ret has worked for Dr. Baker for 12 years starting chair side, her real love, then ending up running the office for his practice. In those 12 years there has been many ups and downs with staff coming and going, including Shelby working for her mom and just the day to day stuff. However one constant has been Ret's and Dr. Baker's relationship of trust, mutual respect and understanding of what it takes to keep the office humming. That trust and respect has never been made more apparent in Dr. Baker and his wife Sheryl's commitment to Ret in these trying times. Their commitment to Ret is to continue to keep her on the payroll as well as continue to pay her health insurance coverage. As you can imagine for Ret and I that has been huge it's also truly hard to put into words what it really means to us. Obviously as in most cases in life the monetary debt can be met and parties satisfied. However I can't tell you how hard it will be for us to repay our debt of gratitude to Steve and Sheryl. In the most caring of ways we hope and pray that won't be necessary, but mine you, if they need us we will be there. We are continually reminded of your love, your care, your concern and how deeply your human spirit runs.

Ret has had a pretty good week this past week. Actually she starting sleeping back in bed, the first time in over two months. Her strength is getting better, albeit slowly the early morning dizziness is subsiding which is good as well. Our first Dr. appointment since starting medication is the 20th of this month so after that we should have a little more information to work with. We now have our first appointment with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance set for March 30th. We will first meet with Ret's physician team which will handle the entire transplant procedure, then her care team which will handle all pre and post daily care, then my favorite the financial team.

Again as we move forward I'll try to keep you all update as to Ret's progress.


We Love you all.
Ret and Jack