Taking Stock... Medicine Free and traveling

I wanted to write in here the day Connor received his last Methrotrexate Shot on July 12, but for some wicked reason I couldn't. It was as of I did not want to jinx anything and in a way I have been holding my breath for the last 11 days.

For a week following the injection I kept giving Connor the Prevacid and Tums to balance out the shot but since Monday we stopped even that.

I can not tell you how happy but scared I am at this point.

 5 years in the making!

 5 years of not knowing if he will ever get to this point or if he will take a turn for the worse.

 5 years of our life's being impacted in so many ways.

 5 years of all of is changing. In some good ways and in some bad ways.

 5 years to take stock of how we fought this fight and if it was the right way... 

Now on a medical perspective I have extreme self confidence that we moved in all the right ways! 

On an emotional level we all are atanding here with lots of scars on our hearts and souls.

Tne anger and helplessness towards JDM never left me. I do not see a silver lining in watching my son fight this disease and crying through the pain.

Yes, of course we made wonderful friends that will be a part of our life for life. We also lost many friends. I faced complete disconnect towards people that I thought were important to my life before JDM.

Also my faith was put to the test. While so many find comfort in turning towards a Religion I found out that my faith and comfort turned and now comes from science. I guess in a way everyone needs to believe in something.

So the true test of faith comes in 2 to 3 weeks when Connor has his first bloodwork taken after stopping his medicine. 

As to us as a family we are wounded but we are still fighting. We are now trying to repair the wounds we had inflicted and making amends for the wounds we caused. We are all in Therapy at this point and I admit what felt like a weakness turns out to be the key towards healing.nit takes strength to realize we need help.

One of the gifts we have our selfs this summer was the gift of travel. We spend close to 10 days in Florida, playing in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando.

We then drove to Chicago to watch Niki Graduate from the Navy's Basic Training Program. On the way back we toured St. Louise.

Shortly after that the boys and I drove Niki's A3 Audi to California from Colorado. There we toured and biked along the South Rim at the Grand Canyon. We toured Big Sur and hugged tne huge Red Wood Trees. We then spend two amazing days in Monterey CA were we played at the beach with Niki and her friends, plus toured the Fishermens Warf and the Aquarium.

So we played at the East Coast and the Atlantic. We played in the Mid West through Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Missourie and Kansas. We finished up with New Mexico, Arizona and California and the Pacific. We swam in both oceans and it was pure heaven. So you see the healing has begun ....

Hugs, and thank you to all of you who survived the last 5 years with us and are still there! I don't think tne journey is over but we made progress!

RACA