Hope4Peyton

Because the older two kids are out of school now they get to come to the Children’s Cancer Center for Little Tales for the rest of the summer! Sara and the gang at the CCC blew up pools and set up sprinklers for the kids to romp around in today, much fun was had. Peyton was absolutely thrilled that her beloved Cody Bertoch was there since he’s out of school too! She whispered behind my leg “Don’t tell Cody I have another boyfriend!”….Zack, a cutie classmate from her school….she’s a tricky monkey already, juggling men, asking mom to cover her back.

This is what I do, because that’s the kind of mom I am:

Peyton and the OTHER guy

Rachael kept passing out in the car today, on the way from the CCC to the radio station…more about that in a bit….then from the radio station to our house. I’m talking full out, sprawled in the seat, mouth gaping open, little string of drool and snoring. Curious why this ball of energy would be so tired on a bright summer day? Because at 5:42 AM this morning she woke me up and asked, “Can I play the Wii?” Sleep or Wii…this child’s priorities are so out of whack it’s not even funny. I mumbled something along the lines of “Go ahead, whatever, play the Wii, make cocktails, here are the keys to the van, take the American Express, I’m going back to sleep now.” Luckily, all she did was play Wii games. But she found that the sacrifice for pre-dawn video games was to take a nap.

Seriously, the worst part of my day should be a forced nap!

After Little Tales, the kids and I headed down to the Clear Channel Radio station to do an interview that will run as part of the Children’s Miracle Network Radiothon in November. Last year we were a part of the telethon that benefited All Children’s Hospital as our local CMN hospital, and this weekend they ran Peyton’s video bit from last year during the 2008 telethon. In case you never saw it, check out the link for “Videos and other jazz”, or check it out here:

Peyton’s All Children’s Hospital Telethon video

Tammy O’Dell was the volunteer that came and got Peyton and me for the Day of Pampering before the Fashion Funds the Cure event. She is the sales manager for Clear Channel and asked us to be a part of the radiothon when she found out that Peyton was treated at ACH. Today, Tammy took us a tour of the station, where many of our favorite radio stations are housed and we all got a kick out of that.

There was this great surreal moment when we walked in to meet Jenny and Travis from 103.5, and Jenny says “I read your website every day!” and I say “I listen to your radio station all the time!”. She’s probably going to read this, how weird is that? She even commented on the kids’ dentist appointment…an out of body experience that reminds me that there are a lot of people out there who know the going-ons in my house…it’s like we have our own strange reality tv show.

As we were leaving our visit with Travis and Jenny, I dropped the comment, “Don’t forget me when I call in for Rascal Flatts tickets!” Can I tell you what a huge fan I am of theirs? Their song “Skin” had a profound tearful experience in my life when Peyton’s hair first began falling out. They are one of my favorite bands! So, of course, bearing the load of insanity that I do, I make the comment “Maybe you can get tickets for some of the families at the Children’s Cancer Center.” They were all “We might be able to do that.”

Just like that. New amazing people, follow Peyton’s site, Rascal Flatts tickets….what a day! So, I don’t know if it’ll happen, and don’t think I won’t throw all the other families under the bus if they can only get enough for one family, but it would be very cool.

On the way home from the taping, of course we had on 103.5 so we could listen to Travis and Jenny, and Rachael was all

“Are those the people in the little room that we just met?”

“Yeah, that’s them.”

“They sound so close! How do they do that?”

“Magic, honey, it’s the power of magic.”

“They’re magicians too?!!!”

Thank you so much to all the wonderful people at Clear Channel, Tammy and Josh, Travis and Jenny, and that fabulous music director who gave me some much loved cds!

Jenny Dean and the Mayhew crew

Josh, our recording guy – I’m sure there’s a lovely technical name for it, but he’ll always be the guy who took “I pick flowers” and “my nose” and edited it into one sentence of “I pick my nose” for Nathaniel.

