Just ranting...

Sorry it's been a while since we've last updated.

Mom has been pretty mad about this whole cancer thing lately. Probably because we lost another friend, Ava. This whole thing really sucks.

Mom just found out today that one of the boys in Mike's Boy Scout patrol has cancer, too. Dad and Mike found out on Tuesday when he came to the meeting. The kid is taking a beating from the cancer. Ever since Elizabeth has been diagnosed, it seems that we have known more and more kids being diagnosed with cancer. First our friend at Mike's school, then a distant relative we met at the annual family picnic, and now a fellow scout. Not to mention all the kids we now know through the hospital and the Michael Hoefflin Foundation support group.

How is it that so many kids have cancer and nobody talks about it????

Hey, Oprah, I have a show topic for you...

One out of every 330 kids will be diagnosed with cancer by age 19. Every day 46 kids are diagnosed with cancer. Not every kid who is fighting cancer looks like he or she is fighting cancer. Elizabeth doesn't. Does that mean she'll be okay and that she'll hit remission again? No. Take a look at the kids in the store, running down the aisles. If you go shopping once a week, and see 6 kids while you are shopping each time, over the course of a year chances are that you will have seen a kid who has cancer. You may not be able to see it, but it's there. Scary, huh? Nobody who meets Elizabeth would ever guess that she is missing 4 complete organs (one partial) in her body, and that she gets weekly chemotherapy.

Can we please start bringing a little more attention to childhood cancers and pancreatic cancer? Breast cancer has gone from having terrible cure rates to almost always beatable. Why? Because an effort was made to educate the public on how important early detection is. Prostate cancer is 97% curable when caught in the early stages. Pancreatic cancer is 95% fatal. Most people don't make it anywhere near their one year diagnosis anniversary, and adults who lose their entire pancreas never make it a year. But Elizabeth is here, 15 months post-diagnosis, still as full of life as ever! She wasn't diagnosed early (stage 3, hit stage 4 in March), and she lost her entire pancreas in June 2004! We believe she will kick this thing completely and go on to reach adulthood (we have to believe that!). She gives us every reason to believe in her.

We like to think that we will part of the lucky group.





ON A MORE POSITIVE NOTE:

Elizabeth is a magazine cover girl! Alright, so it's just a local magazine, but we're pretty proud parents anyway. You can tell by the pictures that she wasn't in the greatest of moods that day... but she is so darn cute, even when she pouts! And check out the boots... the girl won't take those babies off! Wears them with all her sundresses. I see a pair of Doc Marten's in her future...

And the picture inside the magazine, along with the article, can be found at this link:
http://www.santaclaritamagazine.com/Pages/0905/Cover_Story.html