All Set for Round Two!

Elizabeth had an appointment with Dr. Marcio this afternoon. She had her blood drawn and we should know what her AFP levels are by tomorrow afternoon. We are praying that they have not gone up. She was at >1400 as of March 24, before starting chemo. Her AFP was doubling about every 2 weeks at that point. Anything equal to, or less than, 1400 would be good. Of course, an AFP back down to 5 would be ideal, but we're taking the smaller blessings as they come (and we sure are grateful for them!).

We will be doing the chemo as an outpatient this time. Elizabeth will be admitted to Children's "day" hospital on Thursday morning. She'll get the gemcitabine as a 90 minute infusion, and then we should be discharged around lunchtime. We will go back on Friday morning for the 2 hour infusion of oxaliplatin, and again be discharged near lunchtime. Mom promised she'd accompany Elizabeth for round 2 when she was doing round 1 inpatient with Dad, so Dad will spend Thursday and Friday mornings home with all of the "yucky" boys.

So we're pretty much in a holding pattern until we get through this cycle, which ends in another 3 weeks. At that point we'll have a CT scan to look at the tumors and see what change has occured. Dr. Marcio seemed to suggest that even if we are seeing no change (i.e. no more tumor growth), we may want to keep going with the same chemo agents. We'll cross that bridge when we get there, but we're (meaning Mom and Dad) pretty much in agreement that we need to be extremely aggressive because we intend to save our daughter. And as long as the chemo isn't making her sick (thank you God for sparing Elizabeth that), we'll keep pumping her full of it until the cancer runs out of her little body screaming for mercy!

We'll post the AFP levels as soon as we get the results, hopefully tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone who has been signing the GuestMap! It has grown exponentially over the last 2 days, much to Elizabeth's delight. We upgraded to the pro service, so there should be no more people "disappearing" off the map. We now have room for up to 1000 entries.

While you are remembering Elizabeth in your prayers (which we so appreciate and desperately need), please take the extra few seconds to also remember the following cancer-kicking kids:

• Gage: Relapsed in February and undergoing extremely strong chemo that is making him rather ill
• Matthew: Relapsed late last year and is no longer taking any treatments because they were worse than the cancer
• Julianna Banana: Relapsed leukemia with poor prognosis

And the families who have recently gained angels:

• Trey - late 2004
• Bret - February 2005
• Benjamin - April 2005
• Remy - January 2005 (this was a deeply personal loss... Remy was Elizabeth's first roommate in the pediatric oncology hall at UCLA, who also moved to Children's Hospital Los Angeles looking for more aggressive treatment)

11 children die EVERY DAY from cancer. One child in every 330 will be diagnosed with cancer by the age 19. Instead of asking "Why our child?" we say "Why not our child?" Cancer happens to families every where, why would we be any different? There is no answer good enough to the "why" questions, so we stopped asking them a long time ago! Like Mike's button says: CANCER SUCKS