Thankful

I don't know if it is just this time of year, or this year in particular, but I have been so thankful and grateful for everything in our lives the last few weeks. Brooklyn has remained healthy this whole month! Yay!! I kept telling her that we didn't want her to get sick because we didn't want to be in the hospital for Christmas. I know that the nurses and doctors would've made it special for us, but we reeeeaaally didn't want to be there for the holiday. It was a bit hard to get stuff done because I didn't want to take her to any stores and expose her to more germs than normal and potentially have her get sick, so I would go out after Mike got home or he would pick stuff up for me when we needed something. It was definitely less chaotic than it normally is for us during this busy season, but it was so good. I told Mike that I felt so much less stressed than I normally do, and I don't know if we were just more on top of things with decorating and buying presents, or if we just realized that we need to slow down this year to keep Brooklyn (as well as the rest of us) healthy and so that helped us feel less pressure. It has been a great break from school too. The kids have gotten to play with some of their friends, and have had more than one day where they stayed in pj's all day - which they loooved! It was hysterical one day when we went to the park because we have been trying to keep Brooklyn away from germs as much as possible and right before we left to go home (because it was getting really cold outside and starting to get dark) I turn to look at Brooklyn and she has gotten her entire head wet from the drinking fountain. Ugh!! I'm thinking- she is going to make herself sick!! She got dried off once we got home and stayed healthy so we were thankful for that. We even got to go to church on Christmas Eve. I sat in the cry room with Brooklyn and Kelsey and my mom because we didn't want Brookie to be in the church with so many people. She wanted to go out with everyone else, but we managed to stay in the room and it was a wonderful service. We always do a lot of fun things with my family at my aunt and uncle's house so we all headed up there for a fun Christmas Eve and got home pretty late, but it was a really great night. Christmas day was magical. Brooklyn was the most excited that Santa had come during the night. All of the kids were thrilled, but her big blue eyes lit up when she came down the stairs and saw the presents all under the tree. She said, "Tanta came, Tanta came!" We don't keep any presents under the tree before Christmas because she is pretty sure that she should open anything that she sees as soon as she sees it, whether it's for her or not! We had a wonderful day after opening all the gifts and got to just relax, go on a walk, even watch a movie. It was great to just get to enjoy the day all together and rest. Tuesday we left and drove down to Mike's parents' house in southern California. It was a long drive, and we got stuck in traffic a few times, and Braden got carsick, so that wasn't fun, but other than that, pretty uneventful. :) It is so good to be here and visit with the Frank family. Mike's mom is done with her chemo but is still going through other treatments and isn't feeling great, so we brought 4 bundles of fun to keep her on her toes! We have spent time with Mike's brothers and cousins and aunt and uncle too so it has really been great. We haven't been able to come down here for quite some time because of all of Brooklyn's treatments and school and sports for the kids, so it is fun to be here. This weekend we are going to spend with friends from college that we always get together with for New Year's. It will be super fun and super crazy, 5 couples and 14 kids all in one house together. But we rented a big house, so there is room for everybody! Mike was really nervous about coming down because he was worried about what we would do if Brooklyn gets sick when we are away from home. This is the farthest we have traveled with her since January. We know that we will figure it all out though and continue to pray that she stays healthy throughout the trip. 2011 has definitely not been our favorite year. However, throughout all we have experienced, we have learned to be thankful for just everyday things that you normally don't think about. I am thankful every day for our four amazing kids. I am thankful for our wonderfully supportive parents. I am thankful every night when I go in to check on the kids and Brooklyn doesn't have a fever. I am thankful for Mike's job. I am thankful that we have a strong marriage. I am thankful for the support we have received from all of our amazing friends. I am thankful for all the research that has been done to find a cure for this disease. I am thankful for Jesus coming to earth for all of us. There is so much we have learned this year, but more than anything, we have learned how important it is to enjoy every day and to be thankful for all that God has blessed us with in this life.

