Half Way Mark!

We had an awesome trip to Santa Cruz this weekend. What a perfect way to mark the half way point of Danny's chemo! On Thursday Julie and Bennett arrived in town and we planned on picking them up and driving straight down to S.C. Danny had been feeling very tired on Wednesday so that morning we went to the Dr.s and got a blood check. His hemoglobin levels were really low (less than ha;f of a normal persons)making him exhausted (like he-can-barely-move tired). We were able to get a blood transfusion that morning which was really lucky-we were thinking we'd have to come home from S.C. to get it because it takes awhile to radiate all the blood before they give it to him. The transfusion takes about 5 hours (and get this-it cost $7,000! Thank heavens for insurance huh?!) so while Danny was getting blood we picked up Julie and Bennett and got to play a bit. Danny almost immediately felt better afterwards (he had a lot more color too) and that evening we drove down to Santa Cruz. The next morning we drove back to San Jose and the girls picked up Emily and the boys picked up Luke. All the girls went to Princesses on Ice in San Jose-okay, let me just tell you, IT WAS AWESOME! I had no expectations and was really surprised how cool it was. The costumes were incredible and the dancers were really very good. Lucy got in her Snow White dress and was enthralled checking out all the other little girls' princess dresses.





Lucy sat on my mom's lap (mom loved the hugs) during the first half of the show. She got super excited when Minnie and Mickey came out at the beginning and then had a enthralled/excited/slightly scared expression the rest of the time. I kept looking over at her to make sure she was okay and she was just wide eyed taking it all in. When all the princesses started dancing together at the end of the first act she looked at me and said, "All of my friends in pretty dresses!" and then just kept repeating "All my friends!". I have to admit that I started crying at that point-a random mixture of joy and sadness I guess. The second half was the Cinderella story in better detail than the others and Lucy LOVED it. When Gus got on the stage she freaked out. She adores that little mouse. Okay-that is enough detail about all of that-we loved it.






The rest of the weekend is a bit of a blur fro me. We walked a block down to the ocean and went on several walks along the cliffs. Lucy had a riot playing with/bossing around Bennett. She really loved having someone to play with. We watched episodes of Glee and Modern Family, I read a terrific book, and we went on a fun shopping expedition downtown.



We really just loved hanging out with Danny's family. It was theraputic to talk about what we've done for the past twelve weeks and what we expect for the next twelve and beyond. Thanks for sacrificing and coming Julie, Luke and Emily! We're half way there!

Pumpkin Patch

We are so excited for Halloween this year. Lucy has been asking to talk about it for months. She is finally old enough to understand it and has been practicing saying her "Trick or Treat!". An AWESOME mom from Strandwood offered to make Lucy a Cinderella dress after reading one of these posts (Thanks Jennifer!)-can you believe how kind?! She is going to go crazy when she sees it. Last night we went to the pumpkin patch. The past couple years Danny and I have brought two cameras and strategically placed Lucy by pumpkins for some seriously cute pics:
2007




2008



(I had to include some cute ones with Daddy)

This year we couldn't keep up with her. I took over a hundred pictures and they were mostly of her back as she ran to the next pumpkin. Oh well-she had a blast and I still got a couple ones of her face:








I love the pumpkin patch.

The Call

When the Dr. calls at 8 PM it is either really bad news or really good news. Last night we were lucky enough to receive some really good news. Danny had him email us the findings of his CT scan this morning so he could remember the exact words the Dr. used:
"Showed no evidence of any abnormal lymph nodes. Only remaining finding is of a minimally enlarged spleen (which always takes time to shrink to normal. Congratulations."
Very good news. We are incredibly excited. At this point nothing in our treatment has changed, but there is a slight possibility that we won't have to do as many cycles. We'll see the Dr. next Monday and plead with him, but if it is in Danny's best interest to do four more cycles than we'll do it.
A very good start to our Relief Week.

