This week officially marks Week 30 in Ashley’s treatment protocol. She went into the day hospital on Wednesday for chemo (vincristine, actinomycin-d, cisplatin) and has been receiving daily visits from our home health nurse to administer the remainder of the chemo at home for this round. So far so good. Thank you for continuing to keep her in your prayers!

I also wanted to share with you that Ashley was asked to be a Team Bear Abassador for the Rock ‘n Roll Chicago Half Marathon on August 2nd, 2009. Ashley will be out there cheering on the runners who are participating in the race to support Bear Necessities, a pediatric children’s foundation.  It should be a fun time and we’re very excited about showing our support for such a wonderful organization.

To learn more about the event, click here:

http://www.bearnecessitiesteambear.org/

To learn more about Bear Necessities, click here:

http://www.bearnecessities.org/AboutUs/Index.html

Still at the hospital, but I have some very GOOD NEWS to share!! To be quite honest, we were terrified coming in this morning because everyone including the oncologist feared new tumor growth.  For a while it looked like our worst fears would be confirmed because the oncologists were consulting the radiologists who were then consulting infectious disease doctors and they all met to review the images together.  So we were pretty worried when all those doctors walked in the room to talk to us. 

The great news is that it was some sort of infection that started in her line, clotted and then was sprayed out into her lungs.  So the nodules that they were seeing were part of the infection and not tumor.

She’ll be on antiobiotics for four more weeks (two new antiobiotics) with daily visits from the home nurse to continue,  but everyone was thrilled with this plan.  No chemo this week.  Most likely next week. We are still at the hospital but should get to go home in the next few hours.

I really can’t say this enough, but THANK YOU FOR YOUR PRAYERS!! I owe everything to all you.  Your love and prayers are what have carried us through this journey.  We will forever be indebted to you.  Thank you!

I’m sorry I’ve fallen behind on updating again. It’s been a trying month here.  In the past month Ashley has had repeated visits to the ER and a number of hospital stays.  She seems to have an infection that just doesn’t want to go away.  Just as soon as we finish a round of antibiotics it seems that we end up back at the ER.

We  also recently received a phone call from CMH informing us that they wanted additional scans of her lungs.  Recently, when she had scans of her intestines there were two “spots” that showed up on her lungs.  So we are headed to CMH this morning for additional images to be taken of her lungs and we ask that you please keep Ashley in your prayers.

Week 30 is also supposed to be a chemo week, but that depends on her blood counts being high enough to get chemo.  The last few rounds of chemo have been delayed by 1 to 2 weeks each because her counts have been too low.  Following Week 30, the next round of chemo would come on Week 33.

Thank you for keeping Ashley in your prayers. We’ll be sure to keep everyone updated when we get scan results.