Charlotte's Journey

The timing of Charlotte’s fever yesterday was a God send. We got to pediatric sedation to begin prepping for 2 of her 3 scans early yesterday morning. She had been feeling just fine and no fever, although the night before her scans Brian and I were concerned she had contracted a virus because the palms of her hands, soles of her feet and mouth had little blisters. The top of her lip and the inside of her mouth had sores and blisters. We went in for the appointment and let them know it looks like she had an infection that appeared like this childhood virus called Hand Foot and Mouth disease. The doctors were evaluating whether we would be able to proceed as planned when vitals revealed a low grade fever. They monitored her and checked again about 15 minutes later and it was higher. Duke decided to postpone into next week.  If her fever would have begun an hour or more later, which causes elevated heart rates and potentially blood pressure issues, it may not have been as safe to seda...

We want to share every single precious detail with you all but, 😅 phew, life needs to slow down for a cotton pickin’ moment so I can write about it! Charlotte’s wish trip, starting with her Make A Wish delivery party, all the way through her wish week at Give Kids the World Resort and Disney...if you can close your eyes and picture a time where the world stood still and the ones you cherish the most are right there experiencing their happy little hearts desires, well then you would feel what it felt like on Charlottes wish trip. We cannot thank Eatern NC Make A Wish and Something MAAGIC Foundation and Give Kids the World enough for all they have done to give Charlotte and our family this precious time. She felt so cherished as did we all. I promise I WILL make the time to share this with you all as well as some of the pictures and details.. But for now, we are home from her very special wish trip and preparing for her scans and clinic this week. She will have scans (CT, MIBG, and MR...

Look who is a caterpillar y’all! (Pictures still won’t load😑, will update later) We just love the symbolism here. Charlotte had her first day of preschool today! This year, she will be in the 4s caterpillar class MWF (half days). She is taking a Wednesday afternoon dance class: Ballet/Tap/Tumble. She is playing 4 year old soccer on Saturdays. She is in Preschool. She is doing all that her little heart desires. Just look at her. I’ll keep this update short and sweet just like her (although look at the before and after picture and you can see her so much bigger in a year!) Keep those prayers coming y’all! God is so Good! Soccer! Dukes PBMT Durham Bulls Outpatient Event with pops and Mimi First day of Preschool! Our caterpillar  3s class last year vs 4s class this year

(Pictures won’t load, will update later) No one can imagine finding out your child has cancer. Then understanding its Stage IV with wide spread metastasis and that they have a 50/50 chance at beating it.  A coin toss.  So then you go through the harsh treatment and you watch your child battle what you would shoulder for them in a heartbeat. And then they do it. They make it and survive the treatment and reach the end of treatment. Their scans are clear! Your heart sings it’s praise YES!!! And you want so badly to feel this glory but you can’t feel it in its entirety because here we are again looking at a coin toss. You see, after treatment is over kids have about a 50/50 chance of relapse. Your child just went through all that treatment and now it’s a coin toss whether or not their cancer will return?! 6 rounds of chemo, surgery, 2 bone marrow/stem cell transplants, radiation, and Immunotherapy...18months of fighting and beating this disease back and yet they are NO...

I got a bee in my bonnet last week and decided the entire house is full of clutter. Brian of course silently nods because he has been telling me this for as long as I can remember. But it is just like me to walk past a pile of something for months and then one day it seems to annoy me that this pile of clutter is there and so I dive in neck deep into a massive organization and declutterization (is that a word?? It should be) project that takes over every nook and cranny and room in our house, creating a “momnado” effect that is felt far and wide. The first area of my attack: the pantry. I discarded and reorganized and cleaned the shelves, arranging items in new shelf locations, putting some things into air tight containers complete with chalk marker labels. During this “declutterazation” because I couldn’t stand the state of our pantry a moment longer and so it must be done right then and there, I found an old bag of brown rice. I remembered this bag because it moved here with us fr...

About a month before Charlotte got sick, Brian and I were at a special benefit for The Methodist Home for Children with some friends and we won a silent auction bid for a week at Grow, a local Preschool that was having a week of summer camp for preschoolers. When the time came, Charlotte couldn’t go. She was in active treatment, fighting cancer, and so we gifted it to a neighbor to go instead. This winter, we went to the same benefit and won the same silent auction item: a week of Preschool summer camp at Grow in our town of Apex NC. The owner and director of Grow, Julia, was sitting at our table and we all just beamed thinking of what it meant for Charlotte to get to do this. It’s kind of a “pinch me yes this is really happening” moment. Although she’s been battling what seems like back to back colds and even came down with an ear infection that has seemed to really hinder her hearing recently, she is soaring. She is living up this time and creating such a positive impact in the wor...

Sometimes the momentum of life makes us go full steam ahead. And sometimes that’s a very good thing. While perhaps at other times, it’s time to hold the horses. Put on the brakes. Let things “marinate”. Pause to re-evaluate. And that’s exactly what we’ve decided to do for Charlotte and her potential need for hearing aides. Something didn’t set quite right after our Audiology appointment at Duke last month. We felt like we were being “sold” to. A full page of hearing aid colors complete with sparkles or funky swirly colors were presented to us even before the actual technology or exact support Charlotte would benefit from was discussed. The entire appointment was off putting. So we felt like we were being sold a car, but we also felt something else we couldn’t quite put our finger on. We pushed that feeling aside to revisit and went about our way with beach vacation plans (which I still need to post about!!) and summer fun and then WHAM all of a sudden it was time for her follow up...