Happy Thanksgiving

We apologize for not posting but as usual (for us) no news is often good news. Lisa has been doing well the past couple weeks.  In fact after her last round of chemo her white and red blood counts increased rather than decreased which is great.  You all must have been have been sending her a lot of love. Thank you.
She continues to sleep a lot (16 of 24 hours a day) but when she's up, she's running the show.  She truly is a force and a joy to be reckoned with. 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Scan Week

Scans tomorrow [Tuesday] and Wednesday and a bone marrow biopsy [ouch] on Halloween. Send Lisa your best prayers and mojo. Love to you all! Thank you!

Stay the Course

Sorry for no updates for the past two weeks.  Lisa received another round of chemo this week.  She seems to handle the drugs well and so far the only side effects has been more fatigue.  She still is in good spirits and continues to make us smile and laugh but she does tire easily.  She barely makes it through a 1/2 day of school and then comes home to sleep for 4 hours.  She will be up for an hour or two around dinner time and then rests and watches tv, colors or plays with her babies until she settles in for the night around 9 pm. 

She generally wakes up with a smile and some days has more pain then others.  Last week she was really having difficulty walking and experiencing increased pain.  This pain does seem to subside some with the chemo which makes me feel that it does still have an effect on her disease.

Lisa will go for bloodwork this week and next week and than scans. Based on the way she is moving and feeling I am sure we already know what the scans will reveal...that her cancer continues to progress.  But, we still continue to hope and pray.  We have signed paperwork for the doctors to enter Lisa into a "gentics" study where they can further analyze the tumor that was removed from her years ago.  While this will not provide a cure, it may open doors to some other drugs that her cancer will respond to.

I ask that you continue to pray for Lisa and all of us...the road has been long and I'm feeling a bit weary but as we say in BLAST....we continue to stay the course.

I also ask that you pray for Ian...he is the young man I know of thru my childhood best friend...who 7 weeks ago he moved onto u of m's campus to begin a new adventure just recently was diagnosed with  medullablastoma that has already metastasized to his spine. He started radiation last wednesday and suffered a brain swell yesterday and was rushed to St Mary's hospital where he underwent emergency surgery. He is still in ICU and there is fear of brain damage.

Life is precious, please hug your loved ones and remember to live life fully and live as if today is your last day...because you never know, it just might be.

Bridget the Brave has earned her wings

Tears...that is all I have...the funeral will be Wednesday morning, October 10 at Our Lady of
Good Counsel in Plymouth. There will be an all day wake on Tuesday and possibly a short visitation for family on Monday evening. Below is what Bridget's Mom posted yesterday:

Our sweet daughter Bridget Therese was born into eternal life yesterday evening, October 5 at 6:52. If death can be beautiful and peaceful, hers was. She was surrounded by family and love, as well as tender care from her medical team.

Bridget’s little siblings were with us for part of the day. Our dear friend Fr. Ed Fride spent the afternoon with us celebrating the votive mass of Divine Mercy ending close to the Hour of Mercy at 3:00. Directly after mass, Bridget’s little siblings said their goodbyes. At 3 o’clock the medical team began the process of removing the tube and making her comfortable.

Bridget was a quiet warrior, brave in battle until the end. Everyone thought she would breathe her last rather quickly, but I am grateful that did not happen. God allowed us very special time together as a family to say goodbye without tubes. We even brought the little guys back to say goodbye without all the scary stuff attached to Bridgie. We had our last family photo. We prayed, we sang, we cried, and we even laughed a little. There was joy in knowing she would finish the race victorious and meet her Lord. As one of the cards her classmates sent her said…. “If you don’t get better you will get to meet Jesus…how cool is that?!” Cool, indeed.

We were amazed at the outpouring of support for Bridget and our family throughout the entire day. The explosion of her Bridget the Brave poster and zebra hearts all over facebook deeply moved us. The zebra colors that everyone wore throughout the day brought smiles to our faces. Our favorite was her friend Jeff, the Camp Quality Director, who wore a full zebra suit and took his picture with a sign that said I love you Bridget! We received news of masses and prayers offered in Rome, Germany, Ireland, Togo, Brazil, France, India, Uganda and all over the U.S.A. Fr. Gabriel Richard High School gathered with over 500 people to pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet after school hours, as did Huron Valley Catholic School, and Christ the King parishioners. Masco Corp. where Brian works had a room set aside for prayers at 3. I received word from so many places that our family was being lifted up. We were carried on that wave through this difficult day. How truly blessed we are with so many friends and strangers who somehow fell in love with our little flower. Your prayers are what brought us through the day with joy in the last minutes of her earthly life.

I will post more as soon as we make arrangements for her funeral and celebration of her life. We love all of you.

