Thursday, January 07, 2016

Just wanting to say thanks...

Ok, so I had the best of intentions.  I have a stack of thank you cards that I sincerely would love to sit down and spend time on, thanking each and every one of you for the gift cards, meals, blankets, craft supplies, slippers, hats, coloring books, stuffed animals, notes, cards, money, and many other wonderful heart-felt gifts you've all sent to help Abby and us through this.  However, as you can imagine, it's been a challenge just keeping food in the fridge and the laundry done.

I know no one expects a thank you card from us right now, but we want to make sure each person knows how much we appreciate your thoughtfulness.

So we say a very sincere "thank you" to each of you who have reached out to us with a gift, even if it is a simple card with words of encouragement.  It helps tremendously in the practical sense but also in knowing we aren't alone in this.

There's a cool story in the bible where Moses is trying to keep his arms and staff raised up so that the Israelites can remain victorious in battle.  Eventually, his arms get too tired but every time he lowers them, the battle turns and the Israelites start getting beaten.  His two friends, Aaron and some other guy I can't remember right now, stand with him and each hold up an arm.  Although Mark and I  can't compare ourselves to Moses, you all are our arm-holding friends.  When we feel like we are being defeated by despair and exhaustion, one of you steps in to hold us up and help us toward victory.

Wednesday, January 06, 2016

1500 Miles.

I've been trying to figure out how to summarize what life has been like lately.  But seeing the odometer roll over to 1500 miles since we've owned it seemed to fit the bill.

This is the clinic infusion week.  Abby is tired and a bit emotional.  She really just wants to feel better and play with her sisters.  We've had a couple good talks with her to see what we can do to help her out but you know what it's like to feel sick and depressed... unfortunately that's kind of where she is right now.  For a girl that doesn't express her emotions very readily, that is probably an ok thing.  She needs to wrestle with the reality of this life just like the rest of us, unfortunately a big part of that wrestle will be centered around being a 13 year old with cancer.

So, we're plugging along. Trying to help her the best we can.  Overall the week has gone ok so far.  We get up at 7am and drive for an hour and a half to the clinc, get her hooked up.  Fluids, chemo 1, flush, chemo 2, anti-nausea meds, food, ipod games, videos, coloring, a bit of online math, and then drive home by late afternoon.  

We have 2 more trips down this week and then hopefully we can keep her from getting a fever somehow -not very likely but a guy can hope right?  If no fever, she stays home for most of next week.  If a fever... we drive her to the hospital and stay there again until her counts get to the prescribed level.

In the meantime we are waiting for the insurance to approve the bone marrow swab test for the girls and then we'll get to see if any of us are a match (25% chance for Lily and Anna, 5% chance for Tiffany or I).  The rest of the extended family has the same chance of being a match as anyone who is reading this.

Once we know if they can find a match, and once we have the 2nd MRD test in mid-Jan, then we'll have a bit more of a timeline as to what our spring may look like.

One day at a time.  Thanks for all of your support.  We appreciated it more than we could ever express on a blog post for sure!