3F8 Round 14

Greetings from NYC! Well, I feel bad about not updating throughout the week, but I have been updating Eli’s Twitter page, so hopefully you have been following that for quick updates. Before getting here, I set a personal record for travel. I was on an airplane 4 days in a row! I flew to Seattle on Tuesday for a conference on Wednesday. I flew the red eye from Seattle to Chicago on Wednesday night and finished the flight from Chicago to Des Moines Thursday morning. Then Friday morning we got on Meredith Corporation’s jet in Des Moines and flew to NYC! I was certainly ready for a few days of staying on the ground!

This week of 3F8 (round 14) has been pretty typical. It started off with Monday and Tuesday being pretty brutal and extremely painful for Eli. Wednesday was better and yesterday was better still. He still has quite a bit of pain during treatment, but usually it doesn’t last quite as long and he recovers quicker afterwards. He has had a lot of residual pain in his feet at night, but we just strap hot packs on them and it helps.

We have obviously trying to get in some fun while we are here as well. Friday was the day for Central Park with Eli’s friend Sarah. We also got to go to the NYPD 20th precinct to hang out and have a BBQ (http://picasaweb.google.com/HornIT/20thPrecinctNYPD#). Eli also got to drive an NYPD boat on the Hudson River (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBNlIRXaJ4) and even docked it at the pier! The captain had right and left thrusters, so he was able to guide the boat right in without touching the steering wheel, so Eli felt like he was steering it in the entire way. He was pretty happy about that. The NYPD helicopter also did a flyby as we were floating down the Hudson (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVRB0X3HU0g).

On Saturday, we went to an amusement park with the Ronald McDonald House called Dorney Park in Pennsylvania. It is a water park and a ‘rides’ park, so we spent the first half of the day doing the lazy river over and over and over again. The second half was spent at Camp Snoopy with some of the more tame rides. It was a really good time. Eli met a new friend, Danny, that is 8 years old and they had a good time sitting together on the 1.5 hr bus ride there and back. Sunday they had a BBQ on the third floor terrace at the Ronald.

Thursday night we had a really great time. After treatment, we went to Eli’s NYC hair stylist (Mary) for a summer haircut. He isn’t allowed to have mohawks during the school year at Ankeny Christian Academy, so summer is the time to break it back out (anyone who has been following Eli’s CarePage for a while knows about his love of mohawks)! We hadn’t done a mohawk before our trip to NYC because Eli only likes ONE person to cut his hair, and that’s Mary. She is an amazing person and makes time to cut Lacey or Eli’s hair whenever we are in NYC (making room in her very busy schedule of PAYING customers). I’m very particular about my hair, I prefer to do it myself. 😉 She donates a lot of her time to pediatric cancer patients in NYC and at the last St. Baldrick’s event, she shaved over 30 heads non stop for over 5 hours! She is friends with Barbara, and the two of them are doing more for pediatric cancer patients than a lot of entire organizations I know of. Since Eli had just finished up 3F8, he was a little ‘directive’ in how he wanted things done and the narcotics got the best of his emotions at times, but after we left, he was basking in the attention over his new doo. After we said goodbye to Mary, we took off for FAO Schwarz where Barbara was throwing another Candlelighters, NYC party. Eli had a blast (as usual)!

Fiber Hair Spa

Corporate Angels wasn’t able to find a flight home for us, so we booked a one way Delta flight from NYC to Des Moines by way of Detroit on Saturday afternoon. We’re just glad we’re going to be home by July 4th! Hopefully Friday is pretty uneventful (his platelets are borderline too low for flying – they want them over 40 for a flight – so Eli MIGHT have to get platelets so we are ready to fly home). Dr. Kramer said the other day that we will plan on doing ‘several rounds of 3F8’ as long as he is HAMA negative and then see if his bone marrow has improved enough to try to finish out the Temodar (low dose oral chemo that kept sending Eli’s counts spiraling down). It sounded like a good plan to us!

This week marked Eli’s three year anniversary of discovering his tumor (6/26/2007) and being diagnosed with Stage IV Neuroblastoma (6/29/2007). Looking back, we have certainly come a long way and are so thankful for the progress that has been made beating back Eli’s cancer. God has certainly taught us a lot in the past 3 years and we are very thankful for that and for all of you that have joined us on this journey. We have met so many amazing people, but unfortunately not all of those amazing people are still with us. Our little buddy Matthew Bell from New Jersey passed away this week as did another one of our friends from South Carolina, Bayler Teal. They were both very funny and thoughtful kids with amazing parents. It has been another stark reminder of what cancer can do. Please pray for the Bell and Teal families. Thanks to everyone for all of your prayers this week. We are absolutely grateful for them.