Hope4Peyton

Our friends Karen and Mat Gliddon are supposed to get results today on a bone marrow aspirate done yesterday. Their son Mathew has the same kind of leukemia as Peyton, he’s done the same higher risk protocol and had the same cranial radiation treatment.

Two weeks ago they began holding Mathew’s chemo because his counts weren’t rebounding and on Monday there was a significant drop in counts and suspicious “things” in his bloodwork. Yesterday his counts had dropped again after having received blood products on Monday and they did a bone marrow to check for signs of relapse.

I cannot tell you how my heart hurts for Karen and Mathew and their precious son. This is every cancer parent’s nightmare, to hear those words, to even have it suggested. Because Mathew’s still in treatment, he’s in maintenance, a relapse would be much harder to treat.

I’m asking you all to just pray pray pray for Mathew’s healing, for the bone marrow results to come back clear, but mostly for the Gliddons to face whatever God has planned for them with faith, strength and continued hope.

f.r.o.G…fully relying on God
–Anissa

Peyton had her monthly chemo trip to the clinic where I had to confess the ultimate sin of a cancer mom. Last night at dinner I put Peyton’s chemo on her dinner plate, 1 pill of 6MP and 5 pills of Methotrexate. After getting up to swap out the washer and dryer I came back and her pills were gone. I asked if she’d eaten her pills, she confirmed that she did….then she got up to throw her plate away.

About 6 seconds after plate hit the trash she tells me “My medicine was on that plate!!!”

I had looked at her plate, the pills were gone and she’s excellent about taking her meds, so I hadn’t even questioned it. But apparently she got creative and covered her pills with green beans and now there were at the bottom of the trashcan. Soooo, there I am peering into the trash can, debating with myself on whether or not to stick my hand in and rescue her pills and attempt to wash them off and force feed her the trash chemo…I mean, really, it’s already toxic, what’s a little garbage going to do to her?? Did I mention that I’d just cleaned out the fridge of all the miscellaneous leftovers and random outdated foods?? Yeah, her chemo was sitting drenched in two week old spaghetti sauce and some olives that had been in there so long they bore a strong resemblance to raisins.

I agonized over the fact that she hadn’t gotten her most important dose of chemo of the week…Monday is a big day for us!! That’s 6 pills of chemo she didn’t get. PLUS, any other day of the month and I would have had backup pills to make up for it and could have gotten those pills replaced, but it was the day before we get our refills and they were the last ones in the house. Now, realistically, there is no way that 1 day’s chemo skipped is going to cause an instantaneous relapse…but I never said I was rational about it.

I get to the clinic and they ask me the customary questions about her meds and I spill my guts that Peyton had thrown them away, she hadn’t gotten her meds and I was going to burn in a special level of hell saved for people who kick kittens, talk during movies and don’t give their kids their chemo.

“Really?? She clears her own plate at dinner? That’s impressive.”

THAT is what I got from the nurses. All that angst for nothing! So, tonight she got her pills under close eagle eye supervision.

And, her counts were fantastic. Her hemoglobin was 12.3, her platelets were 197,000, and her ANC was 4900. Now, when I tell those of you who are non-cancer-savvy, those counts are rocking!! Right in the middle or top of normal…the numbers any healthy kid would have. But for those who know this routine know that those numbers almost made my eyeballs fall out of my head. For her counts to be so high, her ANC that high without steroids causing it, that’s bad….not bad, really, but a clear sign that she needs more chemo. Her counts are supposed to be suppressed to a certain degree, that’s how they make sure that they are giving her appropriate doses for her weight. She was about 3500 too high on her ANC, so they upped her chemo dose. It’s awesome to know that she could fight off the Black Plague with that immune system, but it’s not to last long.

Our clinic trip was in the afternoon so we could enjoy our Little Tales time in the morning. Many of our friends were at clinic, inpatient or still on vacation, so the group was small, but fun as always.

I HAVE to share this story. I will prepare you, it’s about the funniest thing I’ve ever heard her say and I’ve heard a lot of gut-splitting things come out of Peyton’s mouth.

Kay Bertoch came in from the playground and shared this little juicy morsel of Peyton-ism.

“Miss Kay, when you go home and pick up Cody from school (Cody is her 13 year old son that Peyton loves), I want you to pull down his pants and check if he has nuts.”

Just digest that for a moment. Are you kidding me?

“I don’t think he’s going to like that.”

“No, he probably won’t like that, but pull his pants down and look.”

“What should they look like?”

“Like my brother’s!”

As if the whole world has seen this poor boy in the buff. He would absolutely die if he knew I was even mentioning this, but really, do you think I could hold this in??

I had thought that we were moving beyond the “nut” issue, but apparently I was mistaken.

Pete’s only response was “That boy better stay away from my daughter!”

Does anyone else think that Peyton may have a great career in store for her as a doctor with a specialty in hernias??