Okay now some less exciting news that I am really excited about. Yesterday I saw the blog of some friends that took their little girl to a Disney Princess ice show. It takes very little on some days for me to fall apart and yesterday was one of those days. I may not have mentioned it but one of my coping mechanisms is to buy princess things for Lucy. She LOVES princesses right now so I have bought every silly dollar store item with a Disney princess on it. I buy her Princess stickers whenever I pass them. I guess it is just a way to compensate for what I perceive she has lost in this time. Well I decided it was silly of me to want to go so badly, but the next thing I knew my Mom and Marilyn were online buying tickets for all of us girls to go. So this Friday Mom, Marilyn, Julie, Bennett and Emily will be at
Thanks Mom and Marilyn for ignoring my denials, seeing past my dry eyes and knowing instinctively that I really wanted this. Lucy is going to FREAK OUT!

Happenings

It has been a whole week since I posted last, but not much is going on. Danny got some chemo and has been getting his shots. These last couple of days he has been a little more incoherent due to his pain killers, but in general he is doing really good. We were worried he'd need another transfusion when his red blood cell count dipped pretty low but he ate some serious amounts of steak and leafy greens and his counts improved a bit. He did not want to sit in the hospital all day getting blood, and eating steak isn't too bad:) Tomorrow he gets a CT scan of his whole body to check how large his lymph nodes are. We're excited to get results for that.
Lucy and I have been getting excited about Halloween. She tells everyone we meet that she is going to be Cinderella for Halloween, which is stressing me out slightly because we only have a Snow White costume! We'll see... Lucy and Grandma Marilyn decorated our house and we have a pumpkin spice candle going all day, so we're feeling very fall-y around here.

We have some exciting plans for this relief week. We've rented a house in Santa Cruz where Danny always surfs and Luke & Emily, Julie and Bennett are coming out to play with all of us for a long weekend. We can't wait!
Here is Lucy showing off her "Cinderella Pumpkin"she picked at the Peronas (thanks guys!)I had no idea there was a pumpkin variety named for Cinderella-Lucy LOVES it.

Cycle 4

(editor's note: this is not the trusty chair, but this is Danny on Day 2)

Dear Friends and Family,
I'm sitting in my trusty arm chair which has become like my new
appendage. It's in the main family room, so I get to be in the middle
of all the action...and the big screen is 15 feet away.

I'm trying to get this post out, but I'm not feeling totally
awesome right now, so we'll see how much I get to say. It is the
first day of cycle 4 today! It hit me kinda hard today. A little
harder than last one I think, but I still feel confident that it will
be better than the first two. As I'm thinking on it, it's weird to
get a bunch of crazy junk pumped into your body through a port in your
chest. Some of the stuff is red and we have to handle so carefully
because if it accidentally got on your skin it would burn right
through. So, it burns anything that it touches outside, but we pump
two syringes of that lovely liquid into my body. Guess the only thing
it burns in there is cancer cells baby. Only one other drug is
"pushed", into me like that and the rest are just another clear liquid
in those iv bags hanging on the machine. I'm glad they are doing such
a good job at killing the cancer in my body...but they can knock the
rest of me out pretty good in the process too. It'll be ok though.
At least it is a nice break from the emotional and mental turmoil that
the pred crash has on me.

About the crash. The doctor decided that we will taper the prednazone
so we hopefully won't have such a harsh crash. We were too far into
the cycle for this round to do the real taper, but we did take a lower
dose for 3 days into relief week to help. I think it did help. I
still experienced a let down and then a crash afterward, but it was
less severe. So, I hope that the taper will help in that category.

As you all know, we went to Utah this "relief week", for a couple
days. I'm really glad we went. It was a very good distraction for
Christy and I and think Mom and Dad. It also made the week go by
faster which is a good thing, oddly enough, for what we term as a
relief week. Maybe I should rename this week, emotional breakdown
week, because that is what really happens:) Lindsay's concert was
totally awesome!! I had to hold back the tears as she sang Please.
That is such a beautiful song!

