Hope4Peyton

It’s LONELY being apart from your family for so long…it’s been over a year now that Peter’s lived in Alabama while we house down in Florida.

So, the kids and I got him a very special friend.

I hope they’ll be very happy together.

Meeting R2-D2 for the first time from Anissa Mayhew on Vimeo.

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Don’t forget to enter for the IPod Touch giveaway!

Birthdays around here are YOUR day.

You get to pick what you want to do, where you want to eat, what sounds fun and how you want to do it.

Today?  This particular birthday?  We went to the Lego Store at Downtown Disney.

For my husband’s 37th birthday.

The Lego Store.

Because my husband’s inner child isn’t so inner. And frankly?  If you’ve never been to the Lego Store, you are MISSING out!

There is nothing that makes my mommy heart thump like watching my kids and their daddy play together.  Especially during this time when our family isn’t together as much as we should be, these days are treasured beyond measure.

So, happy birthday to my amazing husband who makes me laugh, who has helped me raise three of the best kids I never dreamed I’d be part of creating, who tells me there’s nothing I can’t do (and truly believes it), who makes me look forward to a lifetime of being his wife.

I loves ya, hon.

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Oh, BABY!  Have I got a giveaway for you.  Do you own one of these yet?

YEAH, your eyes do not decieve you, that’s an IPod Touch and you can win one at

Much has happened this week, between conflict with the boy child for his repeated choice to be a complete mushbrain and getting the awesome invitation to join a phenomenal team of bloggers as a Race and Ethnicity channel editor for Blog Nosh magazine (more coming soon about that)…but, in all honesty, it’s all sort of filtered through my post-traumatic-stress-freakout-syndrome.

I haven’t been sleeping this week, I’m forgetting to eat (which may be the ONLY upside to the whole ordeal) and I may have developed a touch of the anxiety-induced stomach flu.

Good times…

I thank all of you for understanding my need to vent what happened Tuesday and suffering through it (the loooong version) (which I’m sort of sorry for, I know it was drawn out, but NOT for drama’s effect, that’s just how it WAS) with me.  I know that I could have just written that “Peyton had a false positive on a test at clinic and I was freaking out”…but I didn’t feel that you could really understand what I went through in those short moments…and I really needed you to understand how hard it was on me…why, three days later, I still feel weepy and emotional about it.

It did truly help me cope with the emotions of that day to even HAVE a way to just unleash it…on you…because I love you like that…isn’t our relationship really healthy?

SO, just to recap the week:

1. No cancer!

2. Buy a raffle ticket to support Mandy’s fundraiser, $10 gets you a Top Spot over in my sidebar and an entry for the very purty diamond and black pearl earrings (appraised value $975). Plus, if you want to check over on Mandy’s site, there are some more of her raffle/auction items (Buc’s tickets, Lightning tickets, Gift Card Basket) for which you can pre-buy tickets or bid on.

3.  Peter’s coming home this weekend.  I can’t wait.

4.  Some wonderful friends and I have decided to start our own cult that revolves around the worship of the Snuggie and Cinnabons.  Sounds like a safe bet to me, no? How can you not get behind THAT?

And you may be asking yourself how a Snuggie translates into a cult?  My question is, “How could it not?” *ahem, no, a Slanket will not easily substitute*

It may take quite a bit of bedazzling to make it FIERCE like these folks have done, but I have faith that we can do it.

Oh, wait…Slanket already has a Cult?  They’re doing it ok but I see no Cinnabons, so we already win!

5.  Again, no cancer.

Next week? Coherant, non-rambling, well-thought-out (*eye roll*) posts! ALL WEEK! umm, welll, AT LEAST 2 DAYS!  MAYBE. NO PROMISES.

OH!  BUT make it a priority to  come back on Monday because I have a really kickbutt giveaway starting on Monday…I mean, DROOLworthy.

Since the moment Peyton was diagnosed with Leukemia we were taught that everything in our lives depended on one piece of paper.

Counts.

It told us if she needed blood products.

It told us how strong or weak her immune system was.

It told us if her liver wasn’t working properly, if her body was fighting infection, if anything was suspicious.

We, quite literally, lived and died by that piece of paper.

I have every single sheet of blood counts a nurse ever laid in my hands….3 hole punched and placed reverently in a binder. I have the history of her blood for the past two and half years documented and preserved…the highs, the lows, the almost normal and the devastating unsure.

The Monday before our monthly clinic appointment is a hard one, because Tuesday is always our day, and I struggle with what the sheet might say.

Praying for good numbers, high numbers where they’re supposed to be high, low numbers where they’re supposed to be low.

The knowledge always there that they could come back wrong.

Each month I sit in the chair next to Peyton and wait for the magic machine to churn away and print out the papers…for the lab tech to clip one copy to her 8-inch thick treatment binder and hand the other to me.

I always close my eyes and say a prayer before I look at the numbers.

Every month they’ve been perfectly where they’re supposed to be and all my air rushes out in a breath of relief and joy.

I sat there today. I waited through the ritual: poke, blood, machine, printer…

…then the slightest hesitation before handing over the paper.

WAIT. We don’t hesitate before we hand over the paper. That’s not part of the ritual.

I couldn’t close my eyes, but I still said my prayer.

I hoped God understood my muttered, “no, no, no, no, no”.

And I looked down at the sheet.

It almost didn’t connect at first.  I struggled to find the numbers I expected…hoped…to see, but they weren’t there.  In their places were numbers that were horrifically and cosmically WRONG.

TOO LOW.

EVERYTHING WAS TOO LOW.