After all that juicy radio goodness, we got to go have dinner with some wonderful friends at MaryAnn’s house. Baby Leo’s family, Zack Attack’s family, Sara and Molly from the Center, Shannon and Chase, and the Mayhew crew all got to spend some quality time poolside with tons of food. It was ridiculously fun, the kids had a blast, the parents chased the kids and Peyton got so excited she forgot where she was and pooped in her bathing suit….good times, good times! Who’s to judge, like we haven’t all done that at least once! No? Really!

It was just a fantastic day all around. If the rest of the summer goes as well as the past few days, we are going to have a rocking good time. And for those who might be wondering, I haven’t had a chance to go get the books of homework that Nathaniel has to do….I figured I’d give him a few days break and we’ll start punishment work after camp. We’re just having so much fun, it’s hard to administer the punishment now, but I’ll stick to it and hopefully we’ll both learn something from it.

f.r.o.G.
–Anissa

Because my kids like to make me crazy:

Peyton – “How old are you, mommy?”

Me – “34”

Peyton – “Wooooooow. That’s old.”

Me – “Thanks a lot, would you like to walk the rest of the way home?”

Rachael – “That’s not old, Peyton, there are lots of people older than mommy.”

Nathaniel – “Like Methuselah in the Bible, Peyton, he was a lot older than mommy.”

When did 34 = 900 years old? Methuselah? Is that seriously the only person you can think of that’s older than ME??

It is official…the dentist is worse than having cancer!

Peyton’s comment while leaving the dentist’s office today was, “This is my worst day I ever had.” Really? The fluoride treatment was that much worse than being hospitalized with oozing sores and getting bone marrows? I guess it’s a good thing that once it’s past she doesn’t think about it.

Nathaniel and Rachael both had fantastic visits, all clear on the cavity front with glowing reports on how well they’re brushing. Peyton had a less than stellar report.

She has 6 cavities. 6 cavities! Her teeth are the size of chicklets and they are rotting out of her head. The dentist told me that it has nothing to do with her binky and everything to do with chemotherapy. In no uncertain terms, the body can only deal with so many issues and she said that what they see with cancer patients is that the teeth are always the first to suffer. Her teeth are just weak, no amount of brushing has put a dent in the damage the meds have taken on her chompers. The dentist is very concerned to see what her permanent teeth will look like when they come through, the chemo and the radiation can do a serious number on those that are trying to form and they end up all WRONG. Each child reacts differently, the body handles the chemicals differently and she’s had a lot of it.

The dentist won’t do anything for her cavities, she either wants for the oncologist to make a decision between having the procedures done at the hospital to safeguard against infection or to see if it should wait until end of treatment to take care of them.

The dentist was kind enough to drop a few bombs on me today. She asked if we’d ever been told that if Peyton’s ANC is below 500 that we shouldn’t brush her teeth with a toothbrush, just sort of wipe them clean. Big fat no! Never heard that one. Peyton did have to take a monster dose of Amoxicillan before her appointment to ward off infection, but the dentist did make sure I knew that she was risk for fatal infections from dental procedures. Please don’t use those words so nonchalantly. “Fatal infections” just isn’t a phrase we need to toss around, you know? I was really starting to feel like this dentist appointment was not something I wanted to do, but I still let them do her x-rays, cleaning, fluoride treatment and then checking the condition of the teeth.

Cleaning was ok, x-rays were standard, I already told you about the condition of her teeth…but the fluoride treatment was what set her off. She cried while they applied it, hated the taste and started throwing up as soon as we got home. Poor kid threw up that fluoride for a couple of hours.

We are getting the older two kids all packed up and ready to head off to camp from Wednesday to Saturday! The kids are all excited for so many different reasons…Nathaniel for the freedom of an all guy cabin, Rachael loves the girly giggly time and Peyton just wants them to leave.

It’s starting off to be a fun summer!

f.r.o.G….fully relying on God
–Anissa

Nathaniel and Sonyah

Rachael and Sabrina

Although it looks like the kid are surfing the big waves, Sonyah isn't even on a board, they're barely off the sand!

