Please pray for Avalon

Avalon is an amazing and very brave 6 year old. She underwent 2 years of treatment for leukemia and is in remission. Avalon has brain, GI, neurologic, and musculo-skeletal damage from the treatment and continues to amaze and inspire family and friends alike.

Avalon’s mother has been a huge support to parents of children with ALL. Her emails and words of advice and encouragement have helped me more times than I can count. I consider her a friend and my heart is breaking for what Avalon and her family are going through right now.

Serenity insists that we include several cancer warriors in our prayers every night. If one is forgotten – which only happens when someone other than Serenity is saying the prayer – we start over. Avalon is one of those warriors. Right now Avalon needs all the prayers she can get. Please take a moment to visit her website and keep her family in your thoughts and prayers.

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/avalonhavan

Dentist

Serenity had a dentist appointment today. She was scheduled for a cleaning next month but yesterday the receptionist called and said they could fit her in today.

It wasn’t until we were there at the appointment that I remembered that her oncologist wants her to have prophylactic antibiotics a few hours before her appointment. I’ve forgotten in the past and they’ve always had us just hurry up and take some as soon as I remembered.

So I called the oncology department, a little embarrassed that I’d forgotten. The person I spoke with chastised me because she was supposed to get a CBC ahead of time in order to make sure her ANC is above 500. I’ve never done this before! I really think I would have remembered. I mentioned that we’d never done it before and I don’t think he believed me. He said they always want them to have a CBC ahead of time. He did agree to call in a prescription, but I wonder now what her ANC is and if everything will be alright.

We have an appointment next week for her monthly vincristine, and she’ll have another lumbar puncture with methotrexate injected into her spine.

Busy Christmas Season, thanks to Cancer Support Groups!

Just wanted to post a quick update and share what Serenity has been up to so far this Christmas.
She has seen Santa three times!

First was at a family Christmas party:

Then she saw him again at the Make A Wish Foundation ‘Christmas Cookies with Santa’ activity:

Finally, she saw him again tonight at the Christmas for Children with Cancer Foundation:

While there, she also saw Cosmo the BYU Cougar again!:

But her favorite part of this evening was getting to hang out with her “Cancer Sister” (as she calls her) Brinley!!! Brinley also has ALL and is just a few months behind Serenity in treatment. We’ve grown pretty close to their family and really appreciate their family, they have the cutest kids in the world! (besides us of course 😉 )

Serenity is funny – Brinley is one of her favorite people, she talks about her all the time and makes sure we pray for her every night. But, whenever we get together with Brinley’s family (and whenever we’re around anybody for that matter), Serenity goes into her bashful to the doctor about to poke her mode. She begs to see Brinley and buries her face in my chest the moment she gets there.

We still have a couple more parties coming up so I think she’ll see Santa at least once more before Christmas. I need to say though, we sure are grateful for the organizations that put on so many events – especially around Christmas! That list include The Make A Wish Foundation, Hope Kids and CCC.

No news

No news is good news. 🙂 I expected Serenity to get exposed to something over the holiday weekend, but she has been feeling great. A few days ago she had horrible dark circles under her eyes; it usually happens when she is about to get sick. But she’s looking better now and acting like her adorable sweet self.

Today was the last day we have health insurance. We’ve applied for Medicaid, so hopefully that will cover us until Phil’s able to find work. It’s funny to me that in some ways we’ll now have better insurance – no co-pays for prescriptions and hospital stays. Medicaid won’t cover home health visits so we’ll have to make more frequent trips up to Primary Children’s.

I think she will have another CBC sometime this week to see if her ANC has risen at all.