Update

I'm sorry I've not updated sooner....life has been kind of busy. I stayed two extra days in Colorado and went to visit a relative there and to do a bit of site-seeing. After I returned I was out of town for a couple of days again to see my daughter's final symphony concert for the year at her college. We also brought her back home from college for the summer, and my youngest is getting ready to graduate. In the midst of that I've been working pretty much full time in my ICU.

Today for Mother's day my family and I got up at 4:30AM and took the train to Chicago for the opening of the Walk to Empower in Grant Park. Thirty thousand people were there for the 5K walk/run. The Walk to Empower is a breast cancer fundraiser for research dollars. We were there to support my sister-in-law (sister!) as she was recently diagnosed with advanced breast cancer at the age of 49. She is tolerating chemo well and has reached the halfway mark in her treatments. She is a special person; her team consisted of about 20 family members there and 80 more of her friends and coworkers. She's a special and popular lady that many people love! I feel badly I've not been able to talk to her a lot recently, she lives a few hours away and we don't email, and she's not wanted to talk a lot on the phone (I remember that feeling!). When we do see each other and can spend time together we have a lot to talk about, and I can be a lot of support to her. We communicate on a different level now than the years neither of us was in the cancer community.

My kids struggle with all of the attention breast cancer gets sometimes, and it does. They want to see walks and research dollars raised for appendix cancer, though they do understand that breast cancer is much more common and effects more people, so gets more attention. Appendix cancer and PMP are orphan diseases.

There are some new PMP walks, now though. There is the PMP Cancer Walk in honor of Frank “Dutch” Culbertson, who succumbed to PMP in 2006.

I think there will one day be more; I'd like to start a bike trip for appendiceal cancer research dollars someday.