With barely four months to go I am ready to celebrate!  Tonight I forgot to give Sharmi her chemo so when she was brushing her teethI told her I had to go and get it.  She asked, “mommy, when will I be done taking chemo?”  I told her it would be soon.  I reminded her, she had only 5 more doctors visits for medicine.  She added, “then they are going to take out my port out, and I am going to have my birthday party.”  I told her we would certainly have a party.  (To her all parties are birthday parties.)  She also asked,  “Mommy, will I be asleep when they take out my port?”  I told her that she would. She then asked with a worried look on her face, “Mommy, will it hurt?  I don’t want it to hurt.”  I assured her that it wouldn’t hurt and I prayed in my heart that it wouldn’t.  She has had enough hurt in her little life.

So, JUNE 13th 2009 we are going to have a PARTY at the DEL MAR Beach in California.  You are all invited!  I am hoping Melissa can help me with an E-vite so I know who will be able to attend, but for now, just mark it on your calendar.  I can’t believe it has been almost two years.  By her fourth birthday she will have been on chemo more of her live than not.  She is my HERO.  Unless they are told, people would never guess that she is sick.  She is such a trooper.  I am very very proud of her, and I am honored to be her mother!

Cheris

Good Evening Friends,

Another steroid week is behind us.  Sharmi has downed another 16 ounces of egg noodles.  And her voice has turned back to a normal tone versus the constant steroid whine.  I am ashamed to admit how difficult it gets for me deal with her whining and crying for 5 days strait.  It is especially difficult to deal with when neither of us get any sleep.  The steroid side effects at night include frequent potty trips, itching all over, and simply laying awake for hours at a time.  I can hardly wait until this is OVER. 

This morning was a really positive morning.  Emalyn’s Nana came over today to help me and to play with the girls.  Sharmi had a blast (and I got the pleasure of going to the bathroom by myself ).   I am excited also because she will be helping me every week.  I desperately need a sanity break to catch up on everything and recuperate from the last two months. 

Chantel cut her 10th tooth today.  She woke up with a runny nose and drooling so I am hoping that it is due to teething versus another cold.  As a result of her teething she fussed for over and hour for her first nap and never fell asleep, and she only slept for 35 minutes for her second nap.  Hopefully the Tylenol that I gave her tonight will help her get a good rest tonight.

Sharmi has been talking a lot about heaven again.  A few days ago she was watching TV and she said, ” Mommy, when I get to heaven I am going to watch ’Hi-5′ with Jesus”  I told her that would be lovely and that God loves the kids in “Hi-5″ too.  Last night when she was supposed to be sleeping she was talking about heaven again.  She was struggling with the concept that Jesus was alive and in heaven.  She kept said “but Jesus dead on the cross.”  It is difficult to explain to a three year old that Jesus can die and come back to life but her Grandpa can’t.  She finally got off of that subject and she said, “In heaven, I am not going to Adam and Eve’s because they have a mean snake….”  Then I tried to explain that the snake wasn’t going to be there.  I said, “The snake was bad, so Jesus stepped on the snake like mommy steps on spiders.”  Raising children certainly keeps life interesting.  It is amazing how many times she stumps me as to what and how to explain things to her.  She is a incredible!

The girls are growing up to be typical siblings.  They are starting to fight more, but they are also playing much more.  Everyday they play tag and they just run around the house laughing.  It is so sweet to watch.  They love eachother so much.  Last night they unrolled my Christmas ribbon on the floor and then they rolled around and wiggled in 100 yards of ribbon and pretended it was leaves.  They had a blast.  It was worth the half hour it took for me to roll it back up last night.  Today Sharmi got a time-out because she wanted the book that Chantel was playing with and didn’t talk nice to mommy.  During Sharmi’s ”post time-out talk with mommy” Chantel came and reached her little arms up to Sharmi to give her a big hug.  She gave Sharmi three really big hugs and patted her on the back to show that she cared.  It was priceless!

Well, I should try to get some sleep.  I hope everything is well with your families.  Good-night.

Cheris

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

Happy Sabbath,

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with your friends and family.  I know that at least in the northwest many Christmas plans were simplified and delayed because of the snow.  We have all gotten to my parents later than planned, so we are having Christmas dinner today and opening presents tonight.  Chantel has been more anxious than Sharmi to open presents.  We keep having to protect the packages from her.  

