help

I ran some errands today and I noticed that there are pink ribbons everywhere. On shirts, hats, mugs, pins, so many things to buy for breast cancer awareness. It's wonderful! I have had many people in my family get or be effected by breast cancer and I am grateful there is so much funding and support out there.

But where is the gold?

My hope is that one day GOLD will be seen just as much. Childhood cancer is everywhere. It breaks my heart that it doesn't have the awareness it deserves. There's not enough funding and there's not enough support, but we can all help change that!

One of the things we are doing is holding a lemonade stand to raise funds for Childhood Cancer. I hope you can come out and support us. The address is 2345 Lambourne Ave, SLC, UT 84109. For more information or If you can't make it, please go to our page at http://www.alexslemonade.org/mypage/69433 and donate as little as a dollar. It WILL make a difference.

If you can't make it, hold one of your own! Find out how at http://www.alexlemonade.org/. I'm sure your little ones would love to have a stand! It doesn't have to be anything fancy. All you need is cups and lemonade. If you want, Alex's Lemonade Foundation will even provide the signs for you.

Another easy thing you can do is by posting about September being Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Feel free to copy my AWARENESS post in full and post it on your personal blog.

You can also change your facebook profile picture to a gold ribbon for this month. It's easy! Tag yourself on mine and make it your pic. That's all I did. I hope I see A LOT more gold in the next couple weeks.

Please help get GOLD out there for everyone to see!

CANCER SUCKS!

Hearing the word cancer in any form changes lives forever. It changed ours. We will always recognize the sweet little bald heads that are fighting for their lives. We want to do all that we can to help families that are affected by cancer. We want to stop the heartache of knowing your child is going to have to fight with everything they have to live. One person alone can not make a difference, but all of us together can change the world. These children are given a huge responsibility to fight for their lives. We stand in amazement when we see the strength, the courage, the resilience of these beautiful little children. We as a family stand back and learn..we learn how to LIVE from them. We learn that even when life is the hardest it can be, we can giggle! We can cry! We can hurt! We can love! And most importantly we can stand together united as one to WIN THE FIGHT AGAINST CANCER! Come buy a cup of lemonade and be a part in changing how childhood cancer is treated, diagnosed and CURED! The support that has surrounded our family for Amelia has been the most amazing thing we have felt or been a part of. To see ,to feel, to know the love that comes from you is incredible. Our family has been blessed because of each of you individually. Thank you! Thank you FOREVER for the difference you have made in our lives. Love Amelia's support team

Seriously Cute

Millie September 2010 Update

Millie goes to the hospital once a month for her PORT chemo, but yesterday was the start of a new Maintenance round, which is every 3 months so she had to get a Lumbar Puncture as well. She does pretty good with it, but I think it's always a little difficult to watch your child go under anaesthesia. With Brady out of town I was panicked thinking she would wake up furious; it's a 50/50 chance. I got lucky! She was a little ornery, but nothing I couldn't handle. Like always she was a champ getting her PORT accessed and did fantastic getting her Vincristine.

We got some GREAT news:

Millie's FINAL chemo date will be

02-22-12

Although this date seems so far away, it's much sooner then we thought is was going to be.

I am tracking Amelia's hair growth every month on her clinic day by taking the same pictures of her in the same place, I thought it would be fun to look back on. Yesterday she was refusing to pose how I wanted. I let her pose the way she wanted in the 1st picture and she couldn't have been happier. The 2nd picture is how I pose her and she's starting to get a little mad at me. The 3rd picture she is fuming.

Got to love those steroids.

Clinic Stats:

Height: 103 cm

Weight: 16.1

ANC: 700

Amelia's ANC is still a little low so the doctors decided to keep her on a 75% home chemo dose.

A Great Day

Although school started last week today was Millie's 1st day. She didn't even hesitate when it came time for me to leave. She adores Mrs. Patti and all the kids in her class. I am so grateful I have somewhere to send Millie that is full of people that love her. I didn't worry for a second that she would be made fun of, or the kids would leave her out, I don't have to worry about moms sending sick kids, or her feeling out of place. WE LOVE YOU PATTI! Thank you for providing such a safe environment for Millie. She thinks you are the Bees Knees and so do I.

We also went to the Utah State Fair with HopeKids today and it was SO FUN! We got there just in time to join them for fishing. Millie's cousin Oliver was the 1st one to catch a fish, but he wasn't so sure he wanted to touch it.

Next we hit up the Giant Yellow Banana Slide. The boys loved it, but I took Millie up kicking and screaming. I knew once she did it she'd like it and on the car ride home she said, "You wanna know something mom...I liked the slide even though I told you I didn't". Little Stinker.

We were also able to go on all the rides for free! Millie's favorite was ...The Banana Slide (at least that's what she just told me). She also loved the Dizzy Dragon. I wish I'd taken more pictures! The kids were all so dang cute.

Thanks Again HopeKids for providing a wonderful time for Miss Millie. We appreciate you more then you know. We all had a blast!

AWARENESS..

via: www.kissforcami.blogspot.com
(thanks Chelsea for letting basically copy your post)

September is Childhood Cancer awareness month...

Gold is the color of Childhood Cancer. Wear it proudly.
I am still learning all I can about childhood cancer, please do the same.
We learned the hard way that this can happen to ANY child at ANY time, lets do all we can to help find the cause and cure!

You can visit these sites for info and to donate-

curechildhoodcancer.ning.com
http://www.curesearch.org/
www.stjude.org
http://www.goldthenewpink.net/
http://www.alexslemonade.org/
http://www.cookiesforkidscancer.org/
http://www.curechildhoodcancer.ning.com/
http://www.stbaldricks.org/
http://www.gladtogive.com/
http://www.crochetforcancer.blogspot.com/

*if you work for a corporation, tell them about Amelia and encourage them to donate to one of these charities this year!

--I also want to mention that Chili's is supporting St. Jude all month long and on September 27th they are donating ALL profits to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. If you can do nothing more, please go eat at Chili's on September 27th.

A few other foundations I want to talk about are:

Make a Wish
and
HopeKids


If you read our blog you have heard me talk about both of these organizations before. We think they are amazing! They have helped give Amelia HOPE. They aren't looking to cure cancer, they are looking to cure the heartache that comes along with the diagnosis.
We really couldn't make it through all this without them!

Hope Kids held a 5K walk/run on Saturday and we missed it because we were in Lake Powell. I heard it was a blast and I think they raised about $40,000! Thank you to all of you who have already donated to our fundraising page in Amelia's name, it means the world to us. We LOVE Hope Kids and if you want to donate in Amelia's name we are continuing to take donations for HopeKids this week.

Happy Birthday Brady!

a GREAT MAN and FATHER turns 30.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRADY!

you AMAZE me.

(Brady's birthday is the 8th, but we will be driving to Lake Powell at 4 am and won't have Internet)

ER visit

The word that Millie was in the ER a couple nights ago spread like wild fire, so I thought I should give you all an update, but 1st of all she's fine!

Monday night we went to the Bees baseball game with HopeKids and while we were there Millie had gone to the restroom and she had blood in her urine. Our 1st reaction was that she had a bladder infection and that is what the On-Call Oncologist at Primary Children's thought as well. He suggested we take her to the emergency room as soon as possible. If the infection were to get into her kidneys she would get a fever and we'd be hospitalized, so it was important for us to get an antibiotic asap.

We left the game immediately and headed up to Primary Children's. Luckily they got us right back! I thought we'd be out of there in a couple hours. Nope! They took a urine sample and the results were a bit confusing. It was not conclusive that she had a UTI and her blood test came back abnormal as well. Her PTT blood level was high, which meant her blood was taking too long to clot. NOT GOOD. Since they took the blood sample from her PORT there was a chance that her sample had heparin in it and that would effect her results. They took another sample, it showed the same abnormalities.

After 7 hours of sitting in the ER they decided to admit us to the Oncology floor for the night (at this point it's 4:00am). I really hoped I would never have to see that place ever again! Around 5:00 am they took a 3rd blood sample, but this time it came from a vein in her arm and her results came back NORMAL! It was the heparin after all.

After 7 hours in the ER and 8 hours in Oncology, we were sent home with a $200.00 prescription for a UTI. Don't worry, I threw a fit and got a $10 script instead.

All's well that ends well, right?