Abby Update: More Chemo, Almost Done With This Phase, Magazine, A Guest on the Blog Tomorrow

Always the camera hound, Abby grabs some gloves and hams it up WHILE we were changing her dressing. She would grimace in agony one minute before returning to her infectious smile and mugging for the press. (infectious? you'd think a writer could think up a better word in this circumstance!~BR)

From Michelle:

The end of this intense round of chemo is in sight. Abby got her last chemo, for this phase, today. As soon as her bone marrow recovers, she will begin her last and LONGEST round. The last phase is 2 years long, but will be less intense than the others have been. We are looking forward to things getting a little easier for our sweet girl. Abby's doctors remind us that for Abby, it will probably take a while for things to smooth out and for them to discover the correct doses of chemo for her, because she metabolizes three of the four chemos poorly, but we hope and pray things will be smoother for Abby soon.

Today, Abby's infection near her gastric tube looks worse and is more painful for her. The pain medicine is helping a lot, but we are relying more on extra doses of morphine today.

Abby's WBC are still absent and she is anemic. She almost needs transfusions, but narrowly misses qualifying for them. Blood transfusions make her feel much better, but they carry risks as well. I am praying she starts making her own blood soon.

Abby's liver enzymes are up again. The chemo they gave her today is necessary, but it is also one more toxin. I am praying she can filter out all of the toxins we are giving her, so that her liver can begin to heal.

Thank you so much for praying for us. It is honestly getting much harder for us to be in the hospital. Abby is isolated in her hospital room, because she has NO immune system. She wants me in sight at all times, because she is in pain and feels like crud. When she is asleep her oxygen levels sometimes drop, so I don't like to step out of the room then either. This makes it difficult for me to get anything done. Ordinary things like taking showers, getting food and drinks are a challenge. We are both looking forward to the day when we can be home again.

Phyllis, thanks again for bringing me the wonderful frozen dinners and for keeping us company. I can't wait until Abby is healthy enough to play with Kristen again.

Marlo, thanks for watching Abby while I cleaned up. Not many people would volunteer to watch a kid on oxygen. You choose to reach out to Abby and me, even when I know being with us has to bring back so many memories, some wonderful, but others that are more difficult. God has used you to bless us more than you can know.

From Brent:

We've received wonderful feedback on the March issue of Serious.Life Magazine. Be sure to check it out if you haven't see it yet. http://www.seriouslifemagazine.com/

It has been a HARD week, a hard weekend, and hard couple of days. Abby got her LAST dose of the chemo today for this brutal stage she is in. She still has two years of chemo (once a month) but it should be relatively mild compared to the last two months which has been the absolute worse.

When she survives the next 2-3 weeks (as the last of the chemo piles on and the current wounds battle infection), we will move out of the valley of the shadow and finally begin to feel the warm rays of hope corresponding coincidentally to the actual time of year. We look forward to Abby being able to play again, and return to her normal beautiful self as warm spring days arrive and the flowers bloom.

Thanks so much for your kindness and prayers for all these months. We’re not out of the this dangerous phase yet, but at least we can see the first rays of dawn on the horizon. God is good and has seen us through every single step, never failing to shower us with compassion and hope.

Tomorrow afternoon we are going to have someone special on the blog who is insisting on hijacking our online friends and tell them about something she's been twisting our arms over for a while now. I'm still not sure we are going to let her do it, but at this point we've given a tentative approval because she is threatening to reveal publicly that I secretly wanted to be a ballerina all my life.

~ Brent

Here's a tour of Abby's hospital room full of cards, letters, pictures and Bible verses that YOU sent to us. See if you can pick out something from you: