Good Evening,

Happy New Year to all of you!  I pray that this next year will be filled with happiness and health for you and your families. 

We had the pleasure of spending several days on the Oregon coast with friends over new years.  The weather was cold and stormy so we spent most of our time indoors.  I didn’t get to enjoy the coast like I had hoped, but the kids had a much warmer time playing in the indoor swimming pool.  Sharmi loved it and Chantel grew from apprehension on the first day, preferring to be held outside the pool, to enjoying “jumping” into the water from the pools edge on the last day.  Unfortunately, with all of the swimming, maybe in combination with eating a lot of oranges, Chantel got the worst diaper rash I have ever seen.  Her entire bottom was covered with blisters, several of them bleeding.  Friday night it was so bad that even with Tylenol she woke up every 1/2 hour to an hour.  Only 0nce did she sleep for almost 2 hours.  Her bottom hurt so bad that I would have to wait for her to fall asleep in order to change her diaper.  We were both very sleep deprived.   As of today though, her rash is significantly better.  We used “Butt Paste” on it.  It has seemed to work wonders.  I would highly recommend it for anyone with little ones.   

We drove back late Saturday night, and Sunday was a slow recovery day.  Today was back to the hospital.  Once we got to the hospital and were getting out of the car Sharmi said, ” I don’t want to go to the hospital anymore.  When do I get to stop going to the hospital? ” I told her that she would only have to get medicine about 5 more times, but I wasn’t sure how many more doctors appointments she would have.  During her appointment, I asked her provider what the post treatment plan was.  I was disappointed to learn that Sharmi would still have to have labs and an exam every month for a year and every 3 months for the second year. When I inquired as to why so frequent, she stated it was the most common time to relapse.  Which lead me to ask the likelihood of Sharmi relapsing.  She kind of gulped and said there is a 15-20% chance of relapse.  That hit me pretty hard.  I knew there was some chance, but when your child had already drawn the short stick and has cancer you don’t ever feel “lucky.”  All we can do is pray and do the best I can to keep her healthy and strong. 

Treatment today for Sharmi was vincristine in her port and we have started her on another series of steroids.  It promises to be another draining week.   Her blood counts were good.  They actually were too good, so they have increased her chemo doses again (we wouldn’t want her to feel too normal.)   Her provider also got on my case about making sure that Sharmi is getting enough calcium and vitamin D on a daily basis.  The vitamin D is important to help prevent cancer.  I know it sounds simple enough, but is it so difficult to make sure she takes all of her vitamins and drugs everyday.  The other thing Laura (her nurse practitioner) ragged on me about is my weight.  I lost more than 5 pounds before Christmas when I had the flu and I haven’t gained it back.  She nagged me about it several times. 

I would also like some prayer power for a little boy named Evan.  He looked to be about 3 years old.  I don’t know anything about him except I saw him several times today with his mother and he was scared and crying.  It looked to me like his port has already been removed so he was just there for a check-up.  But it was obvious that his mother was an awful mother.  She is certainly verbally abusive and she was not giving him any love or support that a normal child deserves let alone a child who has to fight cancer.  At one point I did make a comment to the mother that, “this is a really tough place for children to be.”  She calmed down a little bit, but two hours later I heard the same heartless words.  It broke my heart and brought tears to my eyes.  Kids don’t deserve cancer and they certainly don’t deserve loveless abusive parents.  Please pray for him. 

Thank you for your continued prayer and support.

Cheris