Wednesday Chris was well enough to have chemo. His weight stayed the same since last week - thank goodness:) They have stopped giving him the oxiplatin, the drug that is suppose to help the chemo work better but causes terrible sometimes irreversible side effects such as numbness and sensitivity to cold things. Chris' nose and tongue would go numb which he hated because his nose would run and he wouldn't know it. He was also loosing his sense of balance. They usually try to go 9 treatments before they stop using it but it was starting to take a toll on Chris so the doctor decided to stop it now. Friday he went in and had the pump removed. He seems to be doing well usually Friday night he throws up alot but last night he just felt really tired and nauseated. Probably because he had a month break, who knows we were just grateful not to have to hear him be sick. It makes us sad:(

Sorry about not writing sooner so here goes. . . Chris hasn't had chemo since August. He was scheduled to have chemo Sept. 9th and then Sept. 16th but his white blood cell count and platelet counts were to low. He also lost 4 lbs in one week (2 lbs the week before). We will try again this Wednesday. Also we decided not to have the children tested. Megan would like to be tested and we feel that she is close enough to 18 to hear the results and deal with them. The other children are just too young they don't need to worry about cancer and dieing. We had talked about just not telling them but knowing me I would give it away, every time I'd look at the child with the mutant gene I know I'd start crying- I'm sure they'd figure it out themselves:) Chris' CT scan came back normal (that's good). Jacob fell off his bike and got a lot of "road rash" Two days after his accident he became covered in a rash. I knew that I couldn't send him to school not knowing what the rash was from so I took him to the doctor. He tested Jacob for strep and looked at his wounds. After he saw the one on Jacob's bottom (which I had to bribe the boy to let him see - ANY treat at the gas station!) The doctor realized that Jacobs body was having a hard time fighting off the infection from the wounds so Jacob is now on medicine to help his body fight off the infection (and so is Chris:) Not much else has happened just the usual flag football games and practices, cross country meets, 10 mile hike, scout camp out (Chris and Tay), homework, scouts, church activities etc. Hope all of you are doing well. We love ya, Ricki