Hello everyone,

Well it has been a long time since we have posted any updates on Mom.  Thankfully, no news is good news in this case.  Mom has been doing great over the past 6 months. (Where does the time go?!) She feels really good most days, and has been staying active with walks around the neighborhood and trips to Kentucky and the beach house in Hilton Head.  She continues her post-transplant cycles of chemotherapy, and now has completed 8 of the 12 cycles.  So there are only 4 more cycles to go!  We hope she will be done with all 12 by the end of the year.  Mom's next trip to M.D. Anderson in Houston will be sometime in May, where she will get another bone marrow biopsy to check the status of her stem cell transplant, and screen for any signs of lingering cancer cells.  The last bone marrow biopsy in January was very promising.  We are still praying for a full remission, and seem to be on a good path towards that goal.

The end of last year, Mom's doctors gave her the 'go ahead' and  we were able to all travel to Hawaii to have a wonderful Christmas there with the family.  Hawaii is about the safest place you can go from a Covid standpoint, (if you can get in), so Mom enjoyed some great walks on the beach and some time with a few life-long friends.  It was especially poignant since our last trip to Hawaii in September 2019 was when Mom got sick.  This time she felt much better than the last, and we were able to celebrate how far she has come, and how strong and resilient she has been over the past year and a half.

At this point, Mom is trying to balance her desire to see friends and family with the ongoing challenges of Covid and her cyclical drop in blood cell counts after each chemotherapy session.    She has been vaccinated, as has the entire family, so we were able to breathe a big sigh of relief that it appears we all made it through the worst of the pandemic unscathed.   Recently William and Sisi had birthdays, and Mom was able to go out to dinner to celebrate with her grandchildren.  These days even eating out in public seems like a gift :-)

Summer is coming, and in June Mom and Dad will be celebrating 50 years of marriage!  We are so inspired by the two of them and by their continuing commitment to each other, which has only grown stronger in these past challenging months.

Thank you again for your love, support, prayers, and messages. 

Love,

The Worthams