Well, another couple weeks have passed without an update. The Horns must be home in Iowa. 🙂 There really hasn’t been too much to report. We have simply been laying low, waiting for Eli’s counts to come back up, but they have been hanging out in the neutropenic range for weeks. We can’t say we are too surprised. A lot of kids don’t make it right away to the second round of 8H9 because it takes their counts so long to recover. Eli’s counts barely recovered in time to do the second round, so we got it done, but now his counts are REALLY struggling to come up. We are taking the ordinary precautions, although we did make a controversial decision to allow Eli to go to his first day of school. We really thought it was too big of an event to miss and he was so incredibly excited for it, so we decided to let him go. His teacher is very aware of the situation and will be letting us know if any kid in his class (there are only 12 of them) appears to be sick so we can come get Eli out of class. Here are some pictures of Eli’s first day of school at Ankeny Christian Academy.
He made it to his first day, but his second day was cut very short because we had to go into Blank and get a platelet transfusion and Dr. Woods had to do a CSF from his Ommaya port (we are SO thankful she was comfortable doing that). Eli of course acted like it was no big deal for her to put a needle into his head and extract fluid, which really surprised her. After she drew the fluid, she looked at him and said, “Eli, I think you are here for a reason. COG only has one antibody study and I think you are here to teach me some things.” The other oncologist, Dr. Mitchell, also asked me a bunch of questions about 3F8 and then muttered as he left, “I guess I have some reading to do.” These are very different attitudes than what we heard in Iowa before, so we are very thankful to have doctors in Iowa that want to play on the same team with New York to help Eli. Basically our weeks have consisted of checking counts 3 times a week and getting blood and/or platelet transfusions each time.
We also made another somewhat tough decision and took Eli to the Iowa State Fair this year (it’s one of the best in the country and likely the only good excuse you would have to actually vacation in Iowa besides to see us.) 🙂 However, there was a LOT of hand sanitizer involved and any time we went into a building, he had to wear a mask. I think his biggest disappointment was that there was also a “no ride” rule. It was fairly easy to stay away from people and it was great to be able to see the Super Bull, the Super Boar, the baby animals, and of course see Lacey’s prize winning bread displayed in the food building. Of course there are pics of that trip as well (I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the “chocolate covered bacon on a stick” sign, otherwise no one would believe me that they serve that kind of stuff at the fair):
You’ll notice that Eli and Lacey were wearing their Beat Cancer shirts that day. We were able to obtain some prototypes of the Beat Cancer shirts early so we could spread the word about them. I have been in awe of the amount of tshirt orders we have been getting every day. Every hour there are at least half a dozen orders placed! We have sold 1,575 shirts so far and it keeps climbing. I am happy to say that so far, the Cyclone shirts are BARELY outselling the Hawkeye shirts. 603 to 598 in fact! I am consoled by the knowledge that a lot of people from other states just like the black and gold colors better, they have no loyalties to the Hawks. 🙂 One of our “cancer family” friends promised us that they’d sell at least 100 Texas Tech shirts if we did a limited edition black shirt with red text. So we agreed and sure enough, we have sold over 115 Texas Tech shirts. It helped that she was interviewed by her local news station about Beat Cancer Today (after that segment aired, the orders came pouring in)! Speaking of interviews, a couple of people from our group (one Hawk and one Cyclone fan) will be talking about our cause on KCCI’s Channel 8 noon news on Monday. Check it out if you’re in the area, otherwise I’m sure it will be online and we can link to it. The KCCI news anchors have also agreed to wear our shirts on September 12th for their Saturday news show! It’s all very cool stuff and it’s going like wildfire! Thank you to everyone who has ordered shirts, even those of you who don’t necessarily have any loyalties to a specific team, but just dig the shirts and their colors (as well as the fact that the proceeds go to CureSearch). This was far more successful than I expected! If you haven’t ordered yours yet, you only have a few days left to get to www.beatcancertoday.org and place your order! So far, our biggest online order has been 41 shirts and second place was 40 shirts!
By the way, just to make sure it is clear, we haven’t shipped any shirts yet. So if you ordered yours on July 27th and you still haven’t received it yet, that’s because it hasn’t been made. The cut off date for ordering and getting your shirt in time for the big day is August 25th. Once August 25th rolls around, we’ll place one big order with our tshirt printer, they will print the shirts, then mail them out around September 1st so everyone will get them before September 12th. I am really excited to see a lot of people wearing them at the big Iowa vs. Iowa State game in Ames on September 12th. We will have a tent in lot A4 with a sign that will say “National Childhood Cancer Awareness Day” on it. Feel free to stop by and say hi, we will have about 40 “cancer families” from Club Hope there sporting our shirts and having a fun time tailgating!
The next step will be to have scans done in NYC on 8/27 and 8/28 (Lacey’s birthday). We did our MRIs in Iowa this week (it was over 3 hours, so Eli had to be sedated for that), so that just leaves urine, MIBG, CT, and bone marrows. For our “Eli prayer warriors”, here are some specific requests we’d love to have you pray for: That Eli’s counts start to come up, that Eli’s scans go well and we get to NYC and back safely, Eli has an infection on his knee where he scraped it that we are praying will heal and won’t turn into a big issue (he is on antibiotics for it now), and of course don’t forget to pray for all of our little friends fighting their own battles with cancer. Thank you so much for being there for us and thanks to everyone who are still requesting Eli bracelets (you can get yours by e-mailing bracelets@elihorn.com)!
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