I may get her a t-shirt that says “Please turn your head and cough.”

f.r.o.G…fully relying on God
–Anissa

These are pictures of my kid and my sister’s 4 daughters: Elaine (15), Katie (13), Stephanie (11) and Rosemary (7)

I call this one “Is the glee worth the beating?”

Elaine, Rachael, Katie, Stephanie, Peyton, Rosemary and Nathaniel

Rachael’s attempt to have eyes as wide as her cousins, she looks a little over-Botoxed

Please look at everyone except Nathaniel in this one

The three DIVAS

Cuddling cousins

We made it safely home, all body parts intact and each child accounted for. The entire holiday week went by without a single worry about fever or illness…that was nice.

The countdown to Pete’s departure is on. We have 6 days until he has to leave. We have to get him the basics to live on his own, which he hasn’t done in 11 years. He has to get ready for doing his own laundry, eating only if he cooks it himself and answering the alarm clock without me punching him in the kidneys each morning. It should be interesting.

I have to prepare to take care of the kids, keep the household business under control and besides planning to move our entire existence, not a whole lot will change. The thing that really stinks is that Pete will finally have the free time to spend with us and he’ll be 400 miles away.

In preparation for the move, I’ve stumbled on the greatest store EVER!! I think that each and every person should drop everything and head straight to the nearest[url=http://www.ikea.com/us/en/] IKEA [/url]store. It’s got the most awesome stuff, it’s totally affordable and it’s like the mother ship is calling! I truly feel the need to share this wonderful Swedish import with each and every person…we all need to have a special gift.

I love road trips, they’re just fun. We are those people who like to travel by road, it gives us time to remember why we should treat rest stops as a national treasure. The time in the truck together also gives the kids time to come up with new and fascinating conversation topics.

Why is it that kids can latch onto a horrifying inappropriate phrase and find a million chances to use it?? Nathaniel came home from school one day, after a rousing P.E. class and announced that “he got whacked in the nuts”. Loved that one. I tried to explain to him that there are nicer and more socially acceptable ways to rephrase that, but the word had been said and heard and cannot be unknown. So, there came a day when Peyton slipped getting into her carseat and she came down hard on the edge of the seat…she yells “Owww, I banged my nuts!”

There has been no getting her past the idea that she doesn’t have them, she never will and if for some reason she were to suddenly grow them….well, let’s just say that cancer might be the least of her worries. But it doesn’t stop her from using the phrase frequently. Her “nuts” have been an ongoing issue when she falls, when she slips….any number of testicle-injuring possibilities.

Leaving the Waffle House in Newnan, Peyton again announced that her nuts hurt. As this is not possible, I chose to ignore it. And then I decided that it was time to just get the basic A&P out of the way.

“Peyton, you do not have nuts.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No. You don’t.”

“I do!”

“Boys have them, girls do not.”

“What do I have?”

Great. Wonderful. Loving this moment!

“Girls have a vagina and boys have a penis.” <—does anyone else remember the scene in that Arnold Shwartzenegger movie with that line?? Oh yeah, it was flipping hysterical before I had kids and realized that it was going to be MY kid announcing that at show and tell.

“What’s a penis?”

“Boys have a dangly part, girls don’t, let’s just leave it at that.”

“I have a vaginaaaaaa!”

Seeing as these are universally the two funniest words in the English language, Peter and I were treated to three rousing choruses of “Vagina Vagina Vagina” from Rachael.

My children are so doomed. I’m through trying to fix this one.

f.r.o.G…fully relying on God
–Anissa

EVENTS UPDATES

The Children’s Cancer Center Holiday Card program

These holiday cards are pieces of art made by the hands of the kids battling cancer or cancer survivors. These are a precious way to support the awesome Children’s Cancer Center while helping to raise awareness. If you’re going to buy Christmas cards anyway, take a moment and consider the impact your choice to be involved in the Holiday Card Program could have. The gift you are giving each child and family is priceless.

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December 15 – Badge Bowl @ Wharton High School

The Badge Bowl is Tampa’s Finest vs. Tampa’s Bravest, Tampa’s fire and police go head to head in a football game that will benefit the family of Brooke Martin, a little girl and friend of ours, battling ALL Leukemia.

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Peter has this deep Clark Griswold streak in him. In case you don’t know who that is, please go rent National Lampoons Vacation and Christmas Vacation…it will all become very clear. So, in keeping with the idea that a holiday is not a holiday until your children have looked at you and thought “Dear Lord, please don’t let me grow up to be THIS person”, we decided that the only way to really bring our family closer was to get in the truck and drive in three different states in one day!!

And by “closer” I mean “ready to leave our children at the Georgia border rest stop”.

To give you an example of what our day was like, this was Rachael’s prayer tonight….

“….and, please, help Mommy and Daddy not to be so mean when we ask them how much farther it is…and help us not to ask so many times…and for us all to just get home soon. Amen.”

Do I need to shed any more light on that one?