Every Day With Joy!

Live every day to its fullest..find a reason to smile:)

Lisa has had a very good week.  With a round of chemo under her belt last week, we are on high alert for low blood counts and other side effects.  She only required one transfusion this week and sailed right through that. She is looking pretty good.  She is moving pretty good, has less pain, smiles and continues to make people laugh.  Just now, at 7:45 in the morning, she batted her blue eyes at me and said "I have a sore throat, can I just have a tiny bit of ice cream...I'm sure it will make it feel better."  She then followed that up with assuring me that she had already eaten a "healthy apple" for breakfast.  So, ummm....yes, with that logic....go for it have a bowl of ice cream.  She added a bigger smile to my face when she grabbed the sprinkles to make it "even better".

So while Lisa still is having good days, unfortunately we cannot say the same for Bridget.  Below is her mother's post from yesterday.  If you can, at 3:00 today, please offer up prayers for Bridget and her family as they take her off the ventilator:(

Every Hour with Joy!

Yesterday's morning prayer seemed as if it was written just for us.

"No trial has come to you but what is human. God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it. - 1 Corinthians 10:13

Oh Lord my strength and fortress my refuge in the day of distress- Jeremiah 16:19

What a beautiful and sad few days we have had. Our flower is fading. I want to be eloquent, but I am weary and the hour is late.

We have met with all the medical teams and they all agree that there is no hope of Bridget's current condition improving. We have had enough time to calm our worries that it might be a virus or seizures or other issues. This was important to us, especially since she has been in the ICU a few other times that things looked hopeless. This is the first time I feel in my heart they are right. Even that Christmas Eve two years ago, I don't think I ever really believed that we would bury our daughter in weeks or months. This time is different. The cancer has taken its toll. The time has come to take our Bridget off the ventilator,the machine that breathes for her and let her go to meet our Lord.

We will take Bridget off the ventilator on Friday at 3:00. We chose the time as it is the Hour of Mercy when Our Lord died on the cross, on the Feast day of St. Faustina, the apostle of Mercy. At that time our family will gather and say our goodbyes. We will wait and we will pray. I know we will be grieving, but I also know we will be joyfully remembering the gift Bridget has been to each one of us. Please surround us in prayer at that time. I believe it will be the hardest moment our lives.

Many wonderful moments have occurred the last few days. I promise to share some of them soon. We are so incredibly grateful to all of you.

Every Hour with Joy!

Pink the Rink and Go Gold

Thanks to the Bergeron family for putting us in touch with the coordinator of the Back to School Classic Belle Tire Hockey tournament.  It has opened the door to us joining up with the Lakeland Hawks' efforts to raise awareness for cancer.  This is their third year  "painting the rink pink" and while players and fans will be wearing pink, they will also have gold childhood awareness ribbons on their helmets (thanks to the Millen family of Paint Protection Plus for making the decals!)

These young  players are taught to play for a cause bigger than themselves which just happens to be exactly what the  "A" in BLAST stands for!  Their sticks will be taped pink and will have Lisa's name written on them.  They have also offered to let Lisa do a ceremonial puck drop at the start of the game if she feels up to it.  This is definitely a step in the right direction of raising awareness and

More Awareness = More Attention = More Funding = More Research =

Improved Treatment and Possible Cure!

 

The Lakeland Hawks will be playing at 4:40 tomorrow at Dearborn Ice Skating Center (DISC), formerly named Mike Adray Sports Arena,  so if anyone is looking for something to do tomorrow afternoon you can go cheer on the Lakeland Hawks and applaud their efforts to raise awareness.

 

Please keep the prayers coming.  Lisa made it thru the week of chemo and so far her counts have not fallen....but...chances are they will plummet soon and quickly.  With all the colds and germs going around low counts put Lisa at great risk.  She is experiencing pain again and requiring more meds to keep it under control and seems to fatigue easy...this could be from the disease or from the chemo...only time will tell.

 

For those of you keeping tabs on Bridget...below is what her mom posted today. Please continue to pray for these girls.  And, yes, I'm still praying for the miracle...."if you have faith, everything you ask for in prayer, you will receive." (Matthew 21: 22)

 

Still in PICU

Posted 2 minutes ago

It has been a long week since my last update. We have been inpatient at Mott for two weeks now and in the pediatric ICU since last Friday. You begin to lose track of the days in a hospital as the days and nights all begin to run together.

We have been on a bit of a roller coaster as they try to stabilize Bridget's sodium levels and control seizure activity. We came up to the ICU because some of the seizure drugs they might need are pretty heavy hitters that can relax the breathing so much she could require intubation. It is a tricky mess to get the sodium under control as brain tumors and injuries often cause the body to either dump salt (salt wasting) or cause a hormone imbalance that causes the body to conserve water effectively diluting it's salt reserve (SIADH). It is a delicate balance as she appears to maybe have both conditions.

