A ribbon cutting, a note, and an anniversary

One month of school down and another month without any medical updates. We did make a trip to the local St. Jude Affiliate Clinic, but it was not medical in nature. More on that later.

We’ve had four-plus weeks of school to figure out our new routine for the year. We even made it nine whole days into the school year before someone got called home sick! Might be a new Palmer family record. I am also happy to report that everyone has survived those four weeks, and we seemed to have found a solid, manageable plan for navigating the days. I have re-taken on the elementary school drop-off duties and Lauren is doing the later middle school drop. The little three (they are not far off from looking and acting like triplets most of the time) are taking the bus home in the afternoons and then Caroline is picked up by a new person every day. Ok, that’s a stretch…but only slightly. It’s a conglomeration of a neighbor who we occasionally carpool with, a high schooler we pay, Lauren, and me. Three days a week she goes straight from school to the gym, so that’s where the high schooler, and me on Fridays, comes in. That saves the little three from being in the car for an hour and a half right after stepping off the school bus, which would be extremely hazardous to L’s health. Lauren then goes to pick her up from gym most nights, which is another almost hour roundtrip.

We have entered that season where we (read: Lauren) are in the car a lot and one or more of our kids is up until we go to bed. It’s new and we’re figuring it out while trying to prioritize well.

A few from September.

The boys are trying out new sports for the fall. Jennings is playing flag football and hanging with kids his own age on the field (he’s always played down in baseball). Henry is playing 6U soccer, which is still very much watching a pack of kids, seemingly joined together, follow the ball around the field. I often wonder why they even bother with the different color jerseys. We’ve been doing our fair share of football watching on the patio on the weekends - I love that it has become a family affair. And Smally wanted to show you her new look.

I must say, we are so proud of how Caroline has adapted to all of this. She seems to have adjusted well mentally to the start of middle school and seems to have good social / emotional health at the moment. She is enjoying her new gym (which was going to be our barometer of whether or not she continued in the sport) and never complains about the long days - she's gone for 12 hours a day on gym days. She is doing her homework, her laundry on the weekends, making her lunches for school and doing most all of it without any involvement or prodding from us. It's a beautiful thing.

So, I mentioned the visit to the clinic. We got to attend the ribbon cutting as they just completed a major renovation of the facility. It has truly been transformed and has all the pediatric touches you would find at St. Jude in Memphis. Our favorite part, though, was seeing the part that didn't change - the people. So, it was a happy visit that happened to land on a happy day. The ribbon cutting fell on the 3-year anniversary of Jennings receiving his cells in the RESOLVE trial. 

Later that night, right before bed, he pulled out his memory book and wanted to go through his beads.

That's him doing that in the top left. Below that is us out front at the clinic, minus the gymnast. Then top right is J getting some time with Puggles, the therapy dog, that the clinic in Charlotte was able to get. Puggles actually cut his teeth (pun intended) at the mothership St. Jude in Memphis. The last frame is a note that he wrote just a couple days before the ribbon cutting. Lauren happened to find it in his backpack; he said he was bored on the bus and so he wrote this note. I'll translate it in case you can't decipher "Jennings."

“I’m Jennings. My life is not normal. I was once sick with blood cancer. I had to go to Memphis 8 hours away and go to St. Jude.”

As far as he is concerned, he wrote that out of the blue. We had not yet told him we were going to the ribbon cutting and he has no awareness of dates and was therefore clueless about the upcoming RESOLVE anniversary.

It was a lot of stimuli related to that part of our lives in a short period of time. Being at the clinic, seeing all of the familiar faces, marking the RESOLVE date…and the note.

He had a similar desire to share out of nowhere right before he relapsed. I’m sure I’ve shared before, but he asked us if he could tell his Kindergarten class about having had cancer. Potentially traumatic flashback warning - this was during the “school at home” days during COVID. We told him sure and the next day, Lauren and I watched discretely from down the hall as he laid on the floor in our “school room” and told his class about his story over Zoom in a 5-year-old’s words. The next week we found out that he had relapsed. The closeness of those two events has always stuck with us. He already had cancer returning to his body when he decided to tell his class.

So, this recent note is, on the one hand, a beautiful picture of God’s grace. Jennings is alive and well, and he is learning to process what he has experienced. On the other hand, it is somewhat of a trigger for us. Our minds can’t help but connect dots and attempt to draw conclusions. We have grown in our ability to process, though. We are patient - the anxieties come, as days pass, they fade from the foreground to the background. Eventually, they fade away. That, too, is a beautiful picture of God’s grace.

Thanks for continuing to follow along and praying for Jennings’s long-term cure.

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9

#allinforjennings