Tag Archives: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Aug8

Miserable Mess

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IMG_0618“Today is the worst day of my life,” Allistaire said to my mom yesterday.

She hardly smiles.  I try and try and maybe occasionally there is a flicker.  Mostly she just lays in bed, curled on her side, flat expression or grimaces of pain.  The hurt intensifies, the moans quicken.  I glance at the heart monitor and watch her heart rate climb, climb. 150, 160, up and up.  Sleