Esa's daddy, Blair, just posted an update on her eye exam that was this week. I haven't posted any reports about little Esa for a while, and they have been good, so I thought it was about time to update everybody. Connie
from Blair:
i'm sitting here typing this entry with esa sitting right beside me so she is going to tell me what to write. she says " thanks for praying for me, cause i had anoder great report!!" she is just as stable as she was a year ago. so thank you so much for your continued prayers.
it was a weird morning for us though, we have met so many great people throughout our journey here at saint jude. 2 years ago we were in the icu hoping that esa would get well enough to breath without oxygen, and pain meds. it's been quite the life for us the past two years. we met a man and his daughter in the waiting room in our clinic. he asked what esa had, and we told him that she has retinoblastoma, and he pointed to his 7 year old daughter who had very short hair that was growing back in. he said "yep, i remember wednesday morning eye exams." so obviously i asked if she has retinoblastoma and he said she was diagnosed with retino when she was 4 months old, and when she was five she graduated to the survivors clinic, and a month later it turned into bone cancer. he told us that this is the natural progression of retinoblastoma. so she just got done with 11 rounds of chemo, and she had the bone in her leg from her hip to under her knee replaced with a prosthetic bone. i was robbed of my joy, and i was reminded that my life with esa is never going to be the normal parenting experience. i always knew that it was a huge chance that other cancer might come, but i never met anyone who has had secondary cancer after they have been cleared from the retinoblastoma treatment. so i'm putting it in God's hands, and just am praying so hard that he will rebuke her cancer, and keep her whole body free from this monster for the next 100 years.
so i will put my worry to the side for today, and i will enjoy this beautiful little girl who got a stable eye exam today. today the world is right for my little girl.
please pray for jacob carver you need to go to his caringbridge. his family didn't get very good news this morning and they have some major decisions to make. that is another reason why this morning so very different. i had so much joy for like 30 minutes, and then i saw jacob's dad, and i was taken back to when we were getting bad news, and my heart just ached for them. so please pray for that family.
i have a very funny story from yesterday. Dr. Scott was checking esa's belly. because of the chemo and everything else esa doesn't poop regularly without miralax. so Dr. Scott likes to check her belly. so he was pushing on it, and out came a stinker. Esa sat up really quickly and gave a very shy smile and said, "what happened?" maybe it's not as funny reading it, but she was so cute about it trying to play it off. "oh, what happened?"
anyway, thanks so much for your prayers, and we love all of you. we go back in 6 weeks.
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I did look up Jacob Carver's page, and his eye cancer has flared up bigtime. They will try various treatments, and if they don't help, his mommy and daddy will have to decide whether his eye should be removed. Their names are Hartley and Rachel.
Blessings to each of you as the year 2009 fades into the distance, and 2010 makes its grand entry.