Well,  I would like to say that this week was filled with health and laughter, but it was filled with flu’s and colds.  I guess that is an improvement to hospital stays.  We have to be grateful at least for that.  Sharmi and I both had the flu most of the week.  Apparently the nausea, vomiting and diarrhea that I blamed on Chantels antibiotics last week was actually the flu.  I guess the good thing was that Chantel was able to quite those nasty antibiotics early.  Once again my friend Trina bailed me out.  Usually if I do get sick I still drag around and take care of my kids, but I was absolutely not capable of it on Tuesday, so she came over and took care of my kids and tidied my house for me.  The later part of the week Chantel and Dean have gotten a cold.  Some day I pray we will all be healthy again.

We are having a fun time at my parents.  It is fun to see Sharmi, Chantel, and baby Roeggie playing together.  Roggie is doing the carpet shuffle, but he hasn’t quite figured out how to crawl.  The kids are such a bundle of joy and give more meaning to Christmas.

Love to you all,

The Curry’s

Wow,  This week has been so long that I don’t even know how to describe it.  In the last 7 weeks both of my daughters have been in the hospital and just this week both of them were very sick and they literally both had doctors appointments at the same time on the same day in Children’s Hospital.  I know God says that he won’t give us more than we can handle, I just wish He thought I was a whole lot weaker.

To recap the last week: Wednesday morning when I got Chantel out of bed in the morning I knew we were in trouble.  The swelling in her neck had turned to a mountain with a purple ridge on the top.  I called her doctor immediately and told her that we didn’t have time for the ultrasound.  If we waited it would burst.  She sent me down to Children’s ER.  My expectation was that we would get it drained and come home.  (I tend to minimize the problem as a coping mechanism.)  Trina came to get Sharmi (she watched her all week) and I picked up my dad at the ferry on our way to the hospital.  I was so grateful to have my daddy, because it turned out to be a very hard day.  The 45 minutes of crying and kicking with two failed attempts at putting in the IV, before they finally got it, almost killed me.  It was hard enough to suffer through it with Chantel and empathize with her, but in addition, I relived the trauma of holding Sharmi down through painful and pointless procedures and I saw the pain, fear and betrayal in her eyes all over again.  Daddies are such a source of comfort and strength just being there.   

With the severity of Chantel’s infection they admittedus to the hospital immediately.  They put her as an add-on to the surgery schedule that day.  I was told that the hospital had seven cases like Chantel’s in the hospital already that week and it was only Wednesday (they usually only have one per week).  The doctor also told me that she was the most acute.  I found out later that Chantel was they only child with this condition that got surgery on the day they were admitted.  Hers was the only one serious enough to bump the schedule.  Shortly after Dean got there they took her into surgery.  Then after three days in the hospital, with below normal standard of care, I was begging to get out.  I was nervous about bring her home with a dime sized hole in her neck, but I felt like I could give her better care at home and we would all sleep better.  The one fun thing that Chantel enjoyed while in the hospital was being pushed around on her IV pole.  They have boards that they put over the wheels of the IV’s that the kids can sit on to be pushed around.  She was very disappointed that she couldn’t do that anymore when we were put in isolation after her surgery.

This week I thought I would only have one recovering child to take care of but Monday night Sharmi got a fever and coughed all night.  The next morning Dean and I packed up the girls and three bags and headed to the hospital.  We were sure that she was going to get admitted.  However, since the doctors were able to identify the source (sore throat) of the fever and since her blood counts were high enough to fight the infection we were pleasantly surprised that they let us take Sharmi home.  However, we had to bring Sharmi back to the hospital every day that she still had a fever.  While we were at the hospital it was clear that Chantel wasn’t feeling well and then she confirmed it by throwing-up all over the floor. At the end of day Dean drove us home and immediately turned around and drove to the airport to fly to Spokane.    

