This year, I didn't have much to report around the time of her 19th birthday. I looked back, and four of the last five birthdays were called out here. I only missed her 14th in 2019. 

So, here I am publicly wishing my unstoppable girl a happy birthday. That's six of them since starting the war on osteosarcoma. When her pediatrician sent us to get an MRI after suspecting a tumor, she told us "What you don't want to hear is sarcoma." Well, that's what we heard on biopsy day, and have since learned over and over what a vicious cancer it is. 

It was actually a pretty mellow day this year. Inver Hills was on spring break, so all her friends were working or off on vacation. We did a little antiquing and had a cake. Once the friends were back, they had a perfectly timed birthday party day-into-sleepover on the Saturday when the weather was in the 80s.  Four new friends she didn't even know a year ago joined for a great party. That's milestone #1.

Milestone #2 is not huge, but it struck me as remarkable. This week, her platelet count reached the very bottom threshold of normal for the first time since August 2021. Platelets were the last standard blood count to reach normal after the onset of leukemia, excepting that high ferritin (iron) level. That's the reason she's still getting monthly labs, and that's going to be high for a while still. 

Milestone #3 is finishing her first full school year since seventh grade in 2018. And actually, she missed most of the last month of that year when starting chemo, so sixth grade. This week, she'll end her first year at Inver Hills Community College with a 4.0 and those credits will make her high school diploma official. If this post time travelled back a few years and she saw it, she'd find that preposterous. It's been a lot of years of not being able to even think about school, but now she's got a successful start to a degree in fine arts.

I also have wanted to share the video from the March gala. It was such a special and memorable event in so many ways. 

Lastly, Isabel and I shopped a local church garage sale last summer that was raising funds for American Cancer Society's local Relay For Life. She was excited to learn about Relay For Life, and we signed up, then attended as a team. That ended up being just the two of us after Sara took on a hornet's nest that afternoon. It was a fun event where she felt some true solidarity with the community of survivors, caregivers, and those who've lost family members to cancer. She and I have become active with organizing the event for this year, and we're attending the Survivor's Breakfast on Saturday. Naturally, I built the website Relay For Life IGH | SSP | WSP (relay52.org), and she's had great ideas and helped me design the 20th anniversary logo. She's scheduled to be the survivor speaker at this year's event on August 3 (Relay For Life IGH | SSP | WSP 2024). Our team is still just the three of us. We'd love to have others join our team that day. It's an afternoon-evening of hanging out, taking a lap around the track once in a while, and supporting those affected by cancer in the suburbs just south of St. Paul.