Emmy's Story Archive

Little miss Emmy has been put through a number of tests including but not limited to: various blood tests, MRI, CT Scan, PET Scan, and bone marrow biopsy.

The initial round of chemo drugs left our little lady feeling nauseous and very uncomfortable. As we mentioned, there are a whole host of side effects that come along with this treatment, most of which we won't begin to see for another 10 days or so, but nausea and fatigue are immediately apparent.

Off to Denver tomorrow for the next big round of treatment and an overnight at Children's Hospital. This will be the first time she gets all three chemo drugs since we began treatment several weeks back. We are a bit anxious to see how she will react but are simultaneously comforted being at Children's knowing that she is being cared for by the best.

Today marks the beginning of week five of chemotherapy treatment where, all in all, things are going ok. She still battles nausea for days after each treatment but we seem to have a pretty tight handle on her medication regimen now, keeping the nausea to a dull roar.

After the scan, it was determined that said pressure had been eased enough to take the catheter and see how she would do. Happy to report that young Emmy has had no trouble giving us plenty of wet diapers all on her own since. What this tells us is that the chemotherapy is having a positive effect on the tumor and reducing it in size.

We were left standing there, a little bit sad watching our girl being carried away but mostly filled with the relief that we were finally at a place along this journey where our care team could operate. So we set up camp in the waiting room for the next five hours anxiously awaiting news of the procedure."

In other news, we met with our care team this week and had a long discussion about Emery's care plan moving forward. The surgery was successful in that they removed the majority of her tumor but the pathology result margins were not clear and some cancerous cells remain. This will result in a number of additional procedures to go back in and remove these mutated cells.

In other news, during the last visit to Children's Hospital Colorado where Emmy had a big chemo treatment she was also intubated for a new CT and MRI. This was to take a look at her tumor site checking for regrowth but also to see an image of her chest which is where this particular type of cancer would go next if continuing to spread. We are ecstatic to report that all scans came back clear and the good people on our care team are not seeing any indications of cancer!

So, next Tuesday we head down to Children's Hospital Colorado for another overnight chemo treatment, only this one is a little different. It is her LAST in this 40+ week course of treatments! After this last big dose of those lifesaving yet horribly caustic drugs, she will get a well deserved break.

Last week found us back on the 7th floor of Children's Hospital Colorado, a floor we've become so familiar with over the last 11 months or so. This time though, was different than all the others.

It's a lot to process. We learned all of this yesterday, today waking up in a fog feeling incredibly hungover from too much unwanted information. This week we have gone from total elation about being at the end of treatment all the way to now where we have been thrust back into a newish and very intense world of aggressive cancer treatment.

Aside from our bicycling adventures, we’ve spent the rest of the time meeting with our new care team(s) from the proton and oncology departments. We're going through additional imaging (CT/MRI) so they can see the most recent pictures to determine our absolute best course of action.

Every time we do get to pass through the threshold of our own place, there comes a moment where a certain smile crosses our little lady’s face, the special one reserved for when she is extra happy, and it melts you into a puddle right there on the spot. We could turn around and get right back in the truck, the whole journey back home made worth it in that one moment.

So whats next? Well, I’ll tell you...next week is currently slated to be her last week of chemotherapy treatment. Five horribly, torturous days with extra shitty (pun intended!) side effects is how we’re going to end this thing. After that, she gets some time to rest (about a month) before we can scan again. That will put us right back where we were almost a year ago.