Sophie's World

6:30 AM: It's been so long since I've posted that I hardly know what to say! Preparing for the move is going well. Randall has taken care of so many things. There are packed boxes all over the house and in the storage building out back. We're going with a freight company called ABF, and although we have to load the truck ourselves, we will have the truck here at the house for 3 days, which makes loading a lot less frantic. We also get a guaranteed delivery date, so we don't have to worry about our stuff beating us there or waiting for days on end once we do get there. Our plan is start driving out on June 9 and spend some time with Randall's family along the way. He has made hotel reservations for the last two night of our drive, and we should get there in the morning on Friday, June 15.

That's just a fraction of what he has done. What have I done? Hardly anything, because I've mostly been in denial about moving. Now, I should say, I'm excited about where we are going and am really looking forward to meeting new people and making new friends. I think the town we are moving to will be great for the girls (how will I sleep at night without tractor-trailers driving by all hours of the night??). But I have grown attached to the people here, and I am not looking forward to saying goodbye. I've hardly packed anything in my office at work. I haven't yet filled out the telecommuting agreement (I REALLY need to get that done today!). I only have six working days left in the office, unless I go in extra days. I absolutely won't miss that commute (at least an hour, usually more), but oh how I will miss seeing the faces of the people I work with. Thankfully, RTI will pay for me to come back for occasional meetings, and there's already one in late June that I can look forward to. Maybe the biggest thing for me is no longer being 4 hours away from my mom. It's not like we were driving up there every weekend, but it was great that I *could* drive up there for the weekend (or she could come down here). But we're already planning for her to come down to visit when I'm here for work trips, so I can look forward to that. I don't want to sound negative, because I am looking forward to our new life. I'm going to feel this way whenever we leave one place and move to another.

The timing of Sophie's treatments and the move has worked out really well. On Tuesday, she goes in to clinic for her last dose of vincristine (through an IV), and then sedation on June 5 for methotrexate through a spinal tap and that last bone marrow biopsy. We get to throw all the chemo pills away on June 1, and Sophie will finally be able to eat after 7:00 (she takes one medication at bedtime on an empty stomach). There's a little tiny part of me that doesn't want to talk out loud about being done with treatment, because we just never know if we're truly done. I know the risk of relapse is really small, and there's no reason to expect that she would. But I guess we've lived under the cloud of "what if" for so long, it's hard to turn off those feelings. It's not like I think that way all the time, but it always occupies a tiny little corner of my mind.

I'm tempted to delete this whole entry now that I'm re-reading it, but it reflects how I am feeling (excited and sad), so I guess I'll post it!