My wonderful friends and family

If nothing else, Frank's "arrival" has reminded me that I have a wonderful family and a wonderful bunch of friends. Everybody has been very supportive and I've had lots of offers to help (which I'm sure I will eventually take you all up on). However, two of my friends deserve special recognition today: John and Elinor.

John is one of my circus friends and I've know him almost nineteen years. Even though John is ten years younger than me, he has gone through two bouts of testicular cancer. John has given me a lot of good information (e.g., "when I got diagnosed and started getting scanned, they found a variety of stuff with me that didn't turn out to be anything") and a lot of good suggestions (e.g., make a list of things that you want to do upon completion of the whole ordeal). Knowing that John has been down the same road that I'm traveling on is a huge comfort.

I've known Elinor a bit longer than I've known John - thirty years. (Although I recently found out her first name is "Lisa" - so I guess you never really know somebody.) She and I went to high school together and we've somehow managed to keep up with each other all this time. When Elinor read about my mother-in-law's gift for Kyle, she emailed me and said she had thought of a way to help too. Last Thursday, 24 April 2008, a big box of precooked frozen dinners arrived on our doorstep for those "times when the last thing you guys want to think of is cooking." The food looks delicious and the seafood jambalaya is mine, all mine I tell you! Back off! Grrrrrr! But I digress... Even under low-dose chemo, I already can see that there are going to be days when doing more than reheating something in the microwave will be too much work.

So thank-you all for your kind words and offers to help, but especially thank-you to John and Elinor.