Saving Sarah

Sarah started another round of chemo today.  Camden and Daddy brought us to the hospital.  I thought having Camden here would help Sarah adjust to being back.  They were cute little friends-playing Xbox, coloring on the window, playing cars-It was great…until it was time for Camden and Daddy to go home.  He was pretty heartbroken we weren’t coming back home with them. Nathan took him to see his work and bought him a new hot wheel car on the way home, so he was good. The chemos Sarah gets this round are the same as last time.  We are back to three sponge baths a day to prevent skin burns from one chemo. She screams and fights, we hold her down so she doesn’t pull the line out of her chest….it’s extremely vulnerable!   As diligent as we’ve been to keep her skin clean, she has a tan and dark spots where her skin was extra sensitive. Overall Sarah is doing really well!  It was so nice to have a two week break at home (with the exception...

I wear flip flops every day at the hospital, even in the cold weather.  They are so much easier to manage when I am getting in and out of bed with Sarah throughout the day. I get many comments on them, but today I got one that made me think...."Eternal hope for Summer".  Yes!  I have an eternal hope for brighter days ahead, and that hope keeps me going, it lets me put one foot in front of the other.  It makes me think of a talk Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin gave years ago. " I think of how dark that Friday was when Christ was lifted up on the cross. On that terrible Friday the earth shook and grew dark. Frightful storms lashed at the earth.....On that Friday the Savior of mankind was humiliated and bruised, abused and reviled. It was a Friday filled with devastating, consuming sorrow that gnawed at the souls of those who loved and honored the Son of God. I think that of all the days since the beginning of this world’s history, that Friday was the darkest. Bu...

Monday!  We have been here for almost two weeks.  Two weeks for sweet Sarah to be confined to her hospital room, but she has been handling it SO well!  It's hard, but it seems like nothing when you see other kids who are confined to their room for 100 days after bone marrow transplant. I stayed here with Sarah for the first 8 days, but I went home on Friday to spend some time with Hannah and Camden.  I really wanted to see them, but it broke my heart to leave Sarah. It was a nice weekend home.  I loved playing cars with Camden, and talking with Hannah about school and mermaids, and cuddling on the couch watching some of their favorite shows.  On Saturday night I called Nathan to check on Sarah.  I starting crying to him as I now thought of leaving my other two angels.  Hannah said, "Why are you crying?"  I really didn't want them to know I was crying.  I don't want to make it harder on them, so I try really hard to just be tough ...

Sarah had her stem cell transplant today!  The staff did a cute little celebration for her.  They came in and sang a "bone marrow transplant birthday" song,  made her a darling banner, and gave her presents.  Getting the cells back was a piece of cake compared to when they had to retrieve the cells back in September.  When they retrieved the cells it took about seven hours and she had to lay still in bed.  Getting the cells back was just like getting a platelet transfusion, it only took about 30 minutes and she didn't have to hold still. Primary Children's Hospital is an amazing place. The people here are wonderful, and you can literally feel the angels surrounding these kids. You make new friends who are going through similar situations and you help each other through it.   The staff becomes like family, always trying to make Sarah's day better.  Whether it's coming in to wish her Happy New Year, play music, give hugs, or get mommy a Diet Cok...

Sarah started her first round of chemo with the bone marrow team today.  She has two days of chemo,  two days of rest, then she gets her stem cells back to help her recover. One of the chemo's she gets is excreted through the skin, so there are lots of precautions to prevent chemical burns.  She can't have the dressing on over her central line...that is the thing that scares me the most!  (A central line is a catheter placed into a large vein in Sarah's chest).  We had to have extra help holding Sarah down while we removed the dressing because she kept trying to pull it out.  The nurse made a nice wrap to go around it, but it will have to be changed multiple times a day which leaves the line vulnerable to being pulled out again. She has to have baths three to four times a day until the chemo is out of her system. Her clothes and blankets have to be washed each time she gets a bath. It's a pretty intense chemo....but that's just what these stubborn ...

I have put off writing this blog post because Sarah's treatment plan has been changed a few times.  So if I talked to you you may have heard different stories, but that was the current plan.  Her team of doctors is fantastic and they all wanted to make sure everything was perfect before we started. Sarah starts inpatient chemo a few days after Christmas.  It will be new chemos she has never had.  They are higher doses of chemo than she had before, so high she couldn't recover on her own like she did before....so she will start the stem-cell rescue.  She gets her own stem-cells back that were recovered after her first round of chemo.  Sarah will do two rounds of these chemotherapies, then we will do another MRI to check the tumor.  If everything looks good we will finish the last round of chemo, then go to Seattle for Proton Radiation. (If the MRI doesn't look good we will leave for Seattle for radiation before the last round of chemo).    ...

The plan was for Sarah's surgery today to be around lunchtime.  The operating room called and said they would be ready for Sarah to come down at 8:30.  Nathan was planning on coming before Sarah went down, but with the new time I didn't know if he would make it.  I really wanted Sarah to have a priesthood blessing before surgery.  I asked the nurse if there was any way and she got right on it.  The Branch President for Primary Children's Hospital called me about twenty minutes after I asked my nurse. He told me he was finding out who was at the hospital and available to give Sarah a blessing, but if he couldn't find someone who could make it in time he would be right here.  An employee named Jared showed up shortly after that to give our little angel a blessing.  It was such a sweet blessing...he was pretty emotional, and that made me cry even more. Nathan made it just in time to see Sarah and walk us down for surgery. -Cuddling with Daddy before ...