Riding for Roses

WOO HOOOOOO!!! Spencer’s counts are back up. He asked for two things: fast food and Bastrop State Park. We did both. Tomorrow he goes back to school.

Hemoglobin is at least 10.3 (their machine reads low and I haven’t heard back with the real numbers). Platelets were almost 400,000. White cell count is pretty good and ANC is 900. That means now Spencer’s immune system is only compromised and not severely compromised. In our world, that is celebration and a return to school (and continuation of frequent hand washing and Purell).

Apparently, on Monday we made a serious omission at Bastrop State Park when we hiked part of the purple trail (the Lost Pines Hiking Trail), all of the orange trail (which is a cutoff on the purple trail that shortens the hike), and the entire length of the red trail (which runs from the top of the park up and down hills to a campground near the entrance). While hiking on the red trail, we encountered a number of signs for other trails where they meet the red trail. Starting at the top of the Bastrop State Park map and going down: green, blue, white, black, grey, and yellow. So today we did everything we missed except yellow and the bulk of the Lost Pines Hiking Trail. A big difference today was that I only carried him three times and not for long. Our route (follow carefully on the map) was to park by the grey trail, take the grey trail into the red trail, head north-ish up the red trail to blue, blue to the road, road to green, green to red, red down to white, white out to road, down the road to the entrance area and group barracks, in the white trail to the red trail, a quick walk to the grey trail, and into the car to go home.

Spencer covered everything on foot except for the two walks on the road and about 1/3 of the grey trail on the way out. He was the leader the whole way, setting pace (often a run, followed by slow walking to rest) and finding the trail markers to keep us on track. He did a great job the whole time and worked really hard to keep using energy so he would keep “sending the message to [his] body” that he needs more red cells and energy. That phrasing has been his favorite way to talk about exercise since he watched the DVD we got from Lifetime Fitness last week when I signed up. The DVD is about how to use exercise and good eating (rather than severely calorie restricted diets) to send your body the right messages to be strong, have endurance, and maintain a healthy weight. Scary, he’s watched 20 minutes of DVD and absorbed more about metabolism than I knew until I was 20.

Tomorrow, Spencer is back to school and I’ll start some training on my own, and work on fundraising letters.