Happy 4th of July!

We hope that this weekend finds you all having fun spending time with your friends and families! We are planning an outing to the CBS studios in Studio City for a Fourth of July Fair and fireworks on Monday. Should be fun!

We just got back from Disneyland... our first trip back since Elizabeth's surgery... if you don't count the few hours Mom and the kids spent there on Thursday evening. This was our first whole day trip, anyway, and we decided to take Dad for the ride. Elizabeth was in such a great mood! She spent most of the day very giggly and pranced around (a little... mostly was carted around in her "royal carriage"... i.e. stroller) in her Ariel princess bride dress. It is so wonderful to be with Elizabeth when she is feeling good. It's like we have our daughter back--not that she was ever gone, she just hasn't seemed like herself for so long (understandably so...). Dad thinks that she's doing better because she had the surgery that removed all that cancer from her little body. All those tumors must have been making her really uncomfortable (to say the least) and now that her body has had a chance to recover it seems she is seeing some positive effect.

We are scheduled for round 2 chemo on July 14. Dr. Marcio is working on the possibility of adding a couple more agents to the regimen on an alternating basis (for example, round 1 - GEMOX, round 2 - 5-FU, round 3 - GEMOX, and so on...). This could lessen the chance of her cancer developing a resistance to what we are already using, and since this cancer is more likely to come back than not, we can't risk resistance later down the line.

We did get Elizabeth's pathology report. I think we may have posted earlier that her margins were clear, but it is worth mentioning again. That means that when they removed the liver tumors, there was enough non-cancerous tissue surrounding what was removed that there shouldn't be any residual disease in the area.

The following is an exerpt from a case update I posted to an acinic cell carcinoma weblist we belong to:
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The pathology report did reveal necrosis (death) in the cancer cells (that's a very good thing!) but with different levels of necrosis than originally thought (based on scans).

Her liver tumors (about 70% of her liver was removed on June 1) were thought to be necrotic and her peritoneal tumors (one rather large 6.5mm, another tumor 5mm and about 8 other nodules--also removed on June1) were thought to be viable based on pre-op scans. Turns out they got it in reverse, which we think may be better.

Her liver tumors showed no signs of necrosis, so good thing we got them out of there. No visible nor palpable signs of disease were left in the liver. Margins were clear. Hopefully we can keep the liver clean for a while now.

Peritoneal tumors--largest was 20% necrotic, second was 60% necrotic, all nodules were 100% necrotic. Good news, means that GEMOX works on the peritoneal implants--a location she has the greatest chance of recurrance at this point.
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So that's what's going on for now. Otherwise, things are great. Mike is out of school and driving us all nuts--but we're enjoying having him around more! Matt and Elizabeth are fighting like crazy for Mike's attention (they just love their big bro!), and Danny is still growing at what seems like a very rapid rate, but I think it's just because he's our last one (barring any miracles--tubal ligation!) and it goes by too fast.

I should have lots of time (well, maybe not lots...) on Tuesday to be able to post some new pictures. Those are always fun and we've been doing some cool things (annual family reunion picnic, Disneyland, Mountasia, Celebrate Life fair, etc.) we'd like to share with you all. Thank you for continuing to pray for Elizabeth. We are so hoping that this will be it for the cancer, but whatever lies ahead, through Him we can "do all things". Without your constant prayers and God's guidance we would not have gotten through this far. Thank you, thank you, thank you!