I Am So Thankful

I've been out of the blogging world for a bit- please forgive me- its just
As October came and went I’ve been feeling kind-of out of it... and just
down a bit and it took me a while to figure out why- this is coming up on
our year anniversary with Tucker. When this whole thing started Justin and
I always used Halloween of 2010 as "when Tucker started to change"- so from
October- January of 2011 we kept telling the doctors- Hey, Tucker was fine
on Halloween of 2010, I remember because I took Jaiden and Tucker that
night and we ran the neighborhoods trick-or-treating and it was just days
after that Halloween that Tucker started going down hill and we started
calling the doctors asking them about this or about that... and then came
January when Tucker was diagnosed. Well it just dawned on me the other day that I’m having a hard time, now. How odd is that? I'm just NOW having a hard time. LOL
That’s a women for ya, when you think we would not be ok, we
are ok, and when things are ok- we aren’t ok. I'm ok.. really... I’m just
not ok at the same time, how’s that for cryptic women talk? LOL Anniversary’s are tuff- depending on the anniversary I suppose. Cancer anniversaries are strange- its like YA lets celebrate! He’s made it through a year!!!!! The first year down of his 2nd cancer! AND its also the anniversary time for his first cancer… so its like YA, one year under out belt for our 2nd cancer… and 7years gone by from our 1st cancer… and then all your emotions gets all mixed up. Like I’m so happy we made it another year- but I’m so MAD that we had to do this again- I’m so happy Tucker is doing so much better, but I’m just so MAD that we have 2 cancer anniversaries, just lots of emotions floating around (feel free to feel sorry for my husband and maybe send him a card with a monkey on it hanging from a tree that says “hang-in-there”) LOL

Let get to the good news first…Tucker's Beat Boredom drive was a huge success! Holy Cow! We got hundreds and hundreds of DVD's- my good friends Angie had got a 500 DVD case hold for the clinic and we were able to fill up all but 100 holders! It looks great! I organized it (yes, yes I realize it won't stay that way..) I have a cartoon section, a girl section, a boy section, a baby & little kids section, and then a “big” movie section. It is great! I've heard from multiple other cancer mom's how AWESOME it is! It’s been up at clinic now for a week and its already getting well used, as I knew it would. Also, on top of the DVD's we got enough games for the Xbox, PS2 & Game cube to fill up a holder for each gaming system! All new and TONS of games! AND somebody donated an actual Playstation! Super-duper SWEET!
Let me give a BIG BIG thank you to Quest Academy- my son's 5th grade class
held there own SUPERHERO drive with the school and collected donations from
the whole school- OH MY HECK we had TONS and TONS! At one point you couldn't walk through our front room because we had stacks and stacks of
DVD's all over the place. And a big shout out to my friends in Alaska who also sent a box full of DVD’s for our UT cancer kids—This drive sure reached far & wide!
I gotta say we had so much fun going through all the DVD's- Also, Angie had some sweet contact that donated a hundred DVD’s (or more? Angie correct me if I’m wrong) to the cause- how COOL?!
You people are SO giving, this is the perfect time to say Thank you- I'm so
grateful this thanksgiving time for everybody who helped out- I'm grateful to Tucker's school- for my friends and for my family who helped out. You
all mean so much to us. I'm just so grateful that we had this opportunity
to help out all the families and kids up at the Oncology ward, Tucker is
actually excited now to go up to clinic to get his chemo because he
can't wait to play the games and watch a new movie and now I bet there are more than one cancer kid in UT who is also looking forward to going up to clinic now.

From the bottom of my heart- thank you all- and I'm so sorry at my delay in writing this post- I’m trying to get out of the "low" I’m in because Tucker is doing so good.
Halloween was lots of fun- Tucker went as some Skeleton thing, Jaiden was a
cool looking robot and I'm still not exactly sure what Lily was trying to
be. It was great fun. Jaired decided that he was to old for Halloween so he
stayed home and passed out candy.

