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Make-A-Wish Pictures
As promised, here are some pictures from Ryan’s Make-A-Wish Disney Cruise.
You can view a slideshow of all the pictures by clicking here.
God Bless!
Life’s Not Fair…
I know it has been a while between posts. I am so very, very, VERY thankful to say that is because our life has settled down a bit. Even the “big” things that are happening in our life seem trivial compared to the events that started in February. It’s all about perspective and boy has ours changed!
I’m in one of those introspective moods, so bear with me. 
Life is not fair. We have all heard it and know it from experience. Life is just not fair, but is our perspective on this sentiment correct? What is fair? This is a question I have asked myself recently.
Life is NOT fair. With our situation, dealing with Ryan’s cancer, we received a… gift. Our family received an opportunity to learn valuable lessons. We so often did not take time with our children due to other “urgent” but less “important” matters. Anyone hear “Cat’s in the Cradle” playing in the background? We are far from a model family but I can assure you we have been changed. As I said in the first post after finding out that Ryan had cancer, none of us is guaranteed another minute in this world. I understand that more today than ever.
Life is NOT fair. In spite of our difficulties, we are blessed beyond degree. I know it sounds “easy” to say that now compared to where we were only weeks ago. Families crossed our path that had a much different outcome. Life is not fair, we get more time with our son. Why us and not others? How can we help others through what we know is such a difficult situation? Prayer, outreach, fundraisers, volunteer work, all will be a focus for us.
As you can see, life has NOT been fair to us recently.
As for Ryan’s status, he is doing well. His stamina is returning, but he still tires more quickly than he used to. He is excited about playing fall baseball and getting back to school. His hair is growing back too, looks like it will be blond?!? I will post a picture when he gets back from visiting our family in TN (and yes he is being spoiled rotten along with Bryce, Deanna AND Victoria!) A full round of scans are scheduled for early August.
May God bless you this day!
6/22 Update
We got home safely last night from Destin. The weather was awesome, hot but no rain. We went through 6 or 7 bottles of sunscreen not wanting anyone to get burned, especially Ryan’s bald head! It was awesome to just sit on the beach and relax. We are thankful for the time away as a family.
Not much else to share at the moment. Ryan is doing well. He has some more scans in two weeks to determine if his intestines were adversely affected by the tumors or the chemo, so please pray about that. We will post more later.
For now, enjoy a few of the pictures. We haven’t even downloaded all of them from our camera yet.
God Bless!
6/14 Update
We are less than 24 hours away from learning about the results from Ryan’s tests. We are prayerfully optimistic about the consultation tomorrow. Ryan has been doing great. His stamina is not back yet and it takes him longer to recover from activity than it used to, but he is really doing awesome. We are thankful for the progress thus far. Bryce and Deanna are doing great as well. They have loved having Ryan home. Deanna is so excited about Kindergarten that she asks almost daily when she gets to go.
I haven’t been sleeping well since this adventure began, so I’m going to take a nap. God Bless and stay tuned for a report tomorrow.
Pictures of Ryan at Camp Rainbow
Here are some of the pics that are up (so far) of Ryan at Camp Rainbow. He had a great time, but did get exhausted and homesick. Guess it will take a while to get his stamina back up. We are thankful that the nurses and staff encouraged him to stay beyond the second day.
Hope you all enjoy!
Thanks Camp Rainbow!
6/1 Update
We have had an awesome couple of weeks. As a family, we’ve been able to worship together, go swimming, have cookouts, birthday parties, 4-wheeler rides, thrown baseballs in the back yard, been to the movies, and many other activities. That said, we’re at the hospital tonight. Ryan started having abdomen pain around 2:00 this afternoon followed by a lot of nausea and vomiting. Victoria took him to the cancer clinic to get checked out. Thanks to our dear friends for keeping Bryce and Deanna on short notice while we went! He had some gaseous buildup in his stomach and an elevated white blood count (remember when we were talking about it being too low?!?) that might be signaling an infection. They don’t think there is anything major at this point. We just got back from an abdomen X-Ray and CT Scan. They are looking into the symptoms just to be sure and have him on IV antibiotics. He is feeling much better right now and may get to go home tomorrow after his MRI, EKG, and ECG. That would be GREAT as he is excited about Camp Rainbow coming up this Wednesday.
We did get a bit of good news today. The doctors will not give us a definitive result until all the tests are done, but the PET scan (one that specifically shows tumors) appears to be clean! AMEN and AMEN! We still are awaiting the consultation on the 15th, but that was an awesome thing to hear and definitely an answer to many prayers.
Off to bed for now. Good night and God Bless!
5/22 Midday Update
Ryan’s party is tomorrow and there is a good chance of light rain. For those of you that have RSVP’ed (and those of you that haven’t) we will be there rain or shine (please pray for shine though!) We will have some tents around the pavilion and will be setting up there. I just didn’t want anyone to wonder if we were going to be there in the rain. See you then!
God Bless!
5/17 Morning Update
Wow, one whole week between posts. You can safely assume that means things are going well! We had a great week doing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Wednesday we went to church and after the lessons, the kids played in the gym for an hour. It was great to see them just being kids. Yesterday, I took Ryan and Bryce to our hunting camp for a day of being outdoors. It was fun! Ryan had a bit too much excitement though and did get sick just after we left. Nothing major, just fatigue. He was still very tired this morning, so Victoria took Deanna and Bryce to church while he and I stayed home.
Tomorrow, Ryan goes back to the cancer clinic for a check-up and to start planning his first round of scans since completing the chemo regimen. We are praying for clean scans! Just so everyone has the right expectation, we are talking about “hospital time” here. Even if we get scans on Monday, it will be days before we have the results. We will keep everyone abreast of the updates as we have them.
Next Saturday, Ryan turns 9 years old. He has grown up a lot in the past few months. I am so proud of the little man he has become. Bryce and Deanna have also adjusted well. We are looking forward to the summer months where the kids can stay home and play together with each other, the neighbors, and us!
God Bless and Stay Tuned!
5/10 – Preparing to go home
Just heard from the doctor this morning. They are preparing to send us home! It will still be a while before we can leave. Ryan has to get a transfusion of platelets and a transfusion of whole blood. After those complete, we will be outta here (again). Guess we can have a Mother’s Day meal as a family after all. Praise God!
5/10 Update
First of all Happy Mother’s Day Victoria (and all the other mother’s as well of course!)
We’re still in the hospital. Ryan is feeling well most of the time. He does still have nausea occasionally. We are hoping that we’ll be able to go home this afternoon, but more likely it will be tomorrow. We are anxiously awaiting the evaluation phase to start which will include CT Scans, PET scans, MRI’s and bone scans. I asked the doctor about next steps if signs of the tumors were still present. She said that there was a “plan B” but she didn’t even want to talk about it as she was confident that based on the type of cancer Ryan has as well as how well he has been responding that the tests would be negative. She even confirmed what a miraculous recovery Ryan had from when he was first diagnosed. Per her statement he was one of the sickest children and most critical cases they had ever seen on the front-end of treatments. Someone asked me yesterday why we didn’t go to St. Jude. We did consider it, but the reality is that Ryan’s case was too critical to consider a move. In retrospect, the care we have received and proximity to our home and support system have not caused us to regret our decision at all. We are so thankful to have Blair E. Batson Children’s Hospital in our backyard!
Yesterday I volunteered to man a shift at the Blair E. Batson Miracle Home and took Bryce and Deanna with me. We had a good time and I am so proud of the way they behaved! We had a played together in the back yard between visitors. Victoria was going to take the kids to church today but Deanna started spiking a fever last night. Bryce has gone to church with some friends, Victoria and Deanna are home, Ryan and I are at the hospital. I guess we’ll get our family bonding time later.
Have a great day and God Bless!