Well, this is how Elizabeth spent the morning while getting her gemcitabine chemo infusion:



Needless to say, she did very well getting the poison--er, medicine--pumped into her central line. She was feeling SO good afterwards that she excitedly agreed to go to McDonald's (can you believe the hospital has one of those?! It's not uncommon to see kids with IV poles in there eating...) with Maureen Masserella, our friend who works in administration at CHLA. Maureen brought Elizabeth a bead/jewelry kit when we first checked in, and Elizabeth did manage to make her a keychain before konking out. She gets several antiemetics (i.e. medicine so she doesn't puke her guts out) before chemo, including regalin, which is always given with benedryl. And benedryl=sleep for Elizabeth! Mom had fun painting Elizabeth's toenails and coloring with her, but did appreciate getting to doze for an hour while Elizabeth napped.

So far so good... Elizabeth is up and around here at home fighting with her brothers, so all is normal! Unfortunately, we did not get out of the hospital in time to make it to ballet class today, so we have to wait until next week for the next class. But that doesn't stop Elizabeth from wearing her dance leotard and skirt and her ballet slippers while dancing about at home... in fact she is dancing right now in her dance class clothes while watching her Barbie of Swan Lake DVD.

We're trying really hard to stay positive, but it's getting pretty hard. We just found out that another of our little friends that was being treated at UCLA while Elizabeth was there died in January. His name was Mikey Traba and he had a little sister named Emily. He spent so much time in isolation because of his bone marrow transplant, but every time we saw him he was smiling from ear to ear riding on his IV pole. It's just getting harder and harder knowing that it is a very real possibility that we'll go through that kind of tragedy. Like Holden's family put it, it doesn't really matter if a cure rate is 67% if you fall into the other 33%. Little Mikey had leukemia, which has a 95% typical cure rate, but he was in the other 5%. We are told that a 20% cure for Elizabeth is optimistic. At this point, numbers just seem so meaningless. Like Dad put it last night, Elizabeth is 4 times more likely to make it than Mikey was to not make it. Who really cares what the odds are when you're banking on a miracle anyway?! It's just more and more frustrating to meet these little angels knowing their futures are so uncertain.

On a lighter note, the boys are all doing great. Mike has been selected (thanks to his drama coach and magnet coordinator Mrs. Marchand Erickson) to do a TV news spot on KCAL 9, a local Los Angeles station. It has someting to do with Angels baseball and as soon as I have more details I'll post the info. He is very excited. Danny is all smiles lately, and Matt is getting more comfortable with his new role as big brother.

Keep the prayers coming! As tough as this is to deal with, there is a sort of calm that we feel sometimes amidst the uncertainty and chaos, which can only be attributed to prayer. Just yesterday Elizabeth told Mom that the chemo was going to shrink her cancer until it was all gone. Let's hope she's right!!