Friday's Appointment

I know everyone has been anxiously waiting with us all day. Dave will begin chemo on Wednesday. He will have 2 rounds then Dr. Ravi will check to see if the tumor has changed. Each round is 3 weeks. 3 days of chemo and every other day he will have blood work. All of this will be outpatient. He is glad about that. If the chemo is working, he will continue with more rounds and then check the tumor again. Then he will have radiation then surgery. The path report from this week revealed that everything was essentially unchanged since the fisrt ct scan. This has been a long day. Thank you all for praying for us.

Friday

Today Dave will see the doctor at 1:45. We will have a plan for the near future after this appointment. We have been looking at places to live while we're here. We are so ready for the kids to be here with us. Kids have a way of taking your mind off of things.

Dave's tests results this week have been good. Our doctor from Anniston has been able to look at these this week and let us know this info. So thankful for the little bits of good news. I'll update after the appointment.

Todays Appointment

Today's appointment didn't go as we had hoped. The difficult thing about LMS is that it moves through the blood stream. It also can't really be graded. Dr. Ravi is concerned that it is already traveling to other parts of the body. Dave has lots of tests this week and he will see Dr. Ravi again on Friday. So this is the plan. Dave will begin chemotherapy on Monday here at MD Anderson. Dr. Ravi said that after a few weeks he will be able to tell if the chemo is working to kill the cells. Then he will have radiation followed by surgery in about 6 months. They are watching the tumor react to the chemo and radiation before they remove it. Dr. Ravi is glad that he is able to treat Dave from the beginning. Had the tumor been removed, he feels like more cancer would have occurred elsewhere in the body. Chemotherapy is a must!

Today was difficult. So please continue to pray for our family. Our kids will be joining us here next week. We miss them!

Today during the pep rally the students, faculty, and parents all wore purple LMS ribbons to honor Dave. This was such a sweet time. One of his precious students prayed for him in front of the whole student body before the pep rally. Here are a couple of pictures I got.

Our family after the pep rally

The Senior Band Members

This is the site to read more about LMS...... http://www.nlmsf.org

Family Photos

Last Monday we had some family pictures made. Thank you to Millie Nelson...she is the best photographer ever. This was such a fun photo shoot. The weather was perfect. It was rainy and cloudy up until time for our pictures. Then as we were beginning, we saw a beautiful rainbow. It was great. So here are a few of our pictures.

handwriting today

Today for Handwriting, I asked Samuel to write a story. I gave him a cute little sheet of writing paper with a big truck on it. I told him to write about anything he wanted to write about. This was his story just as he wrote it...spelling and all :)

My Momy and Dady are goeing to Texas.
I am not goeing to crie.
I am goeing to stay wis my aunt.
We are goeing to hav so much fun.
I am goeing to get my new DS gam.
The End

I almost cried when I read this. A little background for ya....Samuel does not spend the night away from home... EVER!!! The only times he has had to in the past year is when Dave and were in Hawaii and when we took another short trip.....and when I was in the hospital. He just wants to be at home. So, a couple of weeks ago he and I took a walk on a Friday afternoon. I got a chance to talk with him about his Daddy and how important it is for him to go to this hospital. It was like after that that he was OK with whatever we needed him to do. Amazing. So for him to actually be somewhat excited about staying somewhere other than home, and somewhere Dave and I aren't going to be is pretty great!

Tomorrow we will work on that spelling :)

The Weekend

The first picture is of Dave and Samuel watching the Alabama game last night. He never misses and opportunity to cuddle with Daddy on the couch.

Today we had a baby shower for my youngest sister Giny. She is expecting baby #2 in about a month. William will definitely have plenty to wear. I have never seen so much blue!!

Dave is ready to see the doctor. We hope to have a pretty normal week of school and activities this week. The kids are looking forward to spending the week with Aunts and Uncles and cousins while we are gone. We are so thankful to have so many people who love our kids. That will be one thing we don't have to worry about while we are gone.