Conflicted

Do you ever feel like things in your life are conflicted? Like in one circumstance, there are two contradicting options or answers. For example, I remember watching an infomercial one time at the gym a few years ago for the skin care line that Cindy Crawford sells. I was riding the elliptical machine thinking, I need to order that. It gets rid of your wrinkles, it has the nectar from a special cantelope in France, and her skin looks the same as it did when she was 20, so I really should order it. I neeeed it. And then I wake up the next day with a pimple. Seriously? Can you have wrinkles and pimples at the same time? So now do I need Pro-active? The people who use that acne medication all have really nice skin too. I think God is just trying to keep me on my toes (and maybe giggling a little!) To a more serious extent, we are constantly conflicted with choices we make these days for Brooklyn. We decided to keep her home two weeks ago so that she would stay healthy while we were out of town and because her blood counts were low, but last week, we sent her back to school even though we hadn't had another blood test to know if they had gone up or not. On one hand, we think maybe we should keep her home all the time to try to keep her healthy, but on the other hand, we want her life to be as normal as possible. The doctors even said that we should try to keep things normal for our family as much as we can, but that is so hard to do when we know how quickly she can get sick and how different that looks for her than for the other kids. A normal cold for a healthy kid can quickly turn into pneumonia for Brooklyn, which means another hospital stay and serious complications for her. We let the kids all go to that breakfast with Santa at my parents' golf course, but we haven't gone to see Santa anywhere else or gone shopping together because we don't want to expose her to so many other people with their germs and risk her getting sick. It is hard to try to balance what we need to do to stay "sane" and what we need to do to keep her well. She had a great time at school last Tuesday, but Thursday she was more tired and sat on her teachers' laps a lot. Friday morning I took the two little girls to a birthday party for a friend of ours. It was such a fun party and just right for us because there were very few kids there, and they had donuts and played for about an hour and a half and then it was time to go. I was so happy to get to take them out and do something "normal" like that. However, Saturday night, Kelsey came down with the flu. She had a fever for a couple days and was just tuckered out. We were so worried that Brooklyn would come down with it too because they are constantly together, but thankfully she never got it (and neither did the rest of us!) Yesterday, Brooklyn had her appointment with the oncologist and got her monthly chemo in the infusion room. She did great, as always, and got to spend the rest of the afternoon with my mom so I could get some last minute shopping done and take Kayla to her gymnastics performance. This morning she had a spinal tap. It has been a few months since she has had one, but we still have our routine down. We had to be to the infusion room by 8:00 to get her port accessed and then headed over to the hospital. We brought goodie baskets for all of her nurses and they were all so happy to see her. After her procedure, she woke up happy but wasn't feeling well on the drive home, complaining of a headache and dry heaving. She bounced back after a couple hours and was running around outside and making a fort inside. I was sitting with her before bed tonight and she found the bandaid on her back from her spinal tap today. She peeled it off and said, "Who put that there?" I kind of paused and said, "Dr. Ducore did." She asked me why and I said, "Because he poked you." (That is what we call it when she gets blood drawn or chemo through her port because it is all done starting with a needle.) She said, "When I was asleep?" "Yes." "Did he count first?" (She always wants her nurses to count to three before putting her needle in.) I said, "yea, he did." It blew me away that she had no recollection at all of her procedure this morning. I wonder what she thinks we do when we go there. She is awake and talking to all of her nurse friends and then falls asleep in my arms on the table in the operating room and then wakes up in recovery and we leave, but she never questions what happened or why we have to go. It is a blessing, I think, that she doesn't know. She has to take chemo every night at home, had a chemo infusion yesterday and a spinal tap today, but for all you'd know, she is as healthy as can be. She runs around and plays all the time, and just occasionally says she isn't "teeling" well. I know that is partly why it is hard for us to remember to slow down and not do so much with her, because she seems like she is just fine. It's another crazy contradiction because I want so much for the next year and a half to fly by so she is completely healthy again and cancer free, but I don't want to wish away her childhood. When she's done with treatment, it will be time for her to start Kindergarten, which is really great timing-wise, but we have been through so much just in the past year, I know we will want to hang on to her for a little longer. I think that we face conflicting & contradictory decisions throughout all of our lives, it is our faith and trust that gets us through those times. It is fine to need both Clearasil and wrinkle cream. :)

Staying Home & Getting Out

We had such a nice Thanksgiving week. It was great to be home and just play & relax & hang out with my cousin. We even got our Christmas tree and got our decorations up which was way ahead of our normal schedule! It was a fun vacation and hard to get up and back into the routine on Monday morning. This week was a bit of a "hibernation" week in our house. Monday we took Braden to a doctor's appointment for a checkup and then went straight over to the oncologist for Brooklyn's follow up appointment after getting released from the hospital last week. They said she was looking good, her lungs sounded clear, her breathing is good and she isn't coughing anymore. We went to the infusion room to do her blood tests and then went to lunch together. I ran another errand and then picked up Braden from school, dropped Brooklyn and Braden off at home with my mom and picked up Kayla to go to gymnastics. It was fun to be able to take her because she hasn't been in class since last spring & she has always been kind of a natural gymnast (maybe because she is always bouncing off the walls at home!) She picked it up right where she left off and it was great to get to watch her doing something she enjoys so much. The nurse called while I was at the gym with Brookie's blood results. Her ANC level was at about 750 which was much lower than it had been in recent weeks. She had been right around 1400-1600 until she went into the hospital with pneumonia and it shot up to 13,000 because her body was fighting the virus. So, for it to drop from 13,000 to 750 in just a week was a big drop. When she is at 500, that is when we are on "house arrest" and can't be around anyone else or leave the house. So, since it was close to that 500 number on Monday, we decided she shouldn't go to school and should just stay home all week. The doctor wasn't worried about her numbers so we started her chemo back up on Monday night. We were nervous because if she would get a fever, we most likely would have to check into the hospital again since her counts are low. The thing that made us most nervous about that is that Mike and I were going to Phoenix this weekend for his work's Christmas party. I was nervous to leave her and be so far away, especially if she would get sick & need to go in to the ER. My parents and aunt and uncle all helped watch the kids and I knew they would have a blast, I was just praying she didn't need to go in to the hospital for anything. For Mike and me to go away for the weekend was amazing. Mike kept saying that a night in a hotel is like a week in Hawaii for us! So for us to be gone for two nights was like 2 weeks! We had such a wonderful time in Arizona. We got to see some of our best friends and had a really fun night out with them and then just enjoyed hanging out together all day Saturday. It was great to just be able to relax and not have a schedule and get to talk without being interrupted all the time. It was also really nice for me since I had been on "lock down" in the house all week. :)  I like to get out more than we got to this week, but I know that it is not about me, that Brooklyn's health is much more important than getting out and running errands or visiting with friends. There will always be time for that, we need to be sure that she stays healthy and strong to be able to fight this disease and be healthy again. The Christmas party was really fun and we were so happy that Brooklyn stayed fever free all weekend so we were able to enjoy our time and not try to catch a flight home and rush to the hospital. Our timing for our flight home today was perfect because the kids went to have breakfast with Santa at my parent's golf course and we landed in time to get to the course before the kids got their presents from Santa. It was so good to see everyone and have the rest of the afternoon to hang out together. When I was hanging out with Brooklyn earlier tonight she said, "Mom, it's been long days since I saw you." I said, "I know Brookie, I missed you & I'm so happy to see you again." She gave me a big hug and said, "Me too Mom." It was really great to get away, but it is always so good to be back home.