Enjoying Home

Two weeks without posting an update, that has to be some sort of record for me. Hopefully everyone gathered that “no news is good news” and that we were simply enjoying our time at home. Eli has been having a great time catching up with grandparents, friends, and his beloved dog Harley. We certainly tried to make the most of our time here. One of Eli’s favorite things to do is mow the yard, so we did that many times (one complete mowing takes about 4-5 hours). One of my favorite things to do is ride my motorcycle, so I did that once and it was pouring rain. Why did it have to rain nearly every single day we were home? If anyone wants to see some pictures of our town flooding, you can see some here. Thankfully our basement stayed dry and we got a battery backup sump pump system arranged so that when our power goes out (which is a constant problem out here), we will still have a sump pump kicking water out every 2 minutes. Anyway, here is an album of some shots from home:

Home in May

Over Memorial Day weekend, we went to Dubuque, Iowa to stay one night at the Grand Harbor Resort Water Park. We all had a blast and even enjoyed the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium as boring as that might sound! Here is an Animoto video from that trip:

However, all good things must come to an end. So it’s off to the East Coast again for us. That should indicate some good news to you all. We got the HAMA results back this morning and Eli is HAMA negative, so we’re on for the fourth round of 3F8! That also means the beta glucan has officially started again, but that went fairly well this morning. Several people have been asking what is in store for this trip, so I’ll break it down. Weeks 1 & 2 are 3F8. Week 3 will be scans (bone marrows, CT scan, MIBG scan, urine test). Week 4 will HOPEFULLY be a stem cell harvest. Those are the certain things. What is uncertain is what they will decide the next step is based on the scan results from Week 3. If they want us to move to a different 3F8 protocol, they might get us started on that right away, which would mean another 1-2 weeks. We’ll see what they say.

Click “Older” for Part II