Dear Family & Friends,
When I came home from the hospital in November I told Don I wanted to write the next entry on the blog, and as you can see I am much slower getting the job done. I am so deeply grateful to each one of you for your prayers, gifts, visits, and encouraging words. Without the support of friends and family this whole process would have been much more difficult. God has used each of you to encourage me and speed my recovery. Since coming home I have gained a surprising amount of strength. Daily looking at the progress it seems slow, but when I look back and compare I see great strides. I am walking without the walker completely, and I am now driving around San Clemente and on the familiar freeway treck to Valencia, church, and the mall. I am walking daily and now doing some up and down hill stints. My goal is to build muscle. On Feb. 7 it will be three months since the stem cell transplant. The Dr. says that is when we begin a maintenance program. We will address the compromised bone issue and the control of the multiple myeloma cells. Prayer requests are for my back to be stronger and without pain and for the neuropathy in my feet to continue to gradually go away. (Sometimes it takes about a year) Something that I have been blown away by is the dedication by three different people who have raised money for cancer research in my name; John Dindinger from Muscatine, IA who did a walk for cancer research, Dionne Petzold, who dedicated her whole season with TEAM in training to me with a goal of raising $3,000 for cancer research, and Re Grams, who also trained with TEAM, did a marathon in January and raised almost $3,000 for research! Thank you to these three. I am humbled and honored!
Thanks be to God and love to you all!
Ginny
