What a fun week

We spent the week in Boise before Emily's last last last set of treatments. She has an MRI and CT scan today (Tuesday) a bone marrow biopsy the next day and then cranial radiation once a day for 8 days. She will get her central line out and hopefully get to eat subway and soft serve ice cream.

In Boise we stayed at the house and relaxed a lot. It was our first full week of taking care of Jack at night and I think we did pretty well. Some nights he would wake up every 4 hours some nights it was every 2. One night he slept from 10pm until 8 am...it was my turn to wake up with him that night and it was amazing lol.

We made it in time to go to the family party to watch my Brother in law Matt Warnick win big on Who wants to be a millionaire. We are proud of him and are glad that him and Sarah had a great time.

We attended 2 trunk or treats with the family and my Dad and I even got second place at our home ward's Chili cook off.

We carved pumpkins with Jake Vp and his lovely parents and girlfriend Amy. Jack loves being passed around and I think he likes having big dogs sniffing at him and stealthily licking his face.

My mom got a new cat. He's a Siamese kitten named Simon. Pretty cute. Emily doesn't like cats so he was tolerated more than anything lol. I love animals so it was fun to wrestle and make him jump.

The picture of Emily's nails show you when she got the chemo treatments. Kind of like rings on a tree.

Sunday night Brian and Hillary Walker, and  Jason and Ivy Thurston met up with Emily and I at Jason's parent's house. We brought our kids too. The Walkers have a little 15 month old named Abbey. The Thurstons have a 2 year old named Oliver and then we have a nearly 5 month old (Jack). We snapped a picture of all three of them. I'm pretty sure Brian got a better shot than I did. It was a lot of fun seeing them interact with each other. It was even more interesting to take a step back and reflect on growing up with all of them and then see their kids.

Jack is doing great. He is speaking his own language and even started to roll from him back to his stomach! His hands are becoming more accurate at grabbing things and nearly anything makes him laugh or smile. He also doesn't like big stuffed bears.

Thankfully Emily's mom is with us again while Emily is recovering from her biopsy and potentially the radiation. We appreciate her sacrifice coming here and for all the love that our mothers and Grandmothers have shown Jack.

Counts are still up

We are doing good. Counts are still going up and Emily only has one more day of her antibiotic at home. Jack has his 4 month shots on Wednesday and we aren't looking forward to that at all. On Thursday they are going to run tests on Emily again before they clear her to do the cranial radiation in November.

In the mean time we are going to head to Boise on Thursday or Friday and be there until November 2nd. It should be a great getaway.

Link to donate for Emily:

https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/81bb/emily-s-entourage

We are home!

Yesterday Emily's counts went from 11 to 100. We woke up this morning and miraculously they went from 100 to 1200!
Needless to say we were excited and 5 hours of waiting later, we finally made it home. Turns out that we weren't there for nothing because they did find a strain of strep in her blood that was causing the fever. It's all taken care of and Emily is healthier than when we got there (a nice change to our usual hospital stays).

She still has to take antibiotics through her lines so they are going to send a nurse once a day for the next 6 or so days to the house. We are both happy to be out of the hospital even though the doctors, aids, and nurses were all so fun and amazing.

Jack is doing great and loves to read. I got the official acceptance letter to Westminster as well. Made for a good day.

Link to donate for Emily 

https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/81bb/emily-s-entourage

Waiting on the counts

As of this morning Emily's neutrophils are still at zero. Needless to say she is antsy and anxious to get out of the hospital. She still gets a neupogene shot everyday and I can see that it's frustrating getting a shot everyday only to see zero improvement.

On the brighter side, we both sleep great in the hospital now. She gets 25 mgs of benedryl and I take 3 mgs of melatonin. We both sleep like babies.

Speaking of babies, Jack is doing great. He's eating tons, grabbing things he wants to put in his mouth and my Mom got him to laugh pretty hard today.

Emily's Mom got back to Canada safely and we once again loved having her here. We are so grateful for her personal sacrifices to be with us and with Jack. We will miss her and we know that Jack will miss her too. My mom made it into town and I can tell she is going to have a blast with Jack. We attribute a lot of Jack's development to his loving grandmothers. I think that's why he is so smiley.

Emily and I are truly amazed by the donations we have received in just the first week! Emily told me tonight that she didn't know it would bring her this much peace of mind knowing that we had a safety net again. Thank you to all who have donated in the ways that you could.

Link to donate for Emily.
https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/81bb/emily-s-entourage

We are doing well

Emily and I are jst hanging out watching the price is right. Here are some pictures of Jack because he is so cute.

https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/81bb/emily-s-entourage

An unexpected morning

First of all, thank you to everyone for their very generous donations for Emily. We feel so blessed and we are overwhelmed by the love we have been shown over the last 4 months.

Everything is going pretty well. Unfortunately Emily got a fever last night around 4 am. She had a temperature of 100.3 and she was freezing cold in spite of all the blankets and socks. I called the clinic and they said if she hits 100.8 that we should bring her in.

I took her temperature again 3 minutes later and it was 100.7.  The nurse said that we should probably bring her in. The dread of going back to the hospital was enough for us to wait 15 minutes to check again. Knowing all too well that if she was admitted with a fever, she would need to stay at the hospital until all of her counts recovered...yesterday her neutrophils were at zero. So that would nearly guarantee that we stay in the hospital a week maybe 3.

We took the temp again and it jumped to 101.5 . Emily was so brave and ultimately made the decision to go to the hospital. We said by to Jack and Kathy and went to LDS hospital. They took her temperature at the hosptial and it was 97.5.

So we thought, "great we can just head out now. :) "  but the nurses said that the fever always comes back. So here we are. Trying to keep our spirits up. We know we made the right decision because doing the hard thing when it's hard is the only way to really grow.

Please pray for Emily's counts to recover quickly. And thank you again for everything you have done for us.

How to donate to Emily's cause.

Thank you to all who have helped us in our time of need. Some angels have set up an account to help us. Check out the link below. Thank you thank thank you for all your help!

https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/81bb/emily-s-entourage

Good news

Good news all around!

Emily is out of the hospital and she did so good this last last stay. She has a bit more energy but is still taking it easy. We are going to be in and out of the hospital for her neupogene shots until her counts are good. We meet with the radio oncologist tomorrow to talk about possible radiation. Emily and I are both against, but if he can convince us, we may do it.

Jack is doing great and is pretty close to rolling from his back to his stomach.

I was accepted to the MBA Graduate program at Westminster here in Salt Lake starting in January so we are very excited and anxious about that. It's a 2 to 3 year program. If you have been following the blog closely you would know that being accepted there seemed to be the Lord's plan even before Emily was diagnosed. It's nice to know that in the midst of tribulation you still get peace from knowing you are following Heavenly Father's plan for you.

Joe, Krystle and Casey all came down for general conference and it was a great time hanging out with them.

Light the night walk

We did a light the night walk with the east 8 floor today. They usually have it in a park but since we are in the hosptial we have it in the hallway. The gold is in rememberence of those lost, white is for survivors and red is for caregivers. Jack had fun too. I gave a little speech for the caregivers and then we walked around the hall 3 times. 

Also, Jack likes watching Cake Boss in Emily's bed.