T+43 Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer!

BOX SCORE
Element	Current	Std. Range	Trend
Hemoglobin	10.9	13-17	^
Platelets	169	140-375	^
ANC	3440	1800-8300	v

🎵 Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer; 

Those days of soda and pretzels and beer [don't I wish!].

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer; 

And wish that summer could always be here! 🎵

Ahh! Summertime. Somehow we all seem to look forward to it, especially in January for those of us who live in the Pacific Northwest, where January with it's gray, wet, chilly days seems about twice as long as any other month.

Well, say no more; say no more. Summer is here! Today is the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. If you have anything that needs to be completed during sunlit hours, today is the day to "git 'er done." Summer vacations to the mountains or to the lake, or perhaps, the seashore promise idyllic days of rest and rejuvenation. There are family reunions and company picnics to attend. It truly is a time of renewal. 

Sometimes we forget that summer also can bring mosquitoes and sunburn and sweltering heat; brownouts and wild fires and smoky skies. But, today is the first day of summer, and many of us are rejoicing. 

In our family, we have several teachers and several grandchildren, all of whom are especially glad that school is out. It's time for Little League baseball and soccer games, and summer camps and family time. The garden is planted, and now it's time to watch things grow and produce fruits and veggies to enjoy fresh off the vine. It is a glorious time when God's creation is showing off its full potential, through the miracle of things that grow and produce all that we need to sustain life. 

Where Jill and I live, in the Willamette Valley, the fields are aglow with white meadow foam, and yellow rape seed flowers. There are cornfields and wheat fields, hay fields, and grass seed and sod farms. We are surrounded by vineyards growing grapes to feed the booming wine industry. Within an hour's drive there are dozens of wineries where people may enjoy some of the world's finest wines. Everywhere you look, the fecundity of God's providence is evident. 

Yep! Summer is a wondrous time. As we live out our summer in our cozy basement apartment, just a few blocks from OHSU hospital and about three miles from the Knight Cancer Institute clinic, we are missing out on most of those things in lieu of my recovery from a bone marrow transplant that happened forty three days ago today. The trade off is that we may be able to look forward to many more summers to enjoy with family and friends. The Bible tells us to be careful about planning things too far in advance and in too much detail.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— ¹⁴ yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. (James 4:13-14)

Nevertheless, we trust that the Lord has brought us through this journey because He has a purpose for us, when we come out the other side. What that purpose is, we have yet to learn, but the mere fact that it is there, gives us hope that, perhaps, next summer we may enjoy some of these blessings. We hope to travel to San Diego to visit our middle daughter and her family. We hope to spend time with our son and his wife and our granddaughters in Eugene, or perhaps, to take our eldest daughter to a summer festival of some kind. We haven't been able to do any of those things for several years, due first to the pandemic and second to my illness. Hope springs eternal! It's another blessing of summertime!

Today is also clinic day for us. You may recall from my last post that I had developed a bit of a rash, due to GVHD. On Monday, Tracey, our NP, prescribed a couple of steroid cremes to treat the rash, and as of today things are looking significantly better. You can see my latest lab results in the Box Score for today. On top of that my magnesium finally climbed into the "standard range." Granted it is at the bottom of the range, but it is in there, which means I only needed 2 grams of magnesium today, instead of the usual 4 grams. That shortened our clinic visit by about an hour! Tracey told me today, "You're crushing it!" That made me even happier than the first day of summer. 

Happy Summer Solstice everyone! How does your garden grow?