Somber Reflections on a Saturday Evening

I am back in Texas and getting ready to start working on expanding our production capacity for our company.


Lots to do. Need to find a permanent site for the initial expansion as well as one that will accommodate the full farm. 


It looks like August 1st will be the official kick off for the next phase of our developmental strategy. 


Last Tuesday Lori's MRI at John Hopkins showed no progression in her brain lesion. That is very encouraging news.


We now will wait until the first phase of her clinical trial using the Iniparib and the Irinotecan is complete, which is on August 30th. If the therapy is working and we have no progression and no new lesions or metastatic activity she will stay in the trial as we work to also get her into the ImMucin vaccine treatment. 


Our research and medical discussions have convinced us this combination offers real hope for a possible cure not just a chemo maintenance plan.


We have no illusions as to what we are up against but the thought of simply accepting a "go home and prepare for the inevitable" was unthinkable.  


Life is not easy. 


I learned yesterday that my good friend Robert Colona's, (the former state biologist for Maryland), 23 year old son, Garrett was killed in a small plane crash. Words cannot express the pain and empathy I feel for Robert. I had known Garrett for almost a decade. 


Sometimes even with strong faith, we simply must look to the heavens and cry, "why"? 


Like millions of other Americans I was horrified by the Colorado killings at the "Batman" premiere. 


Sometimes it is just hard to fathom why things happen as they do. 


I think someone once wrote that the definition of courage was,  "having fear but working through that fear to take action". 


I am finally old enough to have reached a point in my life where my fears while still real, they no longer terrify me, and I am able to move forward and take action even though the fears are there.


Maybe one key to having courage is getting old enough to gain the wisdom that we really have very little control over the vagaries of life in any case.