The past 6 weeks Tucker's been doing home chemo- that’s the time when he
takes LOADS of pills- but it gets us out of going up to the hospital- its
so easy to pretend that life is normal during those 6 weeks- Tucker was
complaining all about school, as a kid should, he was playing with
friends- not cleaning his room- just being a 11 year old boy. Then last
week we started our big weekly chemos- ugh- but Tucker got to take all the
DVD's and games up there and he wasn't bored once. We did have a little
Hick-up in the plan- Tucker's had this horrible chest cough for like the
whole 6 weeks- I’ve taken him into the doc 2 times (just our family doc)
and they have put him on 2 different antibiotics and then we were scheduled
to start our big chemo on last Tuesdays but his cough had gotten worse so I
talk to the oncologist and they had me bring him right up- we did chest Xrays and saw that it’s not pneumonia and they put him on antibiotics again.
His blood counts were good though (last week) considering his cough/cold he had so they still gave him chemo.
This week was a different story- His nurse showed up at 8am on Monday to take blood for a CBC to make sure his counts were good enough that we could do chemo the next day- all of his levels have to be above something or other in order for us to get chemo- but it was a Monday like every other day- so Scott comes over, gets his blood- Tucker is feeling great- so I take him to school and then at 3pm Tucker’s nurses from Oncology call me and told me “Hey, so- Tucker doesn’t have an immune system his ANC is below 500.” My jaw dropped! Anything below 500 for you ANC is pretty much ZERO- like Tucker can’t and won’t (if I know about it) go to school if his ANC is below 1000- that’s just not a strong enough immune system to fight off the school bugs- anyways, I told the nurse “your just telling me this now? Its 3pm Tucker is just getting HOME from being at school alllllllll day long!” She said, well keep him home now, he should not be around people (hello! Its thanksgiving this week!) Or in public places. *sigh* Ooooookkkkkkkkey… thanks for the heads up.
This reminds me how hard it is to plan stuff with a cancer kid- The good news for Tucker and Justin is I had tickets through the Hopekids foundation to go see How the Grinch Stole Christmas on Broadway somewhere in SLC--- but sneaky me- I didn’t exactly tell them where we were “going” I just said – HEY FRIDAY NIGHT YOUR MINE AND WE ARE DOING SOMETHING fun! Justin color drained from his face and he put 2 and 2 together very quickly- he said- oh NO, it’s the holidays- and your not telling me where were are going?! It HAS TO be a musical/Christmas show of some kind!! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
But I pulled the nifty little “wife card” on him and said…. Tough we are going.
Imagine the utter relief that filled Justin’s soul when I said to him the other day “hey so Tucker’s counts are horrible and we can’t go anywhere.” I swear I saw tears of gratitude fill his eyes. He gave Tucker a hug and said THANK YOU TUCKER- THANK YOUR BLOOD SO MUCH-
Hows that for an odd phrase you’d think you’d never hear?
I just rolled my eyes- the big party pooper anyways. Who wouldn’t want to see men and women dressed up in all sorts of Christmas outfits dancing around on a stage talking and SINGING in rhymes to the classic Dr. Seuss Christmas tale?
Men are not fun.
Tucker was a little upset- he wanted to go. Dang. Just can’t win.
Justin is never in the Christmas spirit- and I’m not either this year, which is a huge difference in all the years past, well for me anyways- I love Christmas, I normally put my tree up on Thanksgiving and get all the decorations out- and now *sigh* I just don’t have the energy or feel the excitement.
Like I said, I’m in a low- but I’ve gotten a new post up for the blog so maybe I’m slowing coming out of my low.

I’m so grateful to you all-
Much love
The Grinch (Justin)- Santa’s elf (Tucker) and the emotion-roller coaster (Amber).

Tucker

Tucker and Amber

Lily, Tucker & Jaiden

 Beat Boredom

Amber was Paper for Halloween