Anthony and Brian

We made some friends here in Seattle, who are from Indiana.
They were here for treatment for two of their children.
One of the children (young adult actually) is creating a photography business.
Andrea and her fiance, Brian, were so good with Anthony.
Actually, Andrea's whole family was so incredible with him.
He loves every one of them, and so do we.

Andrea caught these images with her new camera. :)
Brian was showing Anthony how to do a "pop" with his thumb.
Anthony was mimicking very well.

And of course, we had to show tongues. :P

Just cuteness.

Dr. Anthony

Anthony's counts jumped to over 200 today, so we get to be discharged!
Before we leave the hospital though, I had to use the awesome-speed wifi to upload his stethoscope pictures and videos.
He's just too cute. :)

Special visitors at the hospital

So, Anthony saw my jalapeno Tim's Cascade chips and was demanding some. Demanding in a nice, sign language and loud, grunting way. Knowing they would be way too spicy for his sensitive, sore-filled mouth, I ran up the elevator to get some Doritos out of the vending machine.
He ate an ENTIRE vending machine-size bag of Doritos in contentment. It should have hurt his mouth (although not as bad as the jalapeno ones would), but he had his soothing mouth medicine first. He was so happy eating those chips for half an hour. Our nurse had so much fun watching Anthony's delicate way of eating each chip, and him insisting he have a chip in each hand. He is a definite Dorito boy.

Well, before I got him all cleaned up, some visitors came in the room.
The visitors were Santa's helpers from the Go4theGoalFoundation, bearing lots of goodies/gifts.
Anthony loved the DVDs, chocolate bar, t-shirt, bracelet, a Grover, and a portable DVD player!
He kept emptying and then refilling the bag that the goodies came in, and he was having fun charming the visitors. :)

Wearing the t-shirt after I finally got the Dorito mess cleaned up.

Morning fun at the hospital

Anthony felt a lot better last night after receiving a good dose of morphine, after his other pain medicine wasn't cutting the pain completely. He fell asleep 5 minutes into the morphine drip.
Mucositis is painful stuff.
Receiving blood also helped him immensely.
Today, Anthony is still not back to his normal, but has improved on the symptoms, at least a little.

This morning, I woke up to chainsaws outside. The hospital is expanding and the demolition on the next-door housing development was started recently. The Seattle Fire Department was able to use the situation for a training day. They did a fire/smoke in one unit and tore up the roofs in the other units. It was interesting watching over 5 fire trucks arrive and leave numerous times throughout the day.
I think the firefighters were enjoying climbing on the roofs, using those chainsaws, and the pickax-type thingies.

The tall tree in the picture below is like the several others that were cut down today. They were a barrier between the hospital and the housing.

In the hospital, again

Anthony is not feeling well at all.
He had a fever this morning, has sores in his mouth and likely his esophagus (mucositis), and feels crummy all over.
Tonight, Anthony will receive some blood since his hematocrit level has gone pretty low. This is a result of chemotherapy and is common.

Please pray for Anthony to be better and stronger soon.

Tonight, as always, we are grateful for our medical team, and also for blood and platelet donors.

Leukemia sucks

We finally were discharged from the hospital on Saturday.
Last week, Anthony had a fever, his highest ever at 104 degrees.
He felt pretty crummy all week, and adding steroids to his meds (part of chemotherapy) did not help. We are very tired of "roid rage."
Hi last dose was this morning though, and I believe we are already seeing a happier baby boy than pictures below.

While inpatient, we got to see some fun gingerbread houses that nurses or patients made.
Plus, a teacher or someone brought in a special gingerbread house.
The detail was fun to see.

The windows were stained glass, with candy cooked in them.

They are actually colored, but my camera didn't catch that...

There was a Christmas tree and a Santa inside.

Again, my camera (and its operator) are not that great.

I LOVED the pond with ducks.

The chimney was made of rock candy.

Anthony has had some miserable days. Last night and this morning were really rough.

Tonight, he was still unhappy, but finally settled down in Josh's lap to watch a movie.

He sat in Josh's lap, content, for over an hour!

Leukemia and its effects do suck.

That is not a word I use lightly.

But, I DO NOT appreciate my baby having to go through pain and illness that is life-threatening.

I DO NOT like living like I'm divorced when Andy and I are very happily married.

I DO NOT like feeling like opening our family to another child would be so difficult because "what if" that child developed cancer too? It isn't that we were planning to have more children, but it's sad to have such a warped mindset related to helping other children if needed.

And, I DO NOT like worrying about everything (natural worrier) from Anthony's medications, temperatures, illness, coordinating schools, worrying over going Christmas shopping (threat of germs when A has NO immune system) coordinating where children are when a fever or complication does hit, not being able to think (literally, leukemia has drained my brain of a LOT), and just for the general fact that our family has kind of lost a whole year to this illness.

I still DO LIKE leukemia though, and will be grateful for it, our excellent prognosis, the fact that there are multiple treatments to heal my baby, and that because of leukemia's high rate of occurrence, we can follow a more reliable map of treatment.

I am so sad that my children have had to learn so personally that cancer can kill, and it does.

I am sad that I do not know what to say to a grieving mother who only had her child, and now must go on without him.

I only pray that those little lives lost will not be lost in vain.

A CURE MUST BE FOUND FOR ALL CHILDHOOD CANCERS.

Caught up!!

Last week, Anthony fell asleep while we were waiting for the bus.
NO LESS than 10 people were oohing and aahing over how cute he was.

Publicis did a Christmas activity with the children. Josh made a sharp candy cane point afterwards.

Playing with Anthony before the bus arrives in the morning.

Look what we found in therapy!

It's Daniel's lookalike!

Saturday, we met some SeaGals at RMH. That was fun. :)

They served up a scrumptious breakfast as well as entertained.

Saturday night came and we were ready!

Andy and I had very expensive tickets for the Cirque de la Symphonie with the Seattle Symphony. They featured Christmas music and fun entertainment. Anthony stayed with Tally and Taylor.

Because the symphony was too expensive to bring all the children, we bought tickets for Harry Potter at iMax at the Science Center and asked Auntie Jenny to bring the them.

She came, and boy did she spoil them!

She also spoiled us. Knowing that we'd have to bring Daniel and Kelly back up to Nana's in Everett that night, Jenny instead rented a suite for us at the Deca Hotel. It was so nice to be together as a family for a night, and to have a wall between the parents and the children!
Here's Anthony with Auntie Jenny.

The Seattle skyline on Saturday was so pretty!

Hotel Deca lounge, where we had breakfast.

Hotel Deca Christmas tree in the lobby. It's not funky double, but actually in front of a mirror.

Upstairs railing

We were on the 12th floor, in the middle tower, second set of windows down from the top.

Another Jenny-friend, Jen, came by today.

Anthony has had a fever since yesterday.

His temperature went over 104 degrees.

We're praying for his comfort, and appreciate all others who do.

Lilly was looking at the goodies Jen brought.

Andy was playing around, checking Josh's ear.

Anthony resting on Jen's shoulder.

We met Craig Terrill today. He's Seattle Seahawk #93. We also met his wife Rachel, and one of the Sea Gals, Jessie.