I mentioned in my post about returning to work yesterday that the outpouring of support was overwhelming, but I really should highlight what my friends have done as well.

Yesterday when I got home I was surprised to find a box of cookies that had been sent to me by my friend Kelvin, his wife and son. When you're going through this you know people are thinking about you, you hear it a lot. Texts, emails, general messages of support.

And while you never expect anything more than that, when it does happen it just makes you stop for a second to think about how lucky you are in what would otherwise be a time when you feel like you have none.

Earlier after my diagnosis my friends Rebecca and Casey sent me a really nice gift box as well. I wish I'd taken a photo of it, but I guess I was a little too excited about the beef jerky I found inside. Side note, because I had to have one kidney removed I have to watch my intake of red meat. It doesn't mean no jerky but probably not as much as I'd eat if I had thrown caution to the wind.

Another fun gift type was from my brother-in-law Josh, his wife Mira and kids Jackson and Bodhi.

After the initial surgery I wasn't allowed to bend over for a few weeks while the site healed up. Their solution? A grabber claw. It was meant as a joke, but it actually helped out a lot, especially when I needed to clean up after my daughter as you can see in the photo.

Another category of fun and helpful gifts are gift cards to places like DoorDash and Uber Eats. After the surgery, the weeks after and as we got into chemo. Not having to worry about meal times was super helpful not only for me, but for Sheena. In total we probably got about $1000 from our friends and my coworkers. It has covered us for a number of weeks and definitely made things easier. Especially DoorDash because you can schedule deliveries in advance.

Sheena was hitting a particular busy time at work during my first week of chemo so being able to discuss and order dinner during her lunch break was one less thing she had to think about later in the day while she was deep in her work.

Another helpful category is just flat out manual labor. While all this was going on one of our toilets started not draining correctly and kept running. It happens that our neighbor is a handyman and he offered to come look at it and once he identified the problem even ran out to the store to get the part for me and then installed it.

Again, just people wanting to help any way they can.

All this is to say, thank you to everyone who has sent us something or helped out in some way. It's just a constant reminder that people have your back and are there for you. You're really not alone when you go through this.