Round 2 down..

Thank you all for the outpouring of support and kind words over the past couple of weeks. Z traveled to Charlottesville last Monday to receive his second chemo infusion, and I've posted a picture of him reading the website during treatment! The posts have been wonderful for his morale and we are so appreciative of your messages.

As far as chemo infusions go, Monday’s process was relatively painless. Having been poked and prodded with needles for the past ten years, Z is pretty calm about the IV infusion. Due to his excellent veins, doctors have always asked him to "volunteer" to let students practice drawing blood or inserting ports, and he's been the victim of some very sloppy stabbings. The experienced chemo floor nurses are a pleasant change, and the infusion itself was pretty smooth. Unfortunately, his infusion start time was delayed and it made the day pretty exhausting for him. There’s a four hour window around ingesting the oral trial drug when Z’s stomach needs to be empty, but with the late infusion start, he had to go about six hours without eating. Normally, he’d be able to handle that without a problem, but the steroid Z is on makes him absolutely ravenous at all times, so enduring a six hour fast is literally torture. The visits are very long and exhausting for him, and although he is tolerating the chemo well, treatment is extremely draining.

He visited the speech, occupational, and physical therapists on Monday and everyone was impressed with the major physical progress Z has made over the past two weeks. He is significantly stronger than his previous visit, and his left side is gaining more control and usage every day. Although his memory is still unclear at times, and it’s extremely frustrating for him not to be able to keep things straight, they also saw measurable cognitive improvement.

Today was a big day for Z. The W&M Women’s Soccer team celebrated “senior day” for the class that Z has been coaching for three years, and he really wanted to show his support for the girls. Coaching has been an incredibly important part of his life and he really cares about the players, so seeing them honored at their final home game was a high priority. In his first major “public appearance” in the last few weeks, he got to watch the senior recognition ceremony before the Hofstra match. The team went on to win in overtime and put themselves in a great position moving into the CAA tournament! Hopefully Z will be back on the sidelines by then :-) Keep the prayers coming.

P.S. Z wanted to make sure that the PostHope website name is not misinterpreted. "People better not think this website means 'post' as in 'beyond' hope. That would be very morbid, Dani.” (Dry humor intact.) Post hope is definitely just about posting messages of hope!