4th grade=YUCK

There are struggles that happen in your life that are meant to strengthen you, to make you a more complete person, to give you the opportunity to grow.

Could someone please explain the purpose of the 4th grade PLEASE!

I guess in the face of dealing with cancer this should be cake, but 4th grade is really kicking our butts. Please pray for Nathaniel, he truly needs it. He’s struggling with all the non-academic points of school this year. He’s got the knowledge, but it’s the organization, time management, attention span of a gnat kind of problems he’s dealing with…therefore WE are all dealing with. He’s incredibly smart, so we just hope that the rest of it catches up soon. Please keep us in prayers for patience and diligence to guide him through a challenging year.

Rachael is rocking the first grade. She’s already an accomplished reader, writing is fun for her and she’s such a social creature that she’s in her element in school. She starts soccer on Thursday, she’s super excited about that. She’s decided to skip the dance classes this year, which I’m a little sad about because she’s just so darned cute in the outfits, but she’s ready to get tough on the soccer field, which thrills Pete to no end. Nathaniel had his first day of soccer today, he loves it…no real reason to his madness, but he’s out getting sweaty, dirty and having fun.

Peyton had her clinic visit this morning. She was a champ as always, she gave a fight when getting her port accessed, but that was because she refused to let me put numbing cream on it before we left. I think when we’re going longer between port accesses she forgets how much it really hurts. Her counts were fantastic! Her ANC was 1500 (perfect), her RBC was 10.5 (great!) and her platelet count was over 230K (phenomenal)….it’s awesome to my heart to see this proof that her body is handling the chemo well and is able to bounce back on it’s own. They will continue to watch her counts because if they go too high they will have to up her dosage. They don’t want her too high or too low, it’s a balancing act. But for now, we’re good. She took her 7 pills tonight at bedtime without a fuss, which always blows me away and we are braced for the accumulated effects of steroids to start sometime around Friday….I must remember to make that panic trip to the grocery store to stock up.

Tomorrow we get up extra early as Peyton and I will be heading down to St. Pete for the Studio 10 morning show. We are going to be talking about National Childhood Cancer Month, the Pediatric Cancer Foundation’s Cure Kids Cancer Challenge and what this month really means to us. It’s going to be extra touching as we are going to be there with Barb, the executive director of the PCF, and my friend Holly Wirth, who lost her daughter Paige. I hope that it reaches out to a lot of hearts and we are able to get people involved who might otherwise let the opportunity go by.

A huge thanks to Brandy and Jeff Fishman!! They are a family that we’ve met and become friends with through the Children’s Cancer Center, their son Noah has Neuroblastoma. They opened up their home and had a wonderful cookout and pool party for Labor Day and we had so much fun. It is so tremendous to have these friendships, to be supportive and encouraging of each other in way only cancer families can be.

Please say a special pray for Justin Gaudineer. He is a Neuroblastoma child who will be going in tomorrow to have his stem cell harvest. Please pray for a safe procedure and that he handles the hospital stay well.

f.r.o.G…fully relying on God
–Anissa