Once home Chantel threw-up several more times, her diarrhea was dangerously out of control, her bottom was covered in blisters from the acid, and the next morning she woke up with a bloody nose.  I called the ENT and told them that they needed to see her today and I was discontinuing the antibiotics until they did.  On the other side of the house, (literally because I didn’t want one to get sick from the other) Sharmi had a horrible nights sleep and she still had a fever of 102 degrees even with Tylenol.  Her throat hurt her so much that she would not eat or drink.  She obviously needed to be back to the hospital that day as well.  I thank God for giving us such great friends.  Since it had snowed the night before, our friend Carl drove the girls and I to the hospital, and he was an incredible help all day.  He held Sharmi the entire day and he even took her to get a chest x-ray while I took Chantel to the ENT.  We had a good laugh about how he pulled off the dad thing at x-ray.  To verify that he was her father they asked when the mothers birthday was, he laughed and said “how am I supposed to know that”.  Then gave a big window of when Sharmi’s birthday was.  They laughed and called him a “typical dad” and took Sharm’s chest x-ray.  The day ended well; Sharmi didn’t have pneumonia, Chantel was taken off of her antibiotics, I didn’t have to drive in the snow and Carl and Trina loaned us their nebulizer which he administered to Sharmi.  For as hard as that day was it went very smoothly and ended very well! 

Thursday and today have gotten progressively better, but the girls are still weak, worn-out and tired.  However, as Sharmi always does, she rose to the occasion and manufactured enough strength to go sledding.  Carl has braved the snow and gotten us many things this week, one of them which was snow pants for Sharmi.  She had a wonderful time sledding with Emalyn and Ethan.  It is a gorgeous beautiful winter wonderland out there. 

Today Dean finally got home.  He rented a car and drove back from Spokane since the next available flight was Sunday night at 7:00 PM.  We are glad to have him home.  We wouldn’t want him to miss the party.  Yes after all of that, I am still stupid enough to have the Christmas party that we rescheduled from last week.  I am trying not to live a “sick life” with our family and activities, but I think I overdo the trying to “live” part too much sometimes. 

Well, goodnight and happy Sabbath to you all.  “Live”  You never know what tomorrow will bring. 

Cheris

Hi there! They let Sissy come home from the hospital last night Mommy and Daddy were glad so that we could all be together and comfortable in our home. Poor Sissy has to take antibiotics. I guess they are really yucky ’cause even Mommy and Grandma thought it was awful. She has to take it 3 times a day, and I feel sorry for her. She has a big bandage on her neck and it has to be changed a lot.

Mommy said the Doctors are saying she probably has a staff infection, but I don’t know what it is. I heard them talk about mersa, but I don’t know what that is either. Mommy and Daddy looked real worried until the Doctor said it they didn’t think it was mersa, probably another kind of staff infection and they probably wouldn’t know until Monday.

Well I’d better go to bed now. Please keep praying for Sissy, she needs to get better soon. Nighty Night!

Hi there! I’m not having such a good week, I don’t like how my medicine makes me feel And my sissy Chantel isn’t feeling good at all either. She had a big lump in her neck and her cheek…so Mommy and Daddy had to take her to the hospital (12/10). She had to have surgery (12/10), ’cause there was fluid inside. I guess there was an infection or something. There was so much fluid they had to put in a drain, so that it could keep coming out. But yesterday morning when the nurse was changing the bandage, Chantel pulled the drain out and now there’s a high risk that the infection won’t heal from the inside out So please pray for Sissy too, since infections are scary. Hope she can go home soon!

Have a Happy Sabbath!

Good Evening,

Well it has been 5 days since we started treatment on Chantel’s neck with antibiotics and homeopathic things and she is getting worse and worse.  Tonight when I put her to bed is broke my heart.  Her neck is so red and swollen that her skin is shinny.  I was shocked at how large and hard the mass was when I put lotion on her tonight.  The mass is at least 3 inches long and the swelling is around 6 inches.  It goes into her cheek and also toward the back of her head.  Today she has gotten pretty miserable.  She needs me to carry her all of the time, she whimpers constantly and now it hurts her enough that she keeps reaching up to it and quickly draws back because of the pain. 

