*dusts off blog*

*clears throat*

Well hello! Somehow it’s been more than a year since I updated this. And I’m not doing a Christmas letter. So here you go.

The other day, I had a conversation with some one I don’t see very often. I could tell by her, “Soooo… your husband….” quiet, gentle lead was pretty much asking, “Soooo… your husband…. is he still…. with us?” which was very awkward indeed.

Yes. He is still with us, and doing remarkably well for having more than 105 rounds of chemo, 7 surgeries, cyber knife treatment, 2 radiations and radial ablation on the way. (Is there a cancer treatment BINGO prize somewhere? I’m pretty sure Preston wins.) He’s literally had so much treatment that the UNC system chart didn’t have enough pages.

And, even more remarkably, the treatment is doing his job, and keeping the cancer mostly at bay. This year, though, he has experienced some spread to his bones, which is causing some significant discomfort. He has an appointment in 2 weeks at Duke to try ablation.

We don’t know exactly what’s to come – it’s incredibly rare for colon cancer to make it to bones (honestly, it’s because so few people make it this far) so we’re just sort of taking it as it comes. To say that he is a trooper would be a dramatic undersell.

A lot has happened this year – new jobs for both of us (I took over as ED at NCNG and Preston has a new role at the company that bought his old one) and Conor is in the 4th grade. We have a small army of mental health professionals and Conor had been very fortunate to get plugged in to KidsCan at Rex and Camp Kesem at Duke – both wonderful programs for kids with parents going through cancer treatments. My board is supportive, and so is Preston’s new boss. Family is relatively close still, and so we’re making it work pretty well.

Most of the people that read this know that my mom died back in July. It’s been difficult for many reasons, not the least of which is that I miss talking to her about all of this. She was relentlessly optimistic, and was pretty good at getting me out of my funk. I try to channel her when I start to feel whiny. (And then, my therapist chimes in with, “Sarah, it’s OK to acknowledge that all of this is hard.”) She died when we were on our big, amazing vacation to Mexico. Which was kind of poetic timing. She insisted that we stay, and we did, and it was the right call, but I just feel like everything has been a little off-kilter since then. Like I didn’t quite reckon with it right. But maybe grief is never right and that’s just the way it is when you lose a parent.

So that’s been a whole other layer. We have had some wonderful trips, and boating adventures, and made loads of memories. I have 13,000 pictures on my phone. It’s like there will never quite be enough. I’m constantly documenting, and I think about writing it all down here as a historical record, but something always stops me. I don’t know why.

As I mentioned in last year’s note, it’s strange to me to feel the need to update this all of the time – it’s not that interesting. Everyone is dealing with their own version of awful, and we’re carrying on. Sometimes it’s OK, sometimes it’s good, sometimes it really sucks. Sometimes I can remember how fortunate we are to have access to medical care, jobs, supportive families and wonderful friends, and other times I get really frustrated that no one *quite* knows what it’s like to be in the long-haul cancer game, just figuring it out and moving from one treatment to the next and trying to balance worry with looking forward to good times.

But really, the long-haul is a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

So yeah. Still here.