I've been planning to write this for a long, long time, but I wanted to really reach an endpoint before posting it. The period from December to February saw us reach two huge milestones to cap off the last 2-3 years: the sale of my parents' house for my mom's estate on Christmas Eve, and the end of required scans for Tyler at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK).
To recap, in August and September of 2012, we got hit with a triple whammy of events: my company in VA chose to close their office and consolidate in Franklin, TN as of October 1st, my mom went into the hospital in early August, came out a week later under hospice care and passed away two weeks later. And a week before she passed, Tyler got sick, was misdiagnosed for a month, then in late September was found to have cancer. At that point we dropped everything, uprooted and came back to NJ so he could be treated at MSK.
Word had gotten around about my mom's passing, Tyler in the hospital, then our return to NJ. And I was utterly blown away by the response from the Rutgers Community. Rutgers friends, classmates, alumni and staff all reached out to me to provide support. We truly are Family here at Rutgers. The amount of support we received, from people loaning us furniture until we could bring ours up from VA, to help finding a job, to getting firewood to keep our house warm immediately after Sandy, to meals, help with logistics, so many things, ... it was unbelievable.
So this is a humongous THANK YOU to all of you. Words can't express how much your support has meant to us. For me, especially, it was truly meaningful to receive everyone's help and well wishes while trying to be the rock for my family. All of you helped keep me sane.
I was going to post this a while back after the Spring Game as I didn't want to take attention away from that, but shortly after that we had a scare with Tyler getting sick 3 days in a row, and having to come home from school on Mon. and Wed. of that week. Fortunately that turned out to be nothing, most likely related to the heat at the beginning of that week and the fact he rarely eats or drinks anything in the morning. I guess this is something we're gonna have to live with until he's an adult. Anyway, I've been sitting on this for a while and wanted to get it out there.
I wanted to share a couple of pictures
Here's Tyler and I about a month into his treatment, when he had dropped about 15% body mass:
And here we are in a photo from the end of March (yeah, I know, he's not smiling, but this gives a good idea of how much he has grown), almost two and a half years later:
He's up over 6.5 inches and 38 pounds between those two shots. And since that last shot, he's put on over an inch and a quarter - he's really in a growth spurt right now.
To recap, in August and September of 2012, we got hit with a triple whammy of events: my company in VA chose to close their office and consolidate in Franklin, TN as of October 1st, my mom went into the hospital in early August, came out a week later under hospice care and passed away two weeks later. And a week before she passed, Tyler got sick, was misdiagnosed for a month, then in late September was found to have cancer. At that point we dropped everything, uprooted and came back to NJ so he could be treated at MSK.
Word had gotten around about my mom's passing, Tyler in the hospital, then our return to NJ. And I was utterly blown away by the response from the Rutgers Community. Rutgers friends, classmates, alumni and staff all reached out to me to provide support. We truly are Family here at Rutgers. The amount of support we received, from people loaning us furniture until we could bring ours up from VA, to help finding a job, to getting firewood to keep our house warm immediately after Sandy, to meals, help with logistics, so many things, ... it was unbelievable.
So this is a humongous THANK YOU to all of you. Words can't express how much your support has meant to us. For me, especially, it was truly meaningful to receive everyone's help and well wishes while trying to be the rock for my family. All of you helped keep me sane.
I was going to post this a while back after the Spring Game as I didn't want to take attention away from that, but shortly after that we had a scare with Tyler getting sick 3 days in a row, and having to come home from school on Mon. and Wed. of that week. Fortunately that turned out to be nothing, most likely related to the heat at the beginning of that week and the fact he rarely eats or drinks anything in the morning. I guess this is something we're gonna have to live with until he's an adult. Anyway, I've been sitting on this for a while and wanted to get it out there.
I wanted to share a couple of pictures
Here's Tyler and I about a month into his treatment, when he had dropped about 15% body mass:
And here we are in a photo from the end of March (yeah, I know, he's not smiling, but this gives a good idea of how much he has grown), almost two and a half years later:
He's up over 6.5 inches and 38 pounds between those two shots. And since that last shot, he's put on over an inch and a quarter - he's really in a growth spurt right now.