Seizures can be caused by sodium deficiency and Tuesday Bridget had 8 seizures while on EEG monitoring, None of these were particularly scary, though the longest was 4 1/2 minutes. If you didn't know Bridget you would probably not have even noticed them. We fear, however, that the seizures if caused by tumor will increase in frequency and intensity. Seizures are terrifying. Please pray that we will find the right balance to be able to bring her home with seizure activity under control.

Bridget is extremely fatigued and her little body is conserving its energy. She is barely awake during the day and barely moves even while sleeping. The nurses come into to turn and move her regularly. She is swollen from excess fluid. There are so many reasons she could be so extremely exhausted. She needed a transfusion of hemoglobin (red blood) . Red blood carries oxygen so it can cause extreme fatigue when it is low (anemia). The seizures and the meds used to control them can each cause extreme fatigue. They needed to give benedryl before her transfusion. That stuff alone knocks her out. So many things that could leave her completely wiped. Of course, the real concern is that the fatigue is just the cancer taking its toll.

It is likely they will move us back to Floor 7, the oncology floor, today or tomorrow. She seems to be stabilized on the sodium levels and seizure free right now. She sleeps quite peacefully. She had a number of visitors this week, friends from here at the hospital, school, camp and church. She opened her eyes and interacted a little with many of them. We feel incredible support from the messages of love on this page and sent and brought to us.

We have spoken with both palliative care and Angela Hospice. Our plan is once she is stabilized to bring Bridget home for hospice care. With children hospice care can be coordinated with continued treatment. We still hope that we can get another round of chemo for Bridget and that can be done even while in hospice. Angela Hospice believes in the “nest is best” philosophy so that children are surrounded by the people and things they love and are familiar with. I wasn't particularly comfortable with this two years ago, but now that Bridget has had our den downstairs as "her room" for the past 6 months I think this is the best plan.

Bridget is not really active now, but hears a great deal even when we think she is asleep. Last Friday I had a friend bring me some rosaries that were blessed in Bethlehem and we were talking quietly about them. We then figure out that Bridget was trying to say something. When we went to ask her what she said, she wanted to know how many decades of the rosary (grouping of prayers meditating on a specific event in the life of Christ) she needed to say! I told her as many as she wanted and gave her one of the rosaries.

We were thrilled with the ND victory and all the MI fans who "converted" to fans or didn't mind the victory as much as usual just for Bridgie. I watched the game at the hospital with her. Bridget's nurse painted a big ND on her EEG head wrap. Like her sister Catherine and the rest of the Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s students, she was wearing a lei to honor Manti Te'o, the ND player who lost both his grandmother and girlfriend to leukemia a couple of weeks ago. She slept through most of the game, but she knew it was on and that was enough. By the way, please keep Catherine in your prayers as well. She is loving her freshman year at Saint Mary’s, but being away from Bridget during these days has been very hard on her.

We are sad, but there is a peace and joy in Bridget's room every day. We are treasuring our time and delight in the little interactions that happen when she’s awake – a nod of the head, a thumbs up sign, or an attempt to stick out her little tongue. We are continuing to beg the Lord to heal Bridget. Please continue to ask God for this mercy. From her bed, Bridget continues to teach us about strength and faith, love and bravery, suffering and its value. We know we will never understand why this has happened to her, but we have seen the evidence that God has used all that she is going through.

Thank you, friends, for all your support. We feel the love and prayer that surrounds us. We are so very grateful.

Every Day With Joy!

28 Kids diagnosed with cancer every day

Sadly, a childhood friend of mine just shared that yet another child has entered the war.  Her 18 year old son's best friend was diagnosed with a brain cancer after a 9 hour biopsy surgery on Monday.  His name is Ian and he is 17 yr old  freshman at U of M.  Please send up some prayers for Ian and his family.

Thank you to all of you who have offered prayers, kind thoughts and words of inspiration as Lisa continues her fight.  As usual, she looks great, all things considered.  Today was day 3 of chemo and so far she's been to school each morning, seems to be feeling ok and her counts are holding.  She continues to make us smile and laugh with her independence and humorous one-line answers. 

I love this little girl so much and continue to hope, pray and believe a miracle will occur to help her beat the odds.  A close friend of ours  has a distant cousin (Elisabeth Bergeron) who John Paul II declared Venerable, which basically means she needs a miracle to become a saint within the Catholic Church.  I say we all start asking and praying to Elisabeth to  provide us a miracle...it's a win/win situation in my book....she gets to become a saint, we get to keep our daughter here on earth.

Please continue to pray for Lisa and all the warriors.