Hello Team Zachary,

My husband Michael comes in from walking the dog. It is dusk. He tells me that as he was passing Zachary and Dara's house when he sees a little boy on a bike with training wheels. He finds this curious because he does not see an adult anywhere. Michael watches as the boy goes to the back of Zachary and Dara's house. Michael follows the little boy and finds that he and his mother are picking up sticks after a storm so that Zachary and Dara's house continues to look nice while they are in Omaha.

There are no small acts of kindness. And the family name of the little boy and the mom??? The Darling family. No, I'm not making that up. Isn't that lovely?? The Darlings!

Thanks to so many of you for your kind deeds and thoughts. We appreciate them.

Medical Update:

If you want some REAL powerful medicine, have your best friend come and visit you for a couple of days. Levi, you are the best of the best. No medicine is better than a lifetime of friendship and love.

Zachary is running out of medical options. If he decided to do nothing, his survival would be 30 days or less.

Zachary is 26 years old and crazy about his wife. If they are going to go to Chicago this summer, he needs to get well. So, the plan is to do the very last option they have for him, which is to do a stem cell transplant with a donor's stem cells on 2/19/08. In preparation for this risky procedure he will have to go through the highest level of chemo and full body radiation for three days twice a day prior to the 19th.

AND Dr. Vose said that he is in as good a situation as he could be in because for the first time his SUV levels (the metabolic activity of the cancer) is as low as it has been for many months. So even though the last round of chemo knocked him on his butt, it also did its job in diminishing the intensity of the cancer so that when they put someone else's stem cells in him his new immune system will have a fighting chance.

In the words of Zachary 'I feel like I'd just be layin' down if I didn't go through with it.' And so it is.

Journal Entry:

"Zachary, it is simply not enough to be charming, you must do the work. There is simply no way around it son." I bet I've said that to him 100 times in his life. It is the single message I shared with him again and again as he was growing up.

His whole life he relied on his unbelievable, over the top charm and verbal skills. And it works because he isn't acting charming he IS charming.

And I see him now and I am humbled.

I have never seen anyone ever 'do the work' that he has done. I am quite sure I have never experienced one round of chemo. I have never lost all my hair. I have never vomited all day and all night and then done it again. I have never lost control of my mind or my motor skills. I have never had a fever of 106. I have never looked at my beloved and wondered what they would really do without me. Not in theory, but for real. And that's just cancer. Before that he was in Iraq. I have never served in a war. I have never had my buddies die. I have never been so scared so scared... I have never wondered, 'will I really get out of this alive.'

And still I go to his room and say, 'son, you have to blow in that little blue thing that works your lungs so you don't get pneumonia again. It is your friend.

'You have to do the work.'

As though I know a thing about work! I don't let on but I know that I am standing at the feet of a man who has learned about 'doing the work' in a way that is humbling and foreign to me. Perhaps several of you have really done the kind of 'work' that Zachary is doing now. I certainly haven't.

It would be glamorous to say I wish that I knew just how much strength was in me but it would be a lie. I don't want to know. I've seen up close and personally what it takes to have such self-awareness. I think I'll pass if that's OK.

This year YOU are my Valentine!

XOXOXOX

Ann