Jack to Normal

So it’s been a year…. and it’s time for a long overdue update…. Maybe our last update, as I think it’s time to bookend this little adventure story. What started with a helicopter flight to St. Louis has wound down to mundane car rides for brief appointments and checkups. As expected, we might have finally settled in to a life of normalcy…. Or what we’re calling the new normal. And it feels good to use that word again. When people ask how Jack is getting along, I say we’re almost normal. Our friend Jen came up with the inspiration for the name of this little blog and I’m happy to report he is back to normal.

So this was always gonna be a tough update to put together, which is why it’s taken so long to do it. Today is the one year anniversary of that flight, and we’ll be having a little meal out tonight to celebrate normal. We’ll eat too much, bitch about the cost of Pad Thai these days, and then head home so I can watch some Andy Griffith at a reasonable hour. We’ll hopefully talk about something other than Cancer. Like maybe we talk about being back in school, working at Blue Sky (best co-workes ever), and probably complain about his grades. You know, normal stuff.

So to get to the point of this update, all of this normalcy is only because of the people at Siteman who treated our little guy… who are NOT normal… They are (to use a word that is often over used) heroic (opposite of normal). At least they are to us. To them, fixing Jack was normal. Our doctor once said “this is what we do” in such a casual way that we had no choice but to believe him, and he proved us right. His team never let us believe otherwise either. Yeah there was a lot of hand holding, some frustrating moments, and yeah we didn’t get everything right… but we got our kid back.

We had some highs (Christmas and Birthdays on the 9th floor) and some lows (Spinal taps – 14 maybe?) but we made it through. Meg got to be quite the city girl in St. Louis so don’t hesitate to ask where the beat places to eat in the Central West End are…. She also probably set a record for most puzzles ever completed on the 9th floor in January.

So let’s just say our house has a lot to be Thankful for this year. I hope that you (the person reading this) will know that you have a place at our table… Because it’s you who we will be thinking of this week. You called, you wrote, you gave, you kept us strong when we weren’t, and we are humbled and thankful. We have some paying back and forward to do. And we will work on that every day.

Happy Thanksgiving…

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you…

Meg, Jack and Rich