Derby Day

Last night was the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. The kids always look forward to it. I do too, to a point. The buildup is huge - they do a weigh-in the night before where all the boys can scope out what other people have done for their cars. There is always drilling and scooping and sanding to make sure that the car is as close to the allotted weight as possible. They walk into the cultural hall and the track is all set up and ready to go. They can barely sit through the business of Pack Meeting. Finally, finally, the races start. And......it's over. The boys all get a chance to race multiple times but when each race lasts less than 5 seconds it seems a little anticlimatic. I missed about 90% of it because I was supervising Tessa and a few of her little friends as they colored. Henry's car won the first heat he was involved in but I think he came in 9th overall. He did, however, win a special award for Best Design, which involves the Assistant Cubmaster picking the car that he liked the best. Henry's car got a few goodnatured scoffs when it was announced because he painted two big red U's (for the University of Utah) on it and most people up here in Cache Valley pull for Utah State. But he used bolts and washers to add the weight to it and they gave it a distinctive look, which you can kind of see here even though it's a pretty poor picture.



Henry also got a spacer at the dentist yesterday, so if you talk to him and something sounds a bit off, you know why. It's a good thing that he tested out of speech earlier this year - he spent all of third grade and half of fourth mastering the S sound and now one dental appliance has him back to square one. His speech teacher would probably cry because she worked so hard to get him "graduated" from speech. Anyway, it's a temporary thing to hopefully allow his teeth to come in more easily and straighter.

Just don't ask him to say Mississippi anytime soon. Take my word for it.

Music to Our Ears

We heard the words we have been waiting for today - Henry is cancer free. His last bloodwork showed a thyroglobulin of 0, which means that there is no thyroid tissue, cancer or otherwise, detectable in his body. His latest chest CT showed that the spots in his lungs that were metastatic thyroid cancer were gone. At his doctor's appointment today I asked, point-blank, if we could consider him cancer-free. The PA smiled and said, "yes!" So we'll go with that.

We have periodic - say every 4 months - blood work and follow-up appointments with our pediatric endocrinologist. But the active phase of his cancer treatment appears to be over. He'll be monitored for the rest of his life - both for a good TSH number (his needs to be low) and an undetectable thyroglobulin (a rising number could indicate a recurrence). We'll take that kind of medical monitoring and be grateful for it.

We celebrated by letting Henry choose where we ate lunch. He chose The Pie, a pizza place near the University of Utah campus. Then we made a quick trip to Ikea to buy a new TV stand. We could have stayed for hours there - I seriously could have gotten lost in that store - but Henry kept asking if we were done yet. Turns out browsing in furniture stores isn't his preferred activity on a Friday afternoon, even a Friday on which we had great news. He perked up with a Slurpee and a doughnut on the drive home.

Other than that, things are going well for the Wrights of Hyde Park. The boys have basketball on Saturday mornings and are having fun. The weather isn't too terrible or too cold. The Pinewood Derby is coming up this week. All in all, January 2011 is OK.

War Eagle!

I'm a college football fan. When Jay and I were dating he invited me to a college football game (1996 - Utes vs Utah State - the Utes got beat). My response was something like, "oh, I love football!" Later he told me that he thought, "yeah, right - all girls say that." But then we went to the game and I was able to talk intelligently about football and he was duly impressed. I tease him about that being the night he fell in love with me. Anyway, we watch college football alot in our house, our favorites being the University of Utah and Auburn.

In Alabama (the state, not the university) college football is a different animal than it is here. I grew up an Auburn fan. I'm not sure why - you just are an Auburn or an Alabama fan and my family went with Auburn. I actually lived in Auburn for a year when my dad was working on his doctoral degree. It was my first grade year and I remember going for walks around campus and seeing the mascot - War Eagle - in his giant cage. It's a nice place, Auburn.

Today Auburn fans everywhere are celebrating Auburn's first national championship since 1957! I even managed to watch the entire second half, although it was a nail biter at the end. I know lots of people around here were rooting for Oregon for whatever reason, but I don't care.

War Eagle forever!

