Hey Everyone,

This is Cari writing. Eric and I both thought it would be cool if I wrote something. I’m not much of one for spilling my thoughts, but I am going to try super hard.

In Eric’s last blog he mentioned that we just got married. It was beyond the happiest day of my life. There was nothing that was going to bring me down that day. On July 16th, Eric made me the happiest girl in the world.The mother’s both looked spectacular, the dad’s cleaned up nicely, we had the rest of our family and friends there to support us….and Eric looked amazing, all suited up.For months I cried at anything that had to do with weddings.I am honestly the luckiest girl in the world to be married to such an amazing man.When I first met him years ago, I never would have thought that I’d ever be married to him.

I’m going to be totally honest. I have had a crush on Eric for YEARS. Somehow we both realized this, and things progressed from there. I will never forget the first time he kissed me. I literally got in my car after that and smiled the whole 10-15 minute drive home. I knew right then and there it wasn’t just a little crush. The whole butterflies thing that happens in the movies happened to me that night.

We tried to kind of hide our relationship for a little bit, because we didn’t want to wreck our friendship and have our friends all know. Because had it not worked out, it would have been awkward for everyone. Well, it worked out just fine, and that brings us to now. Not a day goes by that the “C” word doesn’t cross our mind. But on our wedding day, it wasn’t even thought of. We were so glad to have one day where we didn’t think about anything other than how much we loved each other.

I never thought in a million years I’d be coming home from my honeymoon, and then checking into a hospital. I had my suspicions in Jamaica that this is what would happen when we got back. The 4th time he relapsed I had a feeling he did, just a gut feeling…women’s intuition. I knew in the back of my head that he had relapsed in Jamaica, but Eric kept me calm and told me not to worry, we’ll take care of whatever it is when we get home.Truth is, I was getting random bruises, and I was tired a lot too, so he reassured me everything would be fine, that because I was getting small bruises and tired, it was just a vacation thing. I know I can’t live life thinking “what if I would have gotten him to a hospital sooner” or “what if I would have done this” but that has definitely been going through my head.But I listened to Eric, and put it in the back of my head.Almost in denial of what was going on.I convinced myself that Eric knew his body better than anyone so I should trust him. What’s amazing about Eric, is that no matter how sick he is, or how busy he is, he still does everything he can to take care of others and reassure them he will be ok.

Eric and I decided a long time ago, that we’re not going to live our lives based on this disease and the “what if he relapses again” We will continue living as normal as we can. What is the point in living with the “just in cases?” Truth is, anybody could go at anytime. Eric’s beaten this thing 4 times now. He’ll beat it a 5th. If everyone in the world worried about what could happen, we’d all be sitting in our houses being overly cautious. What people don’t know is that when we first started dating, he relapsed for the third time almost immediately. We had been dating for less than a month. He gave me an out and said “if you don’t want to be with me, I’ll understand.” My response was “Eric, just because you have a bump in the road doesn’t change my feelings for you” At this point we were under the impression he didn’t have long. That holds true to this day. I still get the butterflies in my tummy when he kisses me. I still feel like nothing is wrong when I’m in his arms, and when we’re in a room full of people, I feel like it’s just him and I.

On that note, it looks like the plan is a form of chemo Eric’s never had before (along with some he has). Today was the first day of the six day regimen. The goal right now is to get Eric back into remission. Once he achieves remission, Eric’s doctors are planning to do something much higher risk than he has had before. The silver lining is that is comes packaged with a higher reward if it works. What I am talking about is a THIRD bone marrow/stem cell transplant from an unrelated donor. There are currently about 15,000,000 people registered on this list to be stem cell donors, so we are crossing our fingers that someone out there is a decent match. This is where Eric and myself urge everyone out there to go get tested to be on the national bone marrow donor registry. Go to www.marrow.org and search for your city so you can find a place to donate. You may not be a match for Eric, but there are tons of people out there who need matches.

Sorry this wasn’t much of an “update” on things, but not much has changed since his last blog.Thank you to EVERYONE for your love and support, you honestly have no idea how much it means to us!

Cari