Friday evening

Dear Friends and Family,

Another wonderful week has passed, wonderful not because it is perfect but because it is better than the prior week. Florence Nightingale I mean Marilyn really helped Nan so much this week and with Nan doing better I was able to give more attention to the company and our precious clients. Thanks again Marilyn.

This evening Nikki and Keanna came to see us after the 3 hour rehersal at the dance facility. Nikki brought food to prepare and Keanna went over her routines with the music. She has really learned a lot this year in the classes. So tomorrow is her recital when she gets to make her moves and have fun. We are so proud of her and enjoy her every move.

Pam is planning to come over and enjoy Keanna's big performance tomorrow. After we are through enjoying Keanna we then must think of finding Dana. She will be either at Oakland or Sacramento sometime tomorrow. We can't wait for her to get here. Dana is a hoot, a fasinating person and she is ready for a break too.

We saw the doctor today. He had prepared a summary of Nans battle with GIST as a first step in getting AMN. He asked that I contact Dr. Morgan at Dana Farber and find out more about using Sprycel for GIST since he could not find anything in literature about such use. He was generally pleased with Nan's condition, with her unswollen feet and with her blood work. When we got home I wrote an email to Travis and Dr. Morgan and amazingly Dr. M responded at 5:45 east coast time. He said Sprycel works for about 10% of patients he sees so it is a bit of a long shot. Yet until we get a chance to try AMN we do need to do something. Dr. Melynk agrees that we need to try something.

We received such nice comments today to the blog, Nan got to read comments from several days this afternoon as she was able to spend some time with her computer finally. This afternoon she also had some squash, cottage cheese and ice water. This evening we had strawberry shortcake with whipped cream and she enjoyed it very much. We've had to pump a couple times today to removed extra fluid and each time she felt better afterwards. We think the lima beans last night might have stopped things up a bit but her colostomy has continued to work today.

Steve came this afternoon and was kind enough to take the boat and begin repairs to make it work for the summer. He and his friends can do just about anything and fix it. The carb needs help, the ignition needs help and the waterpump probably needs help too. Steve can make it run well again and Johnathan, Dana's son will enjoy playing in the water behind the boat later when he arrives.

We are very very grateful this evening that Nan has once again rallied from being very ill to being stronger, fully aware, engaged in life again. We face huge challenges but we are also very thankful for the progress we have experienced this week.

We send our eternal thanks to each of you and are so appreciative that you are our family, our friends, our support system, our prayer warriors.

love

tim and nan