Anniversary

Today is the first anniversary of Henry's surgery and subsequent thyroid cancer diagnosis. I was thinking about it this morning and trying to remember details of the day. Honestly, it's kind of fuzzy. I was exhausted, physically and emotionally. I hadn't slept well in the weeks leading up to his surgery and the anticipation of the cancer diagnosis was just so emotionally draining. I remember Henry laying on our bed all morning, playing with his borrowed DS game system. He had to fast so we just had him stay upstairs so we could make sure he wasn't tempted to eat or drink anything. I remember dropping William and Tessa off at my friend Nicole's house and how she hugged me. I remember sitting in the waiting room and Jay saying to me, "you know that it's going to be cancer, don't you?" I remember knowing that there were so many people that I needed to call and tell the news but I just couldn't because I knew that if I started crying I wouldn't be able to stop and I needed to hold myself together to take care of Henry.

Mostly, though, I remember the kindness of those around us. There were doctors and nurses who checked on Henry even when they were off their shifts. Henry's teacher came to visit him every day in the hospital and even came to our house to check on him. My friend Nicole took my kids for hours and hours at a time, effortlessly folding them into her daily routine so that I wouldn't have to worry about them. My friend Melissa didn't know it, but when she walked into Henry's hospital room early in the morning the day after his surgery with hot chocolate and a smoothie and a smile for Henry and a hug for me she was a literal answer to a prayer, because I was floundering and wasn't sure how I was going to make it through the morning until Jay came back to the hospital. Those are my main memories from early January of 2010 and I'm grateful for them.

On this first anniversary we are feeling positive. We know his latest bloodwork is good. We're waiting for a call back regarding the results of his chest CT from last week. We have a doctor's appointment in 2 weeks. But things are good.

I don't think Henry even realizes that today is significant to him in any way. He got up at his normal time and asked for his thyroid pill. He complained about the Jazz loss last night. He talked about how excited he is to start playing basketball on Saturday - his first game of the year. He bundled up and went to the bus stop with his brother. After school he'll come home, have a snack and watch TV or play on the Wii. He won't even think about the fact that a year ago he was in the hospital. It's just not something that he thinks about too much.

Life is as it should be.

Anatomy of a Cave-in

Jay and I try to be responsible about money. We have a budget and we do a pretty good job of sticking to it. We don't go out and buy the latest and greatest of anything, no matter how tempting it is. Jay certainly likes his technology, but he gets a pretty good fix at work where they provide new products on a fairly regular basis. He has a cool phone with all kinds of applications; I have a silly prepaid phone that is a few years old. The other day I accidently hung up on a member of our bishopric who had called to talk to me about Primary. He incredulously asked me, "did you hang up on me?" when he called back. And I had to explain about my lame phone that likes to hang up on people.

Anyway, we've resisted getting newer "stuff" for a while. We caved on getting a Wii last winter, but that was after Henry's cancer diagnosis and we felt the need to overcompensate for his lack of fun during January, February and March. We have an old-school DVD player that still plays VCR tapes as well. Our computer is older than Tessa and I pray every morning that it makes it a little while longer. And until Saturday, our TV was one of the older, boxy 27" TV's. We bought it a few years ago and it worked just fine. No immediate plans to replace it. Until.....

....we awoke to no sound from our satellite TV. Well, there was sound, but it was static. We tried a bunch of things to narrow down the problem and figured out that it was something to do with the satellite TV - the TV worked fine with the DVD player, the VCR and the Wii. But could we be sure? What if there was some kind of compatibility issue that was rearing it's ugly head? We didn't wait to find out - by late afternoon we were the proud owners of a new, larger, flatscreen TV with HD capability. The satellite guy came yesterday and the sound problem was just a cabling issue. If we had been patient, we would have been just fine. But we weren't and honestly maybe we were looking for an excuse to buy a new TV. It didn't take us long to jump on that purchase.

The kids love it. Tessa said that, "it was the best day ever" and kept hugging the box. Henry and William just stared at it, even with the sound not working on the TV. Jay and I like it, too.

Welcome to the 21st Century, Wright family.