If I had one more ounce of energy, I’d download Friday’s pictures and show you what an awesome time we had at the beach with our near and dear friends, the Garcias….previous owner’s of Nathaniel’s GIRL PANTS.

But I don’t right now, so I won’t.

Thursday, we obviously had an outrageously fun time at the beach. We ate breakfast at the pier in Daytona Beach Shores (where Nathaniel had an epiphany of sorts….he was sniffing all the bottles on the table at the pier restaurant…a place ON the water….NO glass in the windows…all ocean breeze and sunshine…and he says to me “This ketchup smells like saltwater!” Ummm..duh? We are sitting on top of the beach, son, your fork smells like saltwater) and then we drove up and down the beach with the back open in the van and the kids sitting back there with their feet hanging out. They thought that was the best thing since sliced bread and it was funny to watch my kids behave like tourists. We went back to the house for supplies and bathing suits and headed back to the beach for some serious in-the-sand-and-water goodness. We had a ball! The water was perfection, the temperature was nice and the skies were gorgeous, could not have hit the beach on a better day. For living in Florida and an hour away from the Tampa beaches, we never go. We prefer to drive 2 hours to Daytona and hang on the beach over there….gives it a feeling of vacation. It wasn’t until we’d spent all our energy in the water and got back to the house that we found out we’d been romping in the stretch of beach where there were the most shark bites this year AND the riptides have been the worse. We made it out alive. All is well.

Friday we went back to the beach with the Garcias…Dawn and two of her three girls, Sonyah and Sabrina. It was so much more fun with friends, the kids were insanely happy to pretend to surf and to dig in the sand. My mom and I had rigged together this beach net…we took two curtain rods, 2 yards of mesh and sewed it into a net that the kids could hold in the water and catch stuff….and our McGyver masterpiece actually WORKED! The kids were so impressed by the ability to catch all the little tiny fish and crabby-type creatures…we collected hundreds, we killed several…but they felt like little scientists doing it.

Friday night I got the chance to go out to dinner with some friends that I have not seen in way too long. We talk often, but have not had a chance to see each other since Peyton got sick. It was so good to catch up, I felt like I was reconnecting with some of my pre-cancer friends, which was so needed. This new venturing out of our comfort bubble and leaving home is hard, but now that we’ve done it successfully with no fevers or sudden needs for the hospital, I’m hoping it’ll get easier each time. We used to go often, we’d pick up and leave for a weekend or a week over the summer without a second thought…the past two years have been sort of isolated to the things we can do within a certain radius of our doctors. It’s a strange sense of freedom to feel like we can go and do the little normal weekend trips again.

Sex and the City….what can I say and not spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet….not much. The clothes were both fabulous and hysterical, I was perfectly thrilled with the movie and it was all I wanted it to be and more. Better yet, the time spent laughing and talking and just hanging out with my fellow cancer moms was tremendous. It is such a blessing, this bond we share. At that table were moms of kids in treatment, kids done with treatment, kids who didn’t win the cancer battle, and it didn’t matter, it was just friendship and support and love all around the table.

I have to share the phenomenon we witnessed at the restaurant pre-movie. There were 10 of us, we were all going to see the movie and darn excited about it.

However, we did not do any of the following:

1. Wear matching theme clothes for the movie
2. Order Cosmopolitans
3. Bring our own decorations for our dinner table made of bright pink tulle bows
4. Come equipped with our own martini glasses
5. Act only slightly more obsessed than those people who wore their Jabba the Hut costumes to stand in line for the Star Wars premieres

We felt so ashamed that we hadn’t planned ahead better. I take all the blame, I am a failure as an event planner. My next plan is that we go see the new Batman movie and everyone has to wear a cape and mask! Good times! Frankly, I felt we’d done enough embarrassing ourselves in costumes at the Scavenger Hunt, but that’s just me.

f.r.o.G.
–Anissa

f.r.o.G…fully relying on God
–Anissa