I stated off the day making pancakes for our breakfast. Woody had been wanting them and he was out of oatmeal so this was a good day to have them. Isaac was my only student this morning. Joseph had a doctor appointment. And, I think the rest were getting ready to head out for a ministry gig. Isaac had his spelling lesson with me, then we finished Little House in the a Big Woods and then he worked on his K'nex build for his long time. This build uses a motor and gears. It is a replica of an amusement park ride. I believe that there is a challenge after he gets this built and sees how fast it runs...then he has to figure out how to make it go faster or slower by changing the size of the gears. He's almost got it built...this last part uses small parts and is a bit tedious, but he is sticking to it to get it finished.
Once Isaac left and I made sure that no one else was going to come over, I headed off to run an errand for Woody. He has two plastic "ski" glides on the back legs of his walker. He has worn out one of them...wore right through it. I checked with a local medical supply store to see if they had them, which they did. Yesterday it was just too wet to head off to get them so since it had stopped raining this morning and school was over, I decided to go get them. Nathan helped us get it on...well, really helped us get the plastic circle out of the leg and then popped on the new one. So Woody is once again gliding along with his walker.
This afternoon, Woody headed off to visit and pray with a friend who was recently diagnosed with
melanoma. His friend recently had surgery and will soon begin immunotherapy like Woody has had. Since Woody has "been there, done that," he thought he could lend some encouragement. What is amazing is how much has been learned about melanoma and now more ways to treat it than when Woody began is journey with melanoma. His friend will be getting what out Woody into remission...but when Woody got it was still experimental and the only way Woody was able to take it was for other treatments to have failed...now they are using it to start with as it has been approved for melanoma. Great strides continue to be made in the medical field in regards to melanoma. When Woody was diagnosed, melanoma was almost a certain death sentence...Woody was given the probability of less than a year to live. Thankfully he got in on drug studies that kept him going until they came up with an immunotherapy drug that finally out him in remission...eleven years ago this drug wasn't even an option...it became an option just shortly before Woody had run out of options
with other drug studies he had been on. We've seen a lot of water go under the proverbial bridge in his eleven years experience with Melanoma. We pray for Woody's friend that Keytruda works for his melanoma like it has for Woody's!
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