Busy, Busy, Busy

Thursday, April 11, 2002
Thank you Becky for your quote: "You can't be pitiful and powerful at the same time". I'm a sucker for quotes and that is a great one!

Well, it has been a while since I updated everyone. Sorry about that. It has really been a pretty good week. Kelby is doing really well through this treatment. I had expected her to get really fatigued as before with chemotherapy, but it hasn't done anything to her. They thought maybe her skin in the treatment area might be affected, but it hasn't changed yet. She is a little more tired than usual, but so am I...from the long drive everyday.

Everyday as we are driving down to the hospital she explains to me about the medicine going into her tube and the nap she gets to take. Once we are in the parking garage she gets excited for the "moving stairs" that we get to go up...there's an escalator on the way in. Inside the radiology center, we check in and she checks out the "pretty fishies." There is a huge, beautiful, salt-water aquarium there with a clown fish which she calls the "happy face" fish!) After we check in, we meander back to the radiation treatment waiting room. There is another fish tank there that she likes to visit. She is always being silly and making everyone in the waiting room smile. I am always so proud of her. She likes to "play the game" that's there. It is a Nintendo game that I play and she thinks she's playing. As we wait she says in an excited voice every few minutes, "They gonna check me." We never have to wait too long anymore. The Anesthesiologist comes to get her and we go back to the treatment room. She shows them her tube so they can give her the "medicine" that puts her to sleep. She goes under almost immediately and I leave the room to wait for her to be finished. It takes about 15 minutes. They bring her out to me still sleeping so she can wake up in my arms. Now she wakes up pretty happy and asks for her "circle" sandwich...I have been cutting her peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a special cutter and she seems pretty impressed with that. She always wants to eat right away since they make her starve until after the treatment. Then we are on the way home for the day. It is another long drive and we get home a little more worn, but at least we have the afternoons to rest! I just found out today that we get to finish treatment on Tuesday instead of Thursday. We are almost done! It hasn't been as hard as I had imagined. I am very thankful for those daily dinners by my dear friends from MOPS. It helps to not have to think about anything once we get home. We have time to goof around this way.

On Tuesday, we met our Make-A-Wish Volunteers at Red Robin in Redmond after our treatment. They wanted to take us out to lunch. Normally they have a send off party before your trip, but we just went too fast that they never got the chance. It turned out to be a really great time. I don't think that even the volunteers expected it, but the Red Robin manager really treated us great. We were telling Keith about our wonderful trip to Disneyland when Kelby announced that she wanted a balloon. (She remember the balloon from a previous trip to the same restaurant - smart kid!) Keith went to ask the manager if we could get some balloons and that just got the ball rolling. They brought out a bunch of seven balloons which just thrilled her. We had a delicious lunch. Then, they brought out the big mascot "Red." He brought even more balloons and a huge ice cream sundae. They whole staff came over. They asked if they could sing her their version of the "Happy Birthday" song even though it wasn't her birthday, but just to make her feel special (That is the only song they all knew.) She just loved it. Keith and Sydney (our wonderful volunteers) took all kinds of cute pictures of us and the wait staff. Then, to top it all off, the restaurant's manager said he wouldn't bring out the bill because they didn't want the Make-A-Wish to have to pay...not even a tip. Wow, that was really special! Mike was so disappointed that he hadn't been there. Kelby and I had a great time! Thanks so much to Make-A-Wish and Red Robin!!! '

Yesterday was pretty uneventful I guess. I can't seem to remember anything to tell you about it anyways. I did find out that my mommy gets to come and visit next week. That will be fun! I have just been hanging out and relaxing in the evenings.

Today I called about and ad in the paper for some Springer Spaniel puppies! We went to go see them after dinner...and YES we are going to get one. We picked out a cute little boy! Kelby just loves him. We can't take him home until around the 24th of this month...which will give us time to finish Kelby's treatment and get the house ready for him. I am just so excited. He is so adorable. I look forward to having a great time with him this summer. It will give me and the girls a really good reason to play outside. I know that it will be a lot of work, but it was just really important to me...to build even more good memories. We decided that a Springer Spaniel would be a really good sized dog for us. It is big enough to be fun for Michael for camping and stuff...and little enough to be an inside dog for me! He is the real deal with papers and everything...which means he's more expensive, but I wanted him bad enough to pay. It is going to be really hard to wait for him. The owner said that would could go visit though. I'll take a picture next time to post. I'm so mad that I didn't remember to take a picture tonight...I even had the camera with me.

Okay, so all-in-all we are doing really well. I am thankful for that! Every day is a great day. Kelby continually has that happy smile. That must be due to all the prayers going up for her.
God Bless!

 

Kelby’s wearing Tegan’s shirt as a hat!