I have been dealing lately with a lot of anxiety and fear about
illness (I know funny) falling upon me or my family. It can get
pretty bad. I will kind of get paralyzed with fear and have panic
attacks that one day Lucy will get sick with something, anything, and
for some reason it will be all I can think about. I know I really
need to see a psych about it. But, I also felt impressed on the drive
up to Utah that there was a reason that I was facing these anxieties
and fears and that reason is to teach me how to fully and completely
put my trust in God and His goal to perfect us and have us be truly
happy. I know that I may still need therapy to help teach me how to
get over my anxieties, but I believe that my full and complete healing
will and can only happen through having more faith and putting more
trust in God and His Son Jesus Christ. How this is done, and what it
all means to do that...I don't totally know yet...but I guess that's
why I'm going through this.

If I'm opening up like this, I must say, I wish Christy didn't have to
go through this difficult trial. She is already such an amazing
woman. I wish I could tell you all how amazing she is dealing with
all of this! I wish she didn't have to go through it...I don't feel
like she needs the refining.
(editor's note: I know I didn't have to include his sweet paragraph about me-but it makes me feel good so I did.
Additional note: I think this whole experience IS for me. Danny is the strongest, most humble and faithful guy I know. I guess maybe it will just make both of us stronger, not to mention more grateful every day for health, strength, each other and our Savior.)

I am listening to "Man's Search for Meaning", by Victor Frankl. I
really like it so far and I have a quote I'd like to share, but I
don't have the hard copy around, so I'll get around to it sometime.
It has to with love really being the ultimate thing in life.

I love you all. Here is to the halfway cycle. Cheers!

Danny

Relief Week Cycle 3-Utah!

We had an awesome Relief Week this time around. Danny had a good time, but Lucy, Marilyn and I had a BLAST! It was very good for the "support team" to get out, be in a new place and have fun with our family and friends. The drive was breeze-Danny was surprisingly less "twitchy" than expected and even drove a bit. We left at 4 AM so Lucy would sleep through a bunch of the trip and she was an angel the whole time. She had an HSM marathon and sang along with Troy and Gabriella throughout Nevada. Here she is singing in her falcetto a Sleeping Beauty song:

We spent Thursday hanging out with Julie and the boys and fit in a trip to Kangaroo Zoo-my favorite fun spot in UT. Lucy loves all the bouncy houses-and I love watching her have fun playing with her cousins. That night we got to see Lindsay perform at the Tahitian Noni center. She was incredible! Her voice is amazing and she is just a terrific singer. If you haven't checked out her music-look for Lindsay Aline on iTunes or Amazon. One Friday Danny crashed with the Blodgetts while Lucy, Aunt Becca and I drove up to Thanksgiving Point to Cornbelly's-an extravagant pumpkin patch of sorts. As far as I know they don't have anything like this in CA. There were corn mazes and pumpkins as you'd expect-but they also had toy duck racing, a kid hay maze, a grain train, huge slides off hay bails, piglet races-it was like an amusement park! Our favorite thing was the princess section. They had a large Princess jumpy house, a pumpkin shaped horse-drawn carriage, you could dress up a scarecrow and even dress up yourself. We stayed there at least an hour accessorizing our princess costumes, doing twirls and pretending to be Cinderella in her carriage. It was awesome.












Conference was awesome and it was so fun to be with our family as we watched it. After an awesome trip we drove home Sunday. I drove through what felt like a blizzard for the first three hours, but after that we had good weather all the way. It was a terrific trip-it made the week go quickly (and that is always my goal). Thanks to the Blodgetts, Vaughns and Jacobs (and you Katy and Lindsay) for hanging out, housing and feeding us. Special thanks to Nancy Jacobs who made Danny a gorgeous surfing quilt (with really cool retro material). Here is Danny using /modeling it after his first day of chemo cycle 4.