Praising GOD!

Jake finished his LAST CHEMO this weekend! Eight treatments of week-long, high-dose chemotherapies are forever in the books! I have tears writing this! It’s kinda all hitting today. Now we move on to Phase 2 – and pray for the direction to know which way to go. We’ll scan in a few weeks to see how much, if any disease is still in the bones. We are praying for NED! (no evidence of disease) If NED, we can focus on the bone marrow and liver spots, and we’ll stay here and press on toward his Bone Marrow Transplant. If there is still disease, we go to MIBG (full body, chemical radiation). It’s in another city. I’m terrified. And anxious. We’ll scan and take bone marrow aspirations in about 3 weeks but in the meantime we have a spot ready for us, August 28th at Cook’s Children’s Hospital in Dallas. We tried something different last week and took Jake’s week of chemotherapy as outpatient. There were benefits to being able to go home and sleep in our own bed but in

the end, if we had more chemo to do, we’d go inpatient again. We had issues with keeping him hydrated properly and EVERYDAY we spent hours trying to get his urine numbers to correct since he wasn’t on constant IV fluids. We got there in the morning and left at almost 6 everyday. We had to finish his treatment inpatient over the weekend and were discharged yesterday. All in all, it was a good week for Jake. His best buddy, Nathan, was also taking his week of chemo at the same time so they had lots of playtime. In fact, he was inpatient over the weekend too so they hung out in our room till almost 11PM. It’s a cancer kid’s version of “sleep overs”. Please keep Nathan in your prayers also… he is fighting Neuroblastoma too… for the 2nd time. As much as it hurts my heart that he hast to go thru this again, I am so thankful for the friendship that he and Jake have developed. When they both BEAT cancer’s sorry butt… I have visions of them at each other’s 16th birthday parties, HS graduations, weddings! They have little boy conversations and playtime… they get to be kids together but they share something that will bond them forever. Okay… on to some business… LAST CALL for Warrior Jake shirts. Sorry, I got a little side tracked and the order WILL GO IN at the end of this week. Shirts are $10 each plus shipping, if needed. We have a PayPal account on this page that you can pay here. If you use the PayPal, please write your name and “SHIRTS” so we know who has paid. IF you want to send a check, message me and I’ll send our address privately. AND THANK YOU!!!! You WILL have them in time for September Childhood Cancer Awareness Month! If you have friends, family, teachers, team mates that might want one when they see yours – now’s the time. GREAT GIFTS! (grins) There is a walk/run for the fall that is in the works so get your shirt ready to run with us! Okay… now for some exciting news… we had a very special visitor this week. Navid with ProJeKT 3000 spent the day with us on Friday. What a wonderful treat and such a kind and honorable man, he is. A life long friend has been made. Jake took to him immediately and Navid honored Jake with a ProJeKT 3000 video on his page to help spread awareness. Please check it out and share it!!!! PLEASE, PLEASE share it on your FB, e-mail, twitter, everything! Help it go viral. Let people put a face with this disease. It’s titled “But Not ME” and I’m biased but it has the cutest kid I’ve ever seen!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b56O9o29sIQ&w=590&h=385]<br/
And I have to share this funny… when Navid got ready to go and mentioned driving in his car, Jake looked up with such candid surprise and said, “you drive a car?” He’s only seen Navid on a bike. The innocence in his question and expression on his face is forever etched in my mind. On the way home, he mentioned it again. It really boggled his mind that Navid would get around on anything other than a bike. Then Jake asked if we could send him a photo of his bike. I thought my heart was going to burst. It’s these moments that bring us out of the “cancer world” and back to the everyday world of just an ordinary little boy with sweet, simple requests . Today I’m giddy, giggly, rested. We were supposed to be back at TCH this morning but there was some confusion with today’s treatments and we got an early morning call to let us play hooky (we’ll be back in tomorrow), so we went back to bed! I NEVER do that! Felt great and didn’t realize I needed it so badly. Feeling so much better and so happy to just be home! Jake has some spring in his step today too… he’s home, swimming and playing his “compooter”. So there it is… Phase One in the books! Now we wait. We let Jake recover from this round of chemo. We pray! WE PRAY WITHOUT CEASING! Please pray with us for NED! We really don’t want to put Jake thru MIBG treatment but we are trusting that God already knows where we are heading. I mentioned it in one of the first posts and we still believe… This is His battle to fight, Jesus will carry Jake, and we will follow. “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts”… Colossians 3:15 Love, hugs, blessings and prayers to all of you, Jake’s Prayer Warriors! Don’t forget to order your shirts and SHARE the ProJeKT 3000 link below… September is coming! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b 56O9o29sIQ