Thanksgiving was great! We went to my parent’s house, my sister and her family was there, my brother and his family was there and Peter’s mom was able to drive over to join us for dinner. My parents don’t have a large house and there were 18 people in attendance. The food rocked…my contribution was driving over to pick up the Honey Baked Ham…don’t judge me, I had to stand in line for like 20 minutes! My sister’s daughters blew me away by how much they’d grown and changed and become EXACTLY like her….they will probably want to disown me from the Aunt Guild after this, but looking at her kids is like looking into the face of the person who drove me insane as a child. I’m glad to tell all of you parents….like me….out there with bickering children…like mine…there is hope that your children will eventually grow up to like each other…a LOT!

The reason that we had to make another quickie trip to Atlanta is because Peter has to be in place and ready to start his job on December 5th. Now, enjoy this little piece of divine work. Peter had been talking to a person in the new HR department about his need to find a place to live, and one of other HR people jokingly said that he could have her apartment. It turns out that not only is her apartment perfectly located, priced right and available for move-in next weekend, BUT the lease is up in May…just the time we’re planning to make the big move up. Sweeeet! Like that? So we had to come up and meet Jennifer and organize her move-out and Pete’s move-in. She’s actually going to let him move in on her lease so that there doesn’t have to be a transfer of lease, because it’s darn near impossible to find a place willing to rent for less than a year.

So, now he has an apartment to move into next weekend. We have to get him some essentials to make it through the next six months. The kids are now realizing that this separation is really going to happen and it’s tough on them. It’s tough on Pete and me, but Rachael keeps acting like each time Pete leaves the room it might be the last time she’s going to see him and Peyton is just clinging to him when she can. Peter’s going to miss Peyton’s 4th birthday, we don’t know how we’re going to make the Christmas holiday and we’re both going to struggle with compensating for all that other brings into the relationship…I won’t have anyone to open really stubborn jars and he won’t have anyone to nag that he’s left his socks on the living room floor. How will we survive?

The kids are not coping well with the temperature change. When we got out of dinner tonight the thermometer in the truck read 40 degrees. As we were driving back to the hotel, Rachael made a very profound commentary on weather.

“Hey, that says 37…did that just go down?”

“Yes, it did.”

Pause

“Well, crud.”

f.r.o.G…fully relying on God
—Anissa

As far as marking things off my Do-Before-You-Die list, I can proudly put a line through “Get trapped in a stadium with 9000 delirious, screaming pre-pubescent girls”. That, of course, ranked smack between “Have white-hot needles stabbed in your retinas” and “Staple a piece of asbestos to my forehead”.

Good times!

In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, the girls and I went to see Hannah Montana. THE show to see if you have a daughter of a certain age. We got tickets without having to stand for 7 days with my hand attached to a 12-foot statue of Hannah Montana (which someone did), pay 500% the face value ticket price (which LOTS of people did) or selling my soul to the devil (I’m sure someone out there was willing to make that deal).

Hannah Montana is the equivalent of taking my kids to meet the president or the pope, only they actually KNOW who SHE is!

We were treated to some awesome suite tickets to see the show. The girls sang and danced and loved every shrieking minute of it. I could have found better ways to spend my time, but nothing could beat watching their little faces light up. Thank you to Kasey from the Brad Richards Foundation and Mary Jane Campbell for giving my girls such a phenomenal gift….and me a permanent hearing loss.

The kids and I are in Daytona, enjoying some friend time before we indulge in way too much food with my family. This is my best friend since high school and we have shared so much of our lives through the years. Recently, their house was completely flooded when a pipe burst in the bathroom and they were able to redo much of their house. It’s all new and shiny and pretty right now….I say now, because my kids have only been in the house for about 8 hours. Much of their new décor involves WHITE and GLASS…two things I try very hard not to expose my kids to. Dawn and her husband David are completely anal-retentive and it’s always fun to watch their faces about a second before my kids put their hands or feet somewhere they’re not supposed to. I try hard to accommodate their house standards, but it’s much like trying to teach wildebeests to tiptoe.

In light of this realization that my kids are rough on nice stuff, thereby being the reason we really don’t have any, it’s going to be a fun time to train them about our new house. A house that we don’t have yet, but we will be getting in Atlanta. A house free of dog hair, art-laden walls, play-dough ground into the grout, snacks hidden in interesting and disgusting places. So, I have 6 months to rigorously educate the kids on the finer parts of NOT DESTROYING the house. This can’t be hard, right?

I’ve been discussing the new house, asking what features interest the kids. Rachael wants a room of her own and a bathroom, Nathaniel wants a room as far as humanly possible from his sisters’ rooms and stairs, and Peyton wants stairs and a playroom….and to continue to share a room with Rachael. See the dilemma? Oh well, I’m we’ll be able to figure this one out the same way we make all other decisions in our house….rock, paper, scissors.

The Mayhews wish all of you a wonderful and fantastic Thanksgiving!

f.r.o.G…fully relying on God
–Anissa

The definition of “irony” — celebrating getting a whole week out of school so that you can visit a friend who makes you play “school” all afternoon.