Her hemoglobin was too low, her platelets were too low.

And not too low by a small margin, it was a dramatic and damning drop.

This was cancer back low.

I felt my heart stop…like a rock in my chest.

I couldn’t draw a breath.

My legs went numb.

It took everything I had to not throw up all over the white floors.

She’s looking at me. My daughter is looking at me. She’s watching me and I can’t do this. She cannot see me fall apart.

I choked back every tear that burned like acid and I hid my shaking hands.

I shuffled her out of the lab and into an exam room.  I could feel the tech’s eyes on me, I knew that SHE knew what I was thinking and I knew that SHE was thinking the same thing.

I looked at her and said, “I want a peripheral blood smear.” (A basic preliminary test to show if there are any cancer cells obvious in the blood)

She nodded.

Don’t agree with me!! Tell me I’m wrong and overreacting and stupid and I shouldn’t be allowed to even have children I’m so damn stupid!!!  Don’t agree with me!

“We’re going to do it again, fingerpokes can be wrong.  We’ll do it again by IV and see what the counts are.  She’s had pink eye, it could just be her body fighting an infection again.”

Whatever, just do it.

Go away.

Let me think about this. Let me process that this is THAT day.

And I went THERE, I said it over and over in my head…as if to familiarize myself with the phrase would somehow make the truth, when faced with it, easier to handle…her cancer is back.

She has Leukemia again.

Her cancer is back. Her cancer is back. Her cancer is back.

Peyton decided at that moment that she had to go to the bathroom and I took her down the hall, directly in front of the nurses station and the lab.  The moment she went in, I saw the faces around me…nurses, doctors, techs…all smiling those reassuring fake smiles, talking to me in those low soothing tones, not coming too close, but staying near.

“When she comes out, we’ll pull more blood and run the tests again.”

Yes.

And then we’d have the answer.

Whatever the answer might be.

I held her tight as she cried and screamed throughout the IV blood draw, something out of her comfortable ritual, new and invasive, painful and scary.  I almost cried along with her, overcome with fear that we were heading back into this life of me holding her down, letting people hurt her and poke her and scare her again.

After it was over I almost couldn’t stand to feel her skin against mine.  I wanted to reject the tears and the shuddering of her body.  We’d done this all before, it’s supposed to be over.

But, I held her tight and rocked her as she recovered.

She grumbled, “The rubber thing hurted the baddest.”

Of course it did. Not the needle shoved in her arm. The plastic band used to get a vein was to blame for all the theatrics.

Classic Peyton.

I smiled because no matter what, this child is a fighter.

The machine again churned and worked.

Did the man who designed this machine, the workers who assembled it ever dream that their creation would be the device that decided the fate of our lives?

The printer ran.

And the tech turned with the page waving in her hand.

A HUGE smile on her face.

“302.”

Wha–?

“302!”

She handed me the sheet of paper and my eyes scanned the numbers…normal…perfect…not low…exactly what they were supposed to be.

Her cancer is not back. Her cancer is not back. Her cancer is not back.

I know other things were said.  Explanations of why fingerpokes can be wrong. Percentages are on her side to NOT relapse. Relief expressed that everything was fine.  A collective sigh was heard over the entire clinic.

I could barely hear it. All I could even comprehend was that her cancer was not back.

It’s not back.

Thank you, God, for understanding my less than eloquent, one word prayer.

She’s fine and healthy and good for another month of cancer-free living.

And I?  Will be spending the rest of the day with a bottle of wine, trying not to think about those moments..but failing miserably.

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Don’t forget to enter the raffle to help Mandy Willis, an 8 yo brain tumor patient and a DEAR friend of ours!

Well, I don’t have one for you.

However, the real question is “What would you do for a pair of these?”

This gorgeous pair of fresh water cultured pearl and diamond earrings could be yours.

They’z purrrty, no?  All shiny and blingy and in my current possession and right here on my desk and SO close to me that I could just put them on and….NO! No, they are not for me.  Although they would look ravishing on me, they are for one of you.

Yeah, you heard me right, *insert little grumble-grumble sound here* one of you can get this beautiiiious bling.

You may remember that I recently talked about a fundraiser I’m helping to put on for our little friend Mandy Willis, who has a malignant brain tumor called an Optic Glioma, and THANKYOU a million times over to you wonderful people who participated in the TopSpots fundraiser for her.  Ya’ll are wonderful and generous and I loves ya for it.

But these little pearly beauties fell into our laps and we got to thinking about how best to use them to benefit Mandy.

So, here’s the new deal!

Over there in my sidebar is the “Donate for Mandy” widget still waiting for more donations.  For a $10 donation, you can put your link on there and all proceeds go straight to Mandy’s fund.

BUT!

I also have these ohsofabulous earrings sitting here and if I don’t get them out of my house soon, I swear by all that is holy I WILL not be responsible for my actions…such as putting them on because they would look amazing on me and pretending to have lost them…I’m just saying!

The new offer on the table is if you make a $10 donation through TopSpots (or have already) you have an entry into a raffle for these earrings (appraised value $975).  Each $10 donation is good for one entry, so feel free to donate multiple times.

Now, you may be thinking I don’t have a website, what good does a link do me? and if you aren’t interested in donating via the TopSpot, you can donate directly to Mandy’s Fund through PayPal (to: pursuitgoldens@gmail.com) and in the notes make sure to specify that you’re entering the raffle for the pearl/diamond earrings.

Thank ya’ll SO much for your heart and patience as I keep asking of you all to give.

But know that if it were YOUR child, I’d hope that someone would be there for your family.

This is what I do.