The first big scans scheduled as we begin Round 4

You know those dreams where you start to wake up and you think to your dreaming self, oh not yet! Just a few minutes more? But it never works because your body is well on its way to awake? Or perhaps when you were a child and you were playing pretend happy as a clam, but your parent called you to come in for dinner? When reality encroaches on your fantasy world? That is how it feels right now watching Charlotte run and play and feel like any happy healthy child, and yet she is not a healthy little girl yet. She still has cancer and a long road ahead with a new chapter in her journey beginning this Friday. And it's a very big and important chapter.

Charlotte will begin the first disease evaluations on Friday. She will also begin round 4 of chemo. We will go for an important abdominal CT scan and also a bone marrow biopsy on Friday afternoon to measure her progress. We believe the CT scan will show much progress with regards to the size of her abdominal tumor. We are hoping it has receded away from some of her major organs. And the bone marrow results may or may not show improvement but we will find out those results within a few days of the biopsy on Friday. She will also prepare for her first MIBG scan next week which will show where active neuroblastoma is still left in her body.  As you can imagine, we are both excited and anxious for all of these results. But as Taylor put so simply like only a child can during her bedtime prayer tonight, "we are praying that we see all this medicine is helping her cancer go away". We only need to see some signs of improvement in these scans to verify, but if you have been around Charlotte recently it doesn't take scans or doctors to take notice that she is getting better. It must be working. But we are also not naive in that improvements don't guarantee victory but they are still important slices of sweetness to help celebrate our amazing girl's accomplishments so far.

Thanks for praying for the results of these big scans to show that the chemo is working this far and that this protocol she is on continues to do so. The next milestone, which is this unavoidable elephant in the room, will begin to be planned after we get the results from these scans: when will the surgery be to remove this abdominal tumor? The delicate nature of this high risk surgery is something we cannot wrap our minds around, but our hopes and prayers continue to focus on the chemo doing its part so that the surgery is a) possible and b) safer because the tumor has been killed to such a degree that it is easier to remove pieces of it within her abdomen. The magnitude of what we are praying for is overwhelming but knowing you are all right along with us in prayer, sending your light and positivity towards Charlotte is making such a difference over here. We feel you and we know it's working.