Golden
The streak is alive! And only one month to go…which is mindboggling, but more on that later.
Quite fittingly, in my opinion, the US men’s hockey team won gold in the Olympics this past month. The first time since 1980, which was the team and the unlikely victory dubbed the “Miracle on Ice” from Al Michael’s famous call, “Do you believe in miracles? YES!” It later sparked the movie entitled “Miracle.”
This year’s victory was maybe only slightly less surprising and given it came an entire generation later, there’s not much of a frame of reference for anyone my age and younger.
Both teams won the gold medal. Fittingly, gold happens to be the official color for childhood cancer awareness. It’s the reason Lauren chose Team Gold as her team's name when she ran for LLS Woman of the Year just prior to Jennings’s relapse. She raised nearly a half million dollars, bringing home the title in Charlotte and good enough for runner up nationally.
Just a week prior to that gold medal hockey game, Jennings crossed over Day +1800 since transplant #2. That is the last one-hundred-day marker on the journey to five years. Reaching that, for a kid like Jennings, with relapsed AML (post-transplant) with both Monosomy 7 and KMT2A subtypes, is nothing short of a miracle. I tell people all the time he is a miracle kid. If you met him today, you would have no idea…no idea that the boy on the left was once the boy on the right.
The five-year mark, right around Day +1825 depending on the exactness of your math, has been the goal since he relapsed. It has been a point of reflection at different points in the journey. THE mile marker that we looked towards. I went back and found a couple of old blog posts where I remembered writing about that reflection. This was from April 14, 2021. Just a month out from his second transplant and in a time where we seemed to be teetering on the edge, the threat of relapse a real possibility with each every-other-day CBC check. 👇
This is another one, a little further out, but still at a point where the 1800s seemed like a dream, not reality. We were feeling the slog, the marathon-like nature of the journey, and realizing just how far we still had to go. It’s from October 21, 2021.
And here we are. It is real. In just a few short days, we will hit March 11, 2026 on the calendar. That will mark the five-year anniversary of Day 0, when he received my cells. We are looking forward to marking the day, being intentional and reverential around what it means to arrive here.
About a month after that, we will head to Memphis for our last spring break visit with his transplant team, God willing. And they will move him over to the “Cured” column. It is a slow journey over to that column. One where the feelings of intense anxiety, fear, worry gradually fade and a sense of a return to normalcy, a life without words like relapse, GVHD, immunocompromised, chimerism, slowly builds. What a miraculous journey. To God be the glory.
And maybe also a small miracle - I am still updating this blog. To that end, here’s the stuff that probably keeps you coming back…pictures!
This never happens…11+” of snow in Charlotte! It was incredibly beautiful and the kids had a blast. Jennings with his giant ice ball that sat at the end of our driveway, blocking the mailbox for the better part of a week. That’s brother-man going to work…except not really. He was shoveling in hope of making his own ice ball. Also pictured, Char and her Jabba the Hutt style snow man.
Once the snow melted, we found ourselves gearing up for spring activity season. 👇
That’s the boys at their winter baseball training camp put on by Ballantyne Ridge HS. They got to practice on the high school field and some of the high school players helped lead it, so they were loving it. We are in meet season for C. So proud of her and thankful that she is seeing her hard work day-to-day in practice pay off in competition. Small bear is still trying to find her passion, so in the meantime, we put her in swim classes to give her something and boost her confidence going into swim team later this year.
On the house front, things are coming along…maybe not quite as fast as we would want, but we are making progress!
We have tile in the bathroom…and Lauren loves what she picked – high-fives all around 🙌 We also have floors…not sanded or finished yet, but a big step, nonetheless. We met with the guys at Metrogreenscape who are going to redo our patio and put our outside space back together. They do such awesome work – we can’t wait to see how it turns out. We seem to spend a great deal of time over there measuring, marking, and making decisions...trying to do our part to remove all barriers from getting this thing done!
Thank you all for following along on this journey. Your faithfulness has meant so much throughout the days, weeks, months, and years. It has kept me accountable, which has in turn, has kept this mile marker in view and front of mind. Your prayers have surely been effective – we have crossed the +1800 mark, and all of the five-year milestones are in view. God is faithful and His steadfast love endures forever.
“His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, ‘Behold, we are your servants.’ But Joseph said to them, ‘Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.’” Genesis 50:18-20
God’s purposes are bigger than our plans. We are thankful for this journey and all the ways we have seen, and still see, God working in it and through it…and that’s just a limited, small glimpse of all that He’s doing.
#allinforjennings