Saturday the doctor ordered several labs and tests.  To add to the trauma for Chantel the lab tech wasn’t able to get her vein the first time so she had to poke her twice.  Of course Chantel cried like her world was going to end.  Monday we got her blood work and her strep test back.  Her blood was fine and she was negative for strep.  We are still waiting on the test result for mono and for cat scratch fever.  Tomorrow at noon I am taking her in for an ultrasound to see if the mass is a liquid or a solid.  If it is a liquid they will send us to ENT to drain it.  Hopefully they will be able to do that tomorrow as well.   If it isn’t fluid I don’t know what their plan is yet.

Keep praying please.  We are all worn out. Chantel feels awful already and then her mom keeps trying to force her to take meds all day.  This morning I was in tears trying to get her antibiotics down.  I am an expert at hiding medicine and tricking children, but Chantel has outsmarted me.  I have tried it strait up, in yogurt, in juice, in fruit smoothie, with a straw, in a syringe, in a bottle, and even feeding it to herself.  She is too young to bargain with and too old to be fooled. 

Sharmi is on her bad weekly chemo tonight and is up calling for me again.  Got to run.  Daddy said she dreamed about a giant. 

Cheris

PS.  Melissa found the post that I wrote an December 2nd last week and she put it on the web site now.  Thanks Melissa.

Happy Sabbath,

First of all I noticed that the post I wrote last Monday didn’t get posted to the page.  I have asked Rick if he can do his magic again.   If not I will try to do a recap.

Tonight we need your prayers for Chantel.  Yesterday afternoon after her nap I noticed the left side her of neck was very swollen and a golf-ball-sized hard mass was pushing out the skin.  I rushed her to the doctor and the first doctor we saw thought is was in the muscle, but the senior doctor said that it is a swollen lymph node that is pushing out the mandible muscle.  Both doctors at first glace at her said, “wow, I can see it from here.”  They don’t usually see lymph swelling this bad. We are going back tomorrow at 10:40 in the morning and if it has not improved to their satisfaction they will send us to ENT to have it drained.  As of tonight it doesn’t look good.  The swelling has gone more into her face as well, and the redness is back.  Even though she is on antibiotics now she is worse than she was last night.  She is also suffering from impaired balance.  She keeps falling and she has added several good bumps and bruised to her head pain today.  Poor thing.  Please keep her in your prayers.

Thanks, Cheris

Good Evening,

It is finally starting to feel like we can see the end.  Tomorrow is another procedure day when Sharmi gets chemo in her spine.  After tomorrow we only have two more to go, one in 12 weeks and one in 24 weeks.  I am starting to get excited.  I know that it is too long yet for Sharmi to understand, but I can hardly wait to tell her that she is almost done. 

Today she was talking to grandma on the phone and out of nowhere she said, “grandma my birthday is April 30 and before my party I am going to get the bump taken out of my chest.”  (I corrected her and told her it was after her birthday.) And she continued, “after my birthday they are going to take the bump, my port out.  I don’t know how but they are going to take it out… after my birthday it will be all gone.” 

I am sure she thinks about her cancer and treatment more than we realize.  For example,  I haven’t directly told her that we are going to the hospital tomorrow but she heard me set-up a time to leave in the morning with my friend Rene.  After I got off the phone Sharmi drilled me with questions.  She knows tomorrow is another hard day.  This evening she has been very difficult and tried desperately to keep us from leaving her at bed time.  She always feels the anticipation and the stress.  

I am depressed that I am going to be loosing my sweet calm little girl again.  She has been a different child since she has been off the steroids for 9 weeks.  She is still driven, energetic and strong willed but she has been more peaceful and less manic.  She has been a joy.  I am really looking forward to seeing who my little girl is apart from the drugs. 

One thing I know is that is even with the drugs she is still smart.    A couple of nights ago she was brushing her teeth and she pointed to the toothpaste and said, “Mom this says K-I-D-S, it spells kids.”  I was shocked.  Dean vaguely remembers talking about is with her several weeks ago.  She is also starting to spell signs.  At Petco yesterday she said to Dean, ” I know what the name of that store is, it is P-E-T-C-O.”  She is at a really fun learning stage.

Chantel is also in a learning spurt.  She slipped on her books Friday night and fell.  I asked her if she was OK and she said, “me fall dow”  I said I think she just said “me fall down.”  My dad and mom both said that they heard it too.  So it wasn’t just a mothers ears. 

I hope that you find many things to celebrate and be thankful for with your families this holiday season.

Cheris