November 3, 2011

It's been a crazy couple of weeks! Busy, busy, busy. But I must report that Kass is now at maximum dose on her treatment and handling it very well so far.  The best news of all is that I am starting to wean her off the decadron (steroid). Yeah!!!!!!  Finally I know!! Yesterday, was the first day and I had to do the happy dance.  So she is now down to 1/2 mg of decadron in the morning and hope to eliminate that in a week or so.  Making strides!  Just always scared of a possible seizure in the back of our minds without the steroids.

She has been attending school and doing a bit better in school.  We are thankful for that.  Everything is a little harder for her, so we take whatever she can accomplish.  This week she has also started Environmental Science instead of anatomy and physiology, so far she says it's easier.  I'm crossing my fingers, but if it doesn't work we will go to plan F  :)

Two weeks now without headaches and nausea.  Ahhh breath of fresh air! Still tired most days, but she's looking well.  I do believe our sessions at the chiropractor are helping her immensely.  Our friend Dr Paige sees her every week and works on her to allow her body to handle her treatments better, break down toxins from tumor breakdown and just give positive energy.  She loves the foot reflexology the best, I don't blame her on that one.

Dr. Rhee called this week to tell me that her biopsies of her stomach all came out fine.  The grooves in her esophagus were not allergy related and that he's not worried about them. His office will be calling me this week to schedule a gastric emptying scan, to see what's going on with her stomach not working correctly. I hope by maybe eliminating the steroid that it will help the stomach work better. Hoping!

I also found out during this time that insurance denied the PET Scan for a 3rd time.  UGH! So I called Steinberg to see how much a PET Scan would cost and they said $3,000.  Whewwww, crazy right.  Our doctor at Buryznski's told us just to wait for the next MRI to see what we see and see if we absolutely need it.  Her next MRI is on November 16.  I'm already having anxiety!

We are also started taking Kass to counseling.  We felt it would be good for her to be able to speak to someone else other than us about what she's going through.  This might help her, we thought she should try it for a couple months and see how it goes.  We just don't know what she's going thru exactly and hope that she can work through her bouts of sadness that she experiences sometimes.  She's one tough girl, but is more quiet and barely touches her phone or computer anymore.  :(

Last week she had the opportunity to sit with her team Xtreme at the showcase softball tournament they had here in Vegas.  She dressed in her uniform and went to support her team.  Ryan said she was smiles from ear to ear.  So hard for her to watch from the sidelines and not being out there playing, but she takes what she can get.  It was a great weekend for Kass and Ryan since they got to spend a whole weekend together bonding.

Getting her hair braided by Momma Sue

Best Picture of the Day!

She got to do the coin toss for one of the games.

Posing with some of high school softball friends that play for other travel teams

I got to go surprise Kyle at Fort Collins, Colorado since he was competing in the Mountain West Conference Cross Country Championships; what an honor as a freshman running D1 school.  He was so excited to see me and I as well.  I have missed my boy so much.  It was an honor to watch him compete at the college level and do amazing.  He is the 3rd fastest true freshman in the Mountain West Conference.  He came in 23rd overall and 5th for Boise State with a time of 26:13, that's an average of 5:15 mile for almost 5 miles.  Pretty amazing right!  He will be competing at Stanford for Regionals on the 12th.  Wish we could be there, but we will rooting for him on from afar.  I'm counting the days till he comes home for Thanksgiving.

Check out the link:
http://www.broncosports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=48538&SPID=4063&DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=9900&ATCLID=205324618

So happy to see each other! 

One proud mama!

Boise State XC Team, great job boys, all freshman & sophomores.

Thank you all for always keeping us in your thoughts and prayers.  We feel your support all the time and we so appreciate it.  Our lives are a little lighter because of it.

We want to give a shout out to our extended family all over, especially in Panama.  I know many of my friends from infancy have helped so much to extend Kassidy's Army there. We love the support in the prayers, thoughts, messages, runs in Kassidy's name, t-shirt & bracelets sales, donations, and fundraisers being held there.  We have met new warriors in Kassidy's Army that we have never been able to meet otherwise.  We believe this is one of the true blessings of this journey.