Good Counts and New Pics

It has been a week of up-and-downs.  A tremendous blessing came our way this week from California - one of our old friends from Lynden, Brenda (or Auntie B as Jack Jr. calls her) flew in to help us out for two weeks.  She has been a Godsend and like when my mom and Auntie Geri come to help, she cleans, cooks, takes care of Jack Jr., and anything and everything else to help out.  We are going to miss her dearly when she leaves, although I'm trying to convince her to stay...

Cash had serious nausea challenges on Monday, Tuesday, and part of Wednesday this week.  Trying to get on top of his nausea was difficult but we managed on Wednesday to figure it out by giving him a combo of anti-nausea meds every 3 hours.  I thought today he was nearly done with the nausea so I shifted to every 6 hours but that was a mistake - he threw up twice in a very short period of time, right before we ate chicken enchiladas and during...I think Brenda lost her appetite for the wonderful dinner she made (sorry Brenda!).

In preparing for the meeting with Dr. Carson, I was able to get MRI scans of Cash's tumor and felt like I could now share a few images of what it looks like inside his brain stem.  Below is a scan - I put an arrow to the gray area that is the tumor (it's the darker gray circle-like section).  Keep in mind that it is not one 'mass' so-to-speak, the good cells are intertwined with the cancerous cells - that is what makes this particular tumor difficult to fight, it cannot be operated on in any safe way...

On another note...all of this talk of 'shaving heads' resonated with Jack Jr.  I came home from work and he managed to get a hold of Wendi's shaver (for legs) and thought he'd give himself that 'straight edge' look (note the lack of hair down the middle):

It was hard to get mad, I just told him that only daddy's give haircuts...

After a rough few days with Cash not feeling well, he bounced back on Wednesday and had a pretty good rest-of-the-week.  His counts are good although we expect them to plummet sometime this weekend, which means next week will be infusions of blood and platelets.  He and Jack played a lot the past few days and here they are under Jack's 'house' playing with the Leapster:

There have been a lot of ups and downs this week but we continue to trust in the Lord to give us the strength we all need to keep fighting.  This week, more than ever, I have been reminded that we are not in control and that God is a God of grace and mercy.

Thank you to those who are going to the benefit, we are going to try and bring Cash by just for a moment that evening, depending on how he's feeling.  Thank you all for your continued support and please continue to pray for Cash and his friends with cancer: Coleson B, Christopher H, Aiden A, and Jaimeson J - all who continue to fight this with their families.