Happy Holidays to all of you. I hope that you are all having a great time with your family and making many life time memories.

We had a wonderful time in San Diego. Sharmi loved flying. The flight went quite well since Dean and I were each able to have an entire row with a kid. Sharmi was charming to the point that an older gentleman thanked me for having the best behaved kids he had ever seen on the plane. This of course made me proud, but I was glad he didn’t fly with us on the way back to Seattle a week later.

We went to the Zoo, Wild Animal Park, Lego Land, Sea World, spent a day with Dean’s family, and we also spent a wonderful day with our church friends. Sharmi was very excited about going to her old church. She sang her favorite song “The Big Red Bus” all the way there. I unfortunately never learned the song by heart, and so Sharmi has not heard “The Big Red Bus” since Dave and Jason sang it at the Cancer walk last spring. After the closing song Dave lead the congregation in singing it in honor of Sharmi. It was very special to me and she just loved it. She sang it as loud as she could in the car after church. Why is it that children seem to think that they are supposed to sing at the top of their lungs in the car?

Another priceless experience was at Sea World. Sharmi has been asking to go to Sea World since we left California. She loves to feed anything that she can, so we were going to let her feed the dolphins. I mis-read the schedule for feeding times and so we just missed it. I felt really bad and Sharmi was asking to feed them so I told them Sharmi’s situation and asked if we could buy still buy a few fish. After a little bit more discussion a trainer came out with a bucket of fish and took us over to a roped off area. The dolphins saw us coming and were so excited. I expected 4 fish for $4, but instead we got a mini interactive session for free. We were able to touch them, Sharmi fed them, and they talked, squeaked, waved and jumped for us. It was an incredible experience. When Sharmi talks about it she even does the hand signals that the trainer used. God made incredible creatures. In heaven I am going to have a river flowing through my mansion with dolphins in it.

Christmas blew by too fast to really enjoy and the day after Christmas we took Sharmi to the hospital again. She got chemo in her heart and in her spine again, and she started another series of steroids. Dean went with us this time and it was wonderful for all of us. It had been a month since we had been there and it is always hard to go back. Sharmi and I needed the moral support. We hadn’t told her directly that we were going back to the hospital, but she must of heard us talking to the family about it, because when Dean laid her in bed Christmas evening she said, “I am going to sleep good tonight and be rested because I have to get up and go to the hospital in the morning, and the people will put it in and take it out” (referring to her port). She doesn’t miss a thing.

In the procedure room the staff was talking to us as they were preparing things, and the anesthesiologist marveled at Sharmi and kept saying, “She is such an Adult.” The nurse practitioner, who she sees in clinic frequently kept saying, “She has always been like that.” They were amazed at her and I didn’t notice anything strange. She was just sitting on my lap quietly waiting. Maybe that is strange considering what these kids have to go through. After she was “under” Dean asked me if I ever got used to the feeling of our baby going limp in my arms. I had to answer, “no”. It is common now, but it is still hard. This time when she was falling asleep she kept trying to tell me something, but she was talking so soft that I couldn’t understand her. It was a very helpless feeling. I felt like I was letting her down.

It is hard but we can faintly see the end now. On our drive down we calculated that we should only have about 16 more procedures (where she is put under for her chemo) until she is done in May of 2009. We can make it.

Well, we are going to go and try out papa’s new hot tub, so I hope you all have a wonderful New Years.

Love the Curry’s

Finally a Vacation 

These last few days have been filled with laundry and packing and getting ready for our trip south to San Diego.  Sharmi has been asking to go to Sea World to see all of the animals for months.  She has been talking about the shows and describing them in great detail.  One of the shows has a mime in it and and she talks about “the man with the painted face, everyone claps,” and the “tiny sea lion” (also known as and otter.)  The last few days before her naps she would say, “I’ll nap in the car.  Let’s go the the zoo-park.” And when she got up from her naps she was ready to put her shoes on and go see the animals. 

Sharmi has been feeling much better these last few days as well.  She has been playing independently again which has been very helpful with all of the packing.  Melissa was also a life saver and she came and played with the kids while I did laundry and some packing.  It has been wonderful having them here. 

I am looking forward to putting Chantel in some dresses in San Diego.    She is growing like a weed.  She is 3 months old now and she is already wearing 6-9 month cloths.  She is such a joy.  We are enjoying her very much.  She is a night owl and stays up until 1:00 or later on a regular basis, so we get some alone time together since Sharmi monopolizes all of my time during the day.  We have to find the blessings in all things.

God Bless You All,

Cheris

Merry Christmas!

I am excited that the Christmas season is here, however I have not bought much in the line of presents yet. I used to dislike internet shopping. I didn’t want to lose the experience of crowded malls with Christmas music and decorations that are filled with last minute shoppers like myself. But now with two kids I think that online shopping is a great idea, however it doesn’t work to well for procrastinators.

Well, it has been a very long two weeks. The Monday after Thanks-giving Sharmi started five days of steroids. This usually means about 7 to 10 days of craziness. However, this time I have been waiting very impatiently for the food cravings and crankiness to wear off. Her craving this month was swiss steak. She ate a half of a case of it all by herself. Lets just say I am very grateful for her adjustable cloths. When she is at her thinest time of the month they fall off while she is walking, but after steroids I can barely get them done up.

The past two weeks have been very hard on me. Sharmi has been very clingy. I haven’t been able to walk out of the room without carrying her and most of her meals were eaten on top of my lap. She whinnied so much I was wondering if she was capable of talking without a whine. Her most common phrases where, “Mommy carry me I can’t walk,” “I am hungry, no I want something else,” and “feed me mommy I can’t do it.” Yesterday I called my mom and said, “I am worn thin and can’t do this anymore.” I haven’t had a second to myself and very little sleep. I thank God for my parents. I packed up the girls and we came to grandma and papa’s. They are a great help.

Some specific stresses of the last two weeks with Sharmi include a yeast infection, pain characteristic of a UTI and thrashing and crying at night and after naps. Thursday night was a particularly bad night. She woke up crying and couldn’t be comforted. She didn’t want mommy nor her blanket. When she said “I don’t want my blanket”, which she can never be without, I lost it. I had the sinking feeling that she was relapsing, and I just bawled and bawled.

When you are living this hell you try to stay positive and not get caught up in fear, but you also have to listen to your intuition. There were two different times before Sharmi was diagnosed,while doctors were still telling me that she was just fine, that I cried because I felt in my heart that Sharmi would be “one of those cancer patients.” I believe that was Gods way of preparing me for the shock. So, when I have fears now I don’t know if I should listen to them or ignore them. Yesterday, I called the hospital and they assured me that she wasn’t showing the signs of relapse, so it must have just been exhaustion speaking.

One of the fun things in the last two weeks was the snow. Last sabbath there was a skiff of snow on the ground when we woke up. On the drive home from church it started snowing again and snowed all afternoon. That evening we went to a fesvital of lights with grandma and papa. They had carolers, train rides, horse drawn wagon rides, animals, a nativity and a person in a snowman suite. Sharmi has been telling the story all week.  “The snowman did this (she waives enthusiatically) I was scared and papa held me.”  Even though she was scared she tells the story with a smirk knowing that he really wasn’t that scary.  It was a beautiful way to start the Christmas season, walking through the snow and enjoying our family.

I hope this Christmas season is bringing you joy and happiness also.

Love,

Cheris