Pi

Jenny here.

It's been 2 long weeks since I've had the want to blog.  Sometimes the short snippets of info via Facebook are just easier to manage than sitting down and letting go of the emotions that surround the days, the hours, the minutes, since transplant #2.  Giving out "just the facts" allows for energy preservation.  It also has allowed for less thinking and more napping.  Naps.  We have both been catching as much rest as we can the past weeks.  I've taken 2 days off from the hospital to get things done and to just cuddle with the dogs while binging on Gilmore Girls (Tyson has become Mr. Snippy with me because he's angry and tired of this hectic schedule).

Wil has had no blood products for four days now!  He will continue to have some transfusions to keep him going, but he hasn't gone this long without a transfusion in, oh, two months!  He is in more pain lately, bone deep pain throughout his body due to neupogen injections, but they say this is his bone marrow getting down to the business of making cells!  

Yes, if you haven't heard the dancing and shouting yet, Wil has officially engrafted!  Yesterday he had his first day of neutrophils (.3) and his WBC (.4) was slightly higher.  Today those numbers jumped to 1.5 and 1.6 respectively!  Now we are in the process of getting him a *hopeful* one way ticket home in the next few days, just as soon as he can get off the IV meds and continue with stable or increasing cell counts.  

I'm not saying social workers can't be good at math, but it's often a joke that most of us don't like it, can't do it, and skimmed by with as little of it during college as possible.  That's why it's particulary funny that I married someone who loves math for all it's formulas, constants, numbers, and logic.  Words that trigger a fear response in me, complete with self soothing rocking!  But I am good at simple math and can count. And 72 days straight is longer than we ever imagined.  Having him out of our house for 50% of the last 11 months...crazy.  We have somehow survived yet I can't really wrap my head around it either.  The numbers don't lie, but they sure don't tell most of the story either.  I think it will be some time, settling back into home, before some of the last few months has time to soak in.  Discharge day will be quiet because energy is low, but it will be lovely.  Goodbyes to BMT staff...I expect might feel both sad and surreal.  They have lived through this year with us in the most intimate way, all the twists and turns, and are jumping for joy now...big smiles today with the good news.  I hope they know how much good they do and how much of a difference they have made in so many ways beyond medical.  There is a BMT love song on my heart constantly.

Sunday, a sweet friend held a second haircut fundraiser for us.  I so wish Wil could experience the energy and love that comes with these functions.  There was the sea of blue FTBF shirts I dreamed of plus lots of hugs.  It was a great day.  Driving away from the event, headed to the hospital, exhausted but jazzed, I couldn't wait to share pics with Wil.  Between the t-shirt sales, hiarcuts, and jewelry sold we made our goal and then some.  $1300.  Enough to cover copays and meds through day +100.  

But Wil was very sleepy when I arrived and could barely keep his eyes open.  I scanned through pics once more as he slept, thought about the plentiful arms around us, near and far...so often we have felt on the edge of oblivion in the past 11 months, sometimes only reeled in by the charity, hope, confidence, kind notes, and affection of those fighting with us.  Indescribable.  

Being the non-mathematician, I am always surprised when math is on my mind.  So when the word Circumference kept popping into my head the last 2 days, I had to WikiHow it to get a better understanding of the visual I kept seeing in my mind.  

Soon it will be the year mark since Wil was diagnosed and first admitted.  A year...circling back around to this time in 2013, I just don't know where the time has gone.  Sitting here at the hospital, day 72 of this admit, day 142 on BMT, the curvaceous nature of this journey is also more than I can put into words.  I do try, via this blog, to capture some of it.  It often just feels like a photograph--a caught moment without full context.  So maybe, I thought, math could finally help me in a sort of theoretical way just this once.

Circumference:  "The linear distance around the edge of a closed curve or circular object." 

Pi:  "The ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter"

For me, the circle visual I kept seeing this week was, I thought, about the coming back around...to this time last year...to coming home soon...to an emeging sense of self and being...to a new immune system...(insert the Lion King's Circle of Life instrumental track in the background).  

I do think that's part of it.  We have come the distance, skirted along this thing called cancer, something much bigger than we had bargained for, riding the edge along the way, yet still hanging on.

Each phase of this has held complications...an ever lengthening diameter drawn out, a widening circular turnabout following.  Only looking at the facts, the appearance of an enlarging, curving, road seems daunting.  Many times people ask how we are managing, with serious eyes and "I can't imagine" statements.  From the outside looking in I would say the same thing.  True, some days I'm amazed myself at how it all gets done...how Wil keeps going with daily pain and exhaustion...reading previous blogs I realize I don't recall some of the more traumatic, low energy times.  In an simple but eloquent way, what we have learned so far is summarized by this simple math formula.  The interesting thing? Circumference and diameter are only two parts of the equation here because circumference is intertwined with Pi.  It's in an intimate ratio relationship--ever evolving circumference has a constant, supportive counterpart in Pi.  When the diameter distance lengthens, extends, increases...without fail, so does the circumference.  Held together because of little old, unassuming, unchanging Pi.  

Pi, to me, is the foundation of the equation.  Just like the people who have remained constant on our journey.  Just like our faith, our happniess, our struggle.  It's the constants that allow us to hug the road along tight and quick turns.

This is where we must all reside to make it through this life--we all have an unknown distance yet to travel, but if it is enmeshed with a ceaseless framework of love that grows and expands in relation to the fight, we will always live in an abundance of wonderful.  We make it around the loops because of folks who have fixed themselves to our cause, in a multitude of surprsing ways. We help others, we grow, by doing the same.  We are all so intricately connected.  

This process is not lost on us for a single second.  I keep going for him.  He keeps going for me.  Constants.  When we are both weary, every time, someone else has stepped in with unbroken resolve to do the same for us as a whole.  Whether it be by prayers, donations, visits, well wishes...Our story continues to have no shortages--just a beautful ratio between what is and what is needed.