Roller Coaster!

Just one why I describe our lives "Roller Coaster". As a mom it's hard when one of your kids are sick. It was hard going to work and not always being able to stay home with them when they were sick, but they were sick a few days maybe even a week. Now, a week of watching your child be sick sounds easy, 2 1/2 years is exhausting. This last week has had some good moments and not so good.

We started the DI phase on Friday (16th) We gave Johnny a break and Kyle came with me for the weekend. She had treatments on day 1 and day 4, so we stayed for the weekend and left after her treatment on Monday, then home for a few days and back up on Friday (23rd) The appointment was bright and early at 8:00. So we left Rachelle's house by 6:30. She was given the chemo VCR and DOXO and this was our first day on steroids again. She also had a lumbar puncture. The last few times we have been at the hospital she has really started getting nervous and anxious. She refuses to eat and drink anything at the hospital & sometimes throws up before she gets chemo. It wipes her out and she was ready to go back to Rachelle's house to see her cousins. She throw up twice after steroids, so the Doctor wanted us to continue them for an extra day. She's a trooper even though she feels like crap when I go to take a picture, most the time, she tries her best to smile. They have therapy dogs come visit the kids and the nurses at the RTU posed for a picture. The nurses had lots of orange bands on their wrist since September is childhood cancer awareness month and ended up with the ones Kyle and I were wearing to add to their collection.

The next day she had more energy. I continued to give her medicine for nausea. In the afternoon we went to our first cancer event which was a fundraiser called Alex's Lemonade Stand you can learn about it here.
A fellow cancer mom, who's daughter also had ALL and is done with her 2 1/2 years of treatments does a lemonade stand every year to raise money for this foundation check her story out here.
Her mom, Kristin did an amazing job. On her blog, she does such a good job at describing how she feels and I totally relate to her being devastated about being so close to her goal of raising 10,000 and the passion she feels to help all the children fighting cancer. She was only short $700, but she should feel so proud. She put so much into it and we had an amazing time. So fun for all of us, but especially Avery. It was nice for Avery to meet and see other kids that are going through what she has to go through. She had a star on the wall of courageous and they gave a framed picture with some of the cancer kids to one of the sponsors. They also had her come up with other cancer cuties to recognize them. Kyle and I won raffle prizes and we all put in for a free drawing every hour and Avery won that. It was a good day!