the thing about hope

As you may have already surmised from my longer than usual silence here, Andy's scans of mid-June did not go as we had hoped.  They showed a small tumor in his right lung and a small spot on his remaining kidney, in addition to the bladder tumor.  So, metastasis.  The word we had so wanted to avoid.  But there it is.

So we headed to Mayo and the doc there told us chemo...soon...to address the systemic cells.  And he gave us some hope with his positive attitude and his willingness to see us through this.  He told us we can "only know if we try" and that "we'll swing for the grand slam" and we bottled that up to take home.  Then we headed north.

Six hours of driving brought us to the southern shores of our beloved Lake Superior, to a new-for-us-spot: Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  We pulled into the small primitive campground on Saturday mid-morning with fingers crossed.  No reservations allowed.  It looked to be full, until right there in front of us was a very recently vacated amazing lakeside campsite.  Their fire was still burning.  It couldn't have felt more perfect.  And so we stayed for three days.  Holding in our palms the gorgeous colors of the lake stones, listening to the loons, wandering the hiking trails, admiring blueberry, bunch berry, lady slipper, and june berry, crawling into the tent long before dark (the sun was still plenty high in the sky at 9 pm!), and rising early to do qigong on the beach.  We talked, we cried, we thought about cancer and we didn't.  We laughed and grumped and did all the normal things we always do on these trips to the north.  We felt our energy revitalizing, we felt our feet back under us, hell, we got some mojo back.  We came home ready to do this thing.

And so we will.  On Monday Andy starts chemo.  He is positioned in so many ways to get what he needs from it and stay strong throughout.  

The lake and its forever skyline, the loons calling in pairs, the strength of storm tumbled rocks...it gave us what we needed.  It gave us more hope.  The intention of a positive outcome. That's the thing about hope, it comes back around and says "trust" loud and clear.  And we are tuned in. 

Please join us there.