As you can see through the last almost 2 years of blogging, Donnie grew up being close to his immediate family . . . and his very extended family.  When you wanted to have FUN, you were with your cousins . . . and I mean 1st, 2nd and 3rd cousins!!   This weekend we went to Wing and Andalusia, Alabama, to see all his “people” on his Mom’s (Joyce’s) side of the family.  It was great, because both Joyce’s Mom’s and Dad’s family reunions are over the same weekend:  The Davis and the Turner families 🙂

We borrowed a van from the Babbingtons (what a blessing for Donnie!!), and caravanned up to Alabama with Donnie’s brothers and their spouses.  The guys (Donnie, Ronnie and Rodger) drove up in the van, and the girls followed in the car.  You can only imagine how all the guys loved that precious time together.  Lots of good jamming music and talking.  With stops, the trip took us about 10 hours.

Donnie’s siblings and Mom (9 of us) stayed in Lorraine and Robert’s double-wide trailer in Evergreen, Alabama.  The “trailer” is 2,800 sq ft, and has 4 bedrooms.  It was very comfortable and quite beautiful.  It has a huge front porch with double stairways for access, and plenty of room in the kitchen and 2 living rooms for all of us to be together comfortably:  great for memory making!

Mary Jo and Jackie (Donnie’s 2nd cousin) came over the first night we arrived.  Mary Jo and Donnie cut up a lot (hard to believe!).  He had made fun of her wearing culottes around the house last year . . . so she brought him his own pair to wear!  I can’t post the video, but it was hilarious!  So great to laugh at Donnie!!!

We ate great food all weekend.  I wish I had taken a picture of the kitchen!  It was amazing!  Plenty of room for togetherness during meal time.  I love that!!  Of course, our lunch time meals were with family at the reunions.

It is always great to reconnect with loving family, especially when they have been praying for you for almost 2 years.  Words really cannot describe how loved we all felt.  Of course, we all came home with deep south Alabama accents!!!  I felt so at home 🙂

All “the boys” love their weapons.  Rodger introduced everyone to tannerite possibilities this trip.  It’s an explosive that responds to high impact ammo.  I think an AR-15 field trip is in their future 🙂

Linda Turner Carnley (1st cousin) was wonderful enough to use her professional camera to take some cherished family pics for us after lunch!  We are so grateful 🙂

I post lots of pictures of Donnie, and he is having wonderful times with family and friends.  Interspersed between those good times, are times of nausea, sleeping for 7 hours in the day, getting up and eating a bowl of cereal, and going back to sleep at night for 11 hours.  He’s really all over the map from one moment to the next.  He has a rough day, and then he has a really good day.  He has a bad morning, and a good afternoon.  He’s like a box of chocolates . . . you never know what you’re gonna get!!  It’s a real roller coaster ride.  We are so very grateful for the good moments and days, and thank God for His amazing grace throughout this journey!!!!

Donnie was nauseated the day we had to travel back home from Alabama.  He took his antiemetics, and slept the entire way back in the van with Ronnie and Rodger in the van with him.  Even though he felt crummy the whole day, and slept the whole trip (except for eating and pit stops), it was so wonderful for him to have his brothers in the van.  It just made him happy!  I’m sure you can understand.

It has been 9 weeks without chemo at this point.  Donnie has been taking 75 mg of ER morphine twice a day for over a week now (these are huge doses in case you are not aware).  We were getting to the point where we both felt we needed more wholistic support, so we decided to ask for Hospice to get involved with us.  They came out today and gathered all our information, and we are onboard.  I had said when the time came, I would like to be Donnie’s wife, and not the health care decision maker at the bedside.  This allows both of us to have the support we need.  Dr. Z will continue to be our attending physician, and we also have a Hospice physician that will manage Donnie’s pain and give him the medical palliative support he needs.  We are both relieved.

We will continue to “go” and “see” family as long as we are able.  Only God knows when that will change.  In the meantime, we will continue to fill our days with joy.  We both have a peace about the situation we are in, and are grateful for the love of family, friends, and especially God!!

Thank you so much for your prayers.  We cherish them.

Love,  Donnie & Tina