Sunday, Feb. 24, 2008

Here is the promised posting about Hannah's Cans for Cancer! There has been a lot of activity lately with her quest. We are so excited to report that to date, Hannah has raised $2,956.10! We are so thankful to everyone out there that has donated to Cans for Cancer, whether it be pennies, dollars, or dropping off bottles and cans, EVERYTHING helps! It all adds up!

Of that total amount raised, the total amount we have given in donation is $1,241.57, and the total in the fund currently is $1,714.53. Hannah has big plans for the money. We are researching purchasing Nintendo Wii's for Spaulding Rehab Hospital (where Hannah was for rehab during her proton radiation), St. Charles Hospital (where Hannah stayed after surgery for rehab therapy before radiation) and Med 4 at Schneider Children's Hospital (where all the kids with cancer stay for inpatient services.) We are especially excited about the Wii's since they are very therapeutic in that they strengthen hand/eye coordination, increase connections between the brain and body helping the brain relearn movements, and so much more. We are excited that these will be able to help kids on their road to recovery and keep them from being bored!!

I have included a log on the bar to the left under Hannah's Cans for Cancer section and will keep it updated as we progress. We have lots ideas for expanding and trying new fund raisers (thank you to Greg for your bicycle offer, we'll talk!) We look forward to keeping this moving and helping as many children as we can as they fight their courageous battles.

As for Hannah, she had a good weekend, a very nice week off of school. None of us are very excited about going back tomorrow. She went horseback riding on Saturday and was the only one in her class. It was good for her to have concentrated attention and she did great! She continues to eat so much better than before, wow what a relief! There are still many many things she won't try, or things that just don't taste right to her. We just keep trying new combinations and new foods-thank you to Anne for the great cookbook-and some of them work, although many of them bomb! She still has moments every day of nausea and stomach pain, but they are no longer the focal part of her day. She told me today that she often gets stomach aches around lunchtime, then she ate 2 grilled cheese sandwiches!

We go back to clinic this week on Thursday to have her levels checked again and she will also have an audiogram. Even though she is not on chemo, we have to monitor her hearing for quite some time. Some kids do have late term hearing loss from radiation. They tried to spare Hannah's hearing by decreasing the field of radiation slightly, but they can only do that to a very small extent so to ensure they get the entire area of the tumor so that there is no area left untreated in which new growth can occur. This was a relatively new technique used at the time Hannah had her radiation done, but her radiation oncologist was at the lead in developing this reduced field of radiation and ensured us it was the best way to go for Hannah without changing the efficacy of the radiation.

I wanted to leave you with this song from Randy Owen (who used to be the lead singer of Alabama) called Braid My Hair. Click HERE to be directed to his website and the song should start automatically. It's a great song, tough to listen to for me, but a good song. 100% of the publishing proceeds from the song go to St. Jude's Research Hospital.

I will leave you with a few pictures from our week, all such normal kid things-a pillow fight at the girl scout sleepover (which should be called the NO SLEEP sleepover), Hannah's awesome cake (she loves to bake ALL the time), and the snowmen!

xoxo Kim