Dear friends,   

The last few weeks Micah has made it to the maintenance phase of treatment and it does feel like there is a little more ease in our days, with less hospital visits (now only once every 2 weeks)  and Micah just taking daily pills rather than injections/infusions, etc.   So far, he has felt tired, and a little bit sicky, but much less so than the other treatments.    They are expecting the next couple of months to still be a little unsteady with blood counts and finding the right dosage, but all being well, he will hopefully stay more steady, though still immunocompromised, so needing to be careful about infections.  So hooray....and phew!  

Micah has been feeling well enough to  step out into the world a little bit more.  He has gone to school a bit.  He is fully appreciating the ultimate flexi school experience, where he can pretty much go into school for what he likes.   So far he has gone in for a couple of hours a day twice a week....usually consisting of lunch to see friends and a math lesson (though I did convince him to go to an English class, but unfortunately for Micah they happened to be writing an essay about a poem they had been working on in previous lessons).    I am not sure how long he can pull that off, but for now, he is taking full advantage of some of the benefits of having cancer treatment--a much slower life, which suits him  better than the stress he felt going to school full time and being in such a busy environment.      I am amazed at how well Micah has coped emotionally in the past 7  months.  I think there are strange connections with being faced with such a challenge as cancer that throws life upside down and the awareness of the preciousness of life and being loved so deeply.   

  I was just reading back over some writing and poems I did at the beginning of Micah's treatment. It feels so surreal and intense and I still can't quite get my head around how cancer seems to be following our family.   And as much as I can question some genetic linkage (we are waiting for results of a whole genome sequencing on Micah's DNA, which may or may not tell us anything useful)  or have we all been exposed to something we aren't aware of, and it might be getting all of us?      But what I do know, is that we are living in a broken and wounded world/times that are so in need of healing, attention, kindness, compassion, joy, hope and love.   The cancer that has lived in our bodies and could destroy us, is not so different from much of what has grown out of control in our culture---inequality, injustice,  busyness,  greed, fear, to name a few.  And we also know that as our bodies can heal, so too can our relationships, families, cultures, societies, nations.   So we try to attend to this wake up call of cancer in our family and see how we can attend to it in ways that might bring a little more love, healing, joy and hope.  

I am sitting with the words of Quaker founder, George Fox, 'I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness.”

Thank you again dear friends, for holding Micah and all of us in such a multitude of ways over these last 7 months. I believe so much of this holding, prayer and love has worked towards Micah's healing and all of us.   

Much love x