Hi everyone! First things first. Thanks and thanks again to all of the folks that have offered their help and support since Camden's diagnosis. Camden is doing absolutely wonderfully. Here's the details. So you get the Down diagnosis. Along with that diagnosis comes a laundry list of other things or defects that are more common in Down children; thyroid imbalance, hearing, eyesight, heart abnormalities etc. etc. We are very glad to report that Camden has had all of these (and more) examined and there or no concerns in any of these areas. Excellent news and Karen and I are overjoyed. We consider ourselves so fortunate to have Camden and once we embraced "measuring progress with a different ruler" (borrowed from another parent's account of having a Down child) we were even more at peace with our new opportunity.
Earlier this month Karen and I traveled to Maryland/Pennsylvania to attend Grant and Kristin's wedding and what a blast that was. I got to see all my neighborhood friends from when I was age six through fourteen. They were all doing well and we all found ourselves in very similar places in life. Every nit picking fault I ever had as a child with any of these 'kids' had long melted away and that left only old friends with found memories and great stories to share a wonderful evening celebrating the wedding. I so wish these people were my neighbors again. Grant and Kristin's wedding was storybook with great weather, a wonderful intimate ceremony complete with fireworks. Now the fact that the day before the wedding I was at a truck stop in Virginia in a car that wasn't running with temperatures in the 90's covered in a Redskins blanket and shivering in sickness took a little of the shine off the silver for me, but despite missing the rehearsal and pursuant dinner all other things went swimmingly. I did make the wedding - I was in it. I've always done the big things well in life and I'm putting not disappointing our best friends on their wedding day in that category.
One last thing tonight. I've followed the Tour de France this year again as I have for the last dozen or so years. So far two complete teams, Cofidis and Astana, have withdrawn because their leaders or contenders within the team have tested positive for either blood doping or use of banned substancess. Only tomorrow will we know if any of the Rabobank team will start after Michael Rasmussen's stupidity regarding deception of whereabouts when reporting to the governing body of the agency that executes testing on behalf of professional cycling. It's wrong when a cyclist cheats to win the Tour. It's wrong when a baseball player cheats to hit the most homeruns. It's wrong when the people that we elect to serve us yield to corruption. It's wrong when the people we look to for religeous guidance prey on our children. I don't lose faith that good will triumph over evil though as long as you agree with me. I lose faith though when I hear arguments that introduce spin and attempts at justification. As long as we collectively are the keepers of that which is fundamentally right and wrong I hold out hope that the world will be a better place for my children in the future. I guess what I'm trying to say is that while watching the news these days might be a bit depressing, it would be far more depressing if the bad news wasn't reported because being wrong or corrupt was no longer news.
