Aila
Hi Edna,
I haven't written in a while, and it's not because I can't think of anything to say. We took a trip to Squaw Valley, near Tahoe (which the kids called "the pond"), and I took a break from seeing patients for a couple weeks. Life was different for a few days, and it was tempting and maybe even necessary for us to pretend that leukemia had never entered our lives a year ago. The kids made sand castles on the shore and yelped with excitement when the water would wash up onto their toes. Decky threw sand into his own hair over and over, giggling with pride. Aila and Zander fought over every last thing, like brothers and sisters do. We took all three running along a bubbling Tahoe tributary and took everyone on their first gondola ride. It was so normal that it was tempting to just pretend that there had never been a reason to write a blog in the first place. So I didn't write.
I took Aila to the Stanford ER on August 8th in 2015, and cancer began. It's been a long, long year, and we decided we needed a break. 365 days and 52 weekends at 326 Elwood. Brian went on a work trip for 3 nights, and we all went to Santa Cruz for one night to see our friends Heather, Tom, Reino, and Laila. And we certainly spent our fair share of nights at Lucille Packard and UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals. But we needed a break from the relentlessness of our 1400 square foot house, where post-diagnosis Declan has learned to crawl and walk, amazing people have helped us survive, Zander has prepared for kindergarten, and Aila has been a chemotherapy patient.
I was thirty years old when I decided once and for all that I would get a dog. My parents always said that dogs were too much work, so we did not grow up with one. I was a graduate student in Boulder, Colorado at the time, where dogs are often treated with more respect than humans. I had a boyfriend and friends, but I was lonely nevertheless. Yearning for companionship, unconditional love, the future. I found Trinidad through the Colorado Correctional Industries Prison Trained K-9 Companion Program. Before coming to live with me, he spent time living in a cell with two different inmates (in the Trinidad Correctional Facility, in Model, CO), who cared for him and tried to show him how to behave in the world.
I'm not sure that this is appropriate material for the blog, as it's not very happy. Aila went to camp last week on Tuesday and part of Wednesday, but then refused to go on Thursday and Friday. Why? We have absolutely no idea. My father asked the high-school-aged camp counselors, who said that all was fine until she asked for "Wampa" an hour before the end of camp on Wednesday, prompting them to call him. Zander said that a boy called her a "baby," which is entirely possible and makes my heart sink to the floor. Was it her binky? Her absence of hair? Her slow and labored gate? Could have been any of these or a host of other things.