Good Evening,

Last week was wonderful.  Sharmi was feeling great and happy.  It was such a joy.  She was so polite to mommy and so thoughtful of her sister.  She even walked into sisters room when I was in there and she said, ”this room is a mess.  I need to clean this up.”  When I was starting to leave she said, “mommy, sisters room isn’t clean yet, I need to finish her room first.”  She is turning into such a big girl.

This week on the other had is another steroid week and it has been a rough one.  Monday Sharmi had her monthly doctors appointment.  It felt like we had gone back almost two years.  She had a complete meltdown when we tried to access her.  She is usually so brave that she doesn’t even make a peep.  However, when she has had a hard time in the past, I tell the nurse to give her a minute and I will tell Sharmi that she is in control. I will emphasis that we need to do it but she can tell us when she is ready.  It usually only takes her a few seconds and she calms down and is ready.  This week she just got more and more hysterical.  I finally had to take her shirt off so that it wouldn’t recontaminate the access site.  I had to grab her arms and wrap my arms around her and hold her with all of my strength so that they wouldn’t miss the port and have to do it again.  Once she was access she calmed down, but she was distressed the entire day.  It was a good thing that my mom was there with us to help with Chantel.  I could not have done it without help.  

I think Sharmi is afraid of the unknown.  We talked in great detail about the “end of treatment” and her port coming out, at bedtime last Sabbath.  She was very disturbed.  She said she wants to have her port forever.  I tried to get her excited and told her about all of the parties she is going to get to have, the first one being at church on May 23rd here in Marysville and the second being in San Diego.  She did like looking at the calendar.  I have mentioned before that she never talks about having cancer.  She knows all of her drug names.  She discusses the hospital processes and treatment but she won’t talk about cancer.  So I asked her, ”Honey do you know you have had cancer.”  She responded, ”Yes I know.”  I stated, ”well, you have never talked about it.”  She replied, ”I know mommy, it don’t talk about it because it is boring. I talk about a lot of other things, but I don’t talk about it because it is boring.”  I thought this was interesting because she doesn’t really use the word “boring” very much,  and even with direct dialog she still would not say the word, “cancer.”  I am grateful that God gives even the smallest children coping mechanisms.  This isolated silence must be hers.

Sharmi has had a rough couple of day and has pretty much watched TV non-stop.  She finally started feeling better tonight around 6:00 pm, but I am sure that will change overnight since she got her weeking methotrexate along with her steroids and her daily chemo tonight.   However, we did have one cute moment on a not so cute topic tonight.  Constipation is one of the side effects of chemo that we have to deal with and I have been trying to get Sharmi to go potty.  She sometimes intentionally chooses not to because it frequently hurts after vincristine.  So we were having a debate over a topic that you can’t force a child to do.  I was trying to use higher reasoning and it didn’t work.  About 20 minutes after my attempt to to talk her into it, she decided she needed to go.  After she was successful she gave me a long explanation of the process and she said, “See mommy, I am smart too!”  I busted up laughing.  Sometime I have to tell her that her mommy is a smart person and she knows what she is talking about.  Tonight she felt like it was her turn to state her inteligence and demand the respect for her knowledge.  It was priceless!

Chantel is turning into a monkey,  she climbs up on everything she can includeing chairs, couches, stools and her hassock and then she jumps or falls off.  She doesn’t care anymore if I am there to catch her or not.  She climbs, jumps crashes, laughs and does it again.  Another new thing is to hide things.  Sunday she put about ten pieces of her sisters chalk in the crack of Sharmi’s trundle bed.  After she did it she grabbed me and pointed and said, ”hide, hide.”   I put my hand in the crack and discovered little colored pieces of chalk.  She was so pleased.  I thought I had got it all, but she pointed to the foot of the bed and said, “hide, hide,” but I couldn’t find anything.  It wasn’t until later that night when I was putting on new sheets for Sharmi that two more pieces of chalk fell out.  It made me smile. 

Well, tomorrow will be another long day of crankiness so I need some sleep.

Goodnight to you all.

Cheris