Actually Sandy has many new hats. These are two of her favorites. The straw hat is her Sunday-go-to-meeting one that Breanna affectionately nicknamed the "Gilligan Hat". Not in memory of Bob Denver, the actor who played the television character and who died recently. Sandy bought the hat about two weeks before he died. The other hat was a present from Shirley, Steven's mom and my ex; thanks again Shirley. It is a pink Packer hat sold through the Packer Organization; a part of the procedes go to support Breast Cancer research. Sand was talking to her sister Lori while I was taking her photo. Which hat do you like the best?

Sandy's new hat marks the ending of one leg of her journey. She has only one more radiation treatment left on Monday and her two oncology doctors tell her she looks and is doing great. She did not experience the fatigue they predicted and, as you can see, she has kept a majority of her precious hair. We and the doctors are not certain at this point if Sandy will lose any more hair when the chemo dose is increased. The chemo has made her only slightly anemic so the doctor has prescibed one iron pill a day.

In a month, Sand will need to have an MRI done. This one will be the baseline for future visits with radiation oncologist, Dr. Bastin.

In my mind's eye, I always see Sandy as the 21 year old college student I met in astonomy class at UWGB the summer of 1980. Below is my favorite photo of her that I snapped on the old bridge in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. It was a grey cold Sunday afternoon in mid October of the same year and we had taken a motorcyle trip up to Door County. On the way home, it began to drizzle and we were frozen by the time we made it back to Green Bay. I keep a framed copy of this memory on my dresser.

You can click on all the photos for a larger view.