Africa

Thanks to everyone who has signed up for Eli’s new website! I know a lot of you have signed up to receive these updates via email and many of you have created logins and have already left comments, which is awesome. These comments are emailed to me and I can reply to them very easily, which is great. I know one person has struggled with getting the email subscription to work, so I am working on that, but otherwise I think people have had great success in getting subscribed. Thank you!

As I mentioned on Eli’s Twitter page a few days ago (since I could only do a quick update at the time), our plans changed at the last minute. Although we discovered that Eli was HAMA negative, Dr. Kramer preferred to try Temodar (oral chemo) now rather than do another round of 3F8 and then try Temodar after that. I think she was anxious to get back on the 8H9 protocol and give some more treatment that would treat Eli’s brain (3F8 doesn’t reach the brain, but Temodar does). She has a lot of interest in making sure Eli doesn’t have a brain relapse at all. Lacey and I were comfortable with that decision. So Eli started low dose Temodar on Monday. Unfortunately, history repeated itself and Eli got nauseous and threw up the first night of taking it. The poor kid even grabbed a tissue on his way to throw up so cleanup would be easier. Being nauseous is something that these kids are very experienced with. Hopefully he will handle the Temodar ok for the rest of the round, but our biggest prayer is that Eli’s counts stay decent and don’t come crashing down. Eli becoming neutropenic (no immunity and at a very high risk for infection that his body can’t fight off) is a very big concern here.

It is hard to be away from home, but I know that Lacey has things well under control. The hardest part of being away was missing Isaiah’s 3rd birthday. I will also be flying home on my 30th birthday, so we will have to make up for those celebrations later. I took a few days to visit Cape Town, South Africa before going to Durban for work because I wanted to say hi to Connor Gerber and his family. We met the Gerbers in the Ronald McDonald House in NYC a few years ago and hadn’t seen them for a while. Connor is a fellow Neuroblastoma warrior who will soon be starting MIBG therapy in South Africa under the direction of Dr. Modak in New York. It is going to be very hard on him because nobody can be in the same room as him for many days due to the high level of radiation and the lack of ‘lead walls’ that they have in NY that allow the parents to be in the same room. Please keep him in your prayers as well. http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/connorgerber

It was really great hanging out with the Gerbers at dinner on the beach. The three boys were full of energy and definitely reminded me of my boys back home. One of my coworkers also joined me for a day at Cape Town and we visited the hot spots like Table Mountain and Camps Bay on Saturday. Cape Town is an unbelievably beautiful city and we both noticed that people in South Africa seem to be unbelievably friendly. I uploaded quite a few pictures here:

Cape Town 2010

I also have been uploading food pictures for those that enjoy my foodie tendencies, although so far I haven’t had anything extremely out of the ordinary. An Ostrich burger was my most unique experience so far and I really enjoyed it:

South Africa Food

I had two really great experiences in Cape Town. The first was on a $10 boat tour around the harbor. I took a really cheap option to just get some views of the city from the water and it turned out to be a great value. As we were out on the water, two whales came right up to our boat and swam past as they showed us their tails and popped up for air. It was really exciting and even the captain of the boat was taking pictures like crazy. I got a few good pictures and a video that I will put on YouTube later as well:

From Cape Town 2010

The second experience was coming across a group of guys doing some African music and dance at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town. It was very cool. Here is a video of it that I grabbed with my camera:

There will be more good experiences in South Africa to come, I am sure. It has been nice that I can FaceTime with Lacey and the boys at night at least!

Thank you for continuing to pray for Eli as he continues on with chemo, but thank you also for praying for his friends that are going through an even rougher time right now like Connor, Kate, and Jack just to name 3.

Please don’t forget to vote daily at http://www.refresheverything.com/armswideopenchildhoodcancerfoundation

We are now in 3rd place, but only 1st and 2nd place get the money! Thanks to everyone who has been helping.

For those that didn’t see the Twitter update a few days ago and want to get those updates via email as well, remember that you can easily subscribe to get a daily email with all of Eli’s Twitter updates. Just go to http://www.feedmyinbox.com and give it your email address and this website: http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/139533223.rss Then you’ll get one email every day that I update Eli’s Twitter account and you won’t have to keep visiting his Twitter page to check for updates.