Identity I

Treatment twelve underway! White blood count was up three points from last time, likely due to the fungal infection that contributed to my pain last week. So another milestone is reached. We still don't know at the moment what is to come (who does, but God alone) but our appointment on December 29 will likely decide much. Speaking of knowing what is to come, it struck me just now that we had no idea a year ago, or even seven months ago what we would be facing as this year waned into its final months . . . but God knew. Even that brings great comfort to me.

Cynth says I should tell a little about the photos you see here. OK.

Starting on the top left and working down, one of my first portraits, probably three to five years old. If this is so, we were living either in the Arial Mill Village north and west of Easley, or in Clemson, either in a duplex east of campus on highway 93, or in a prefab on a site where Littlejohn Coliseum now sits. Do you see the mischief?

Next, a candid shot by the yearbook staff at our Alma mater, formerly Baptist College at Charleston at the beginning if the Fall Semester, 1984. I had just returned from Air Force ROTC encampment at Tyndall AFB FL (early August) where my first Air Force plane ride was in the T-33 which happens to be the last plane my step-father Bob piloted, a week at Myrtle Beach (later August) and my Uncle Edward's funeral (end of August).

Next, a photo taken in our house on base        housing at Davis-Monthan AFB AZ, probably in 1989. It is post-Caleb, but pre-Aaron. We were stepping out to a squadron Dining Out at the Officer's Club. Cynth chastised me for picking a photo where her eyes were closed. Oh well. I'll just relish my thinner days.

Last on this side is my return from the Middle East and Operation DESERT STORM after over five months in theater, March 1991. We were one of the last units to arrive, but one of the first to leave. Our plane missed the big welcome home with then Senator Keating, being broke at Griffis AFB in Rome NY. A C-130 unit in Schenectady, NY had the part we needed, we were repaired by late that evening, then flew to DM for a small welcome home with our families present. Aren't my boys precious and my wife lovely?

On the top right is my post-retirement, newly hired government contractor photo from October 2006. Hired by General Dynamics as part of a operational support contract, I was just beginning a three year stint (before they lost the contract) and also beginning to let my hair grow out, the result which you see in ...

The second picture, the extent of my rebellion. Yes, that is me in the Fall of 2007. We also took a picture of the back, me standing next to Cynth to confrirm my hair was as long( but thinner) than hers. We went straight way to my favorite barber, Mina, our former neighbor (in 1998-9) who is from Iran. Good folk. They still refer to us as their good neighbors. Anyway, right after this picture we went to get my hair cut. I had had enough. Now I wish I had hair at least as long as Sawyer's (or Le Fleur's, whoever he is).

Next is a picture of Cynth and I after the diagnosis and after maybe a treatment or two. A much different Greg and Cynthia than in earlier pictures. Still as confident, but now in God and his Christ after years of trusting little by little knowing him increasingly more and more. We had been through the struggles of friends who derided us for our engagement, the difficulty of navigator training, a one-month deployment to Japan and the Philippines, a difficult pregnancy and delivery of Aaron, a deployment to the Middle East to participate in combat with all of the uncertainty for those who remained behind and those there who sweated out the first several months before commencement of hostilities. The realization that God is much bigger than we ever knew and was active in everything in his creation, including two little people like Cynth and me began about this time period.

The last picture is me in the chair getting my infusion of Camptosar (Irinotecan) during one of my treatment Wednesdays when the weather here was warmer.

As I began this, I intended only to describe the photos for you.  I didn't realize I would be so verbose (long-winded as the hillbilly might say).  Part II, which follows, fills in some of the blanks beghind the photos.