Still not easy

Lisa ended up being admitted Thursday night because they weren't able to get enough bone marrow collected and needed her there Friday morning to finish the collection. Docs also wanted to keep an eye on her cold.


It has been close to 8 weeks since we have had to stay at Motts. After all the time we've spent here, I figured this stay would be no big deal, it would feel pretty routine. I was surprised as I walked down the hall to relieve Mike how anxious I felt. Feelings of dread, fear and uncertainty came surging through me and I realized that I didn't want to be here and I didn't want my daughter to be in this situation. The severity of the whole thing raced thru my head...this is a wicked disease with no proven cure and a very low survival rate. The treatments, while helping, have no guarantee of success. I feel powerless. As a parent, I can do nothing to help my daughter except to keep subjecting her to treatments which make her feel awful but are the lesser of two evils. My feeling of powerlessness intensifies when I find out that a little boy who had been with us in the hospital during most of our stays was now back on the floor.


When we had first met him, he was recovering from a complication that had caused a head bleed and a stroke. He too is a neuroblastoma patient, but at the time we met, he was cancer free and working to recover from the stroke. We saw him and his family rally. Lisa and I were there the day he regained his speech after months of silence. We were there as he gained strength and started to play games with his physical therapist. We were there for Thanksgiving and all celebrated together. We were there when after nine months of being in the hospital, six of which he was cancer free, he was released to go home. It was the day before Maranda was released, three weeks before Christmas.


Now, he and the neuroblastoma were back on 7th floor of Motts. He had a short six months of remission, most of it spent in the hospital recovering from his stroke. His family works up the courage and strength to fight...again. This is the second child with neuroblastoma we've met who has relapsed. Both the same age as Lisa and with the same diagnosis. It is a bitter pill to swallow. It is hard to stay focused, it is hard to stay positive, it is hard to believe. But, that is all we can do...because what is life without hope? Again, I must remind myself how lucky we are that God has given us this reminder. Life is precious and we should not take it for granted, every minute should count and not just because you or a loved one is fighting cancer. So, go on we will and I will search and grasp for that little ray of hope.


I think of how recently I said the statistics were working against us. The odds of having a child with this type of cancer, the small percentage of children with scoliosis caused by a chiara malformation, the 1 individual out of 16 whose vaccine was contaminated....I think of that and wonder if that is our ray of hope....maybe, just maybe, we will be a minority once again, but in a good way. Maybe, Lisa will be 1 of the few who beats neuroblastoma. We continue to hope and pray.

As long as her cold doesn't get any worse and there are no problems with the vaccine, Lisa is scheduled to be admitted to hospital on Monday 2/16 for chemo followed by bone marrow transplant. She will be in the hospital for a minimum of three weeks. So far all of her treatments have helped to shrink the cancer....this step will be another major attack against the vicious cells. It will be tough on Lisa, but we do what we have to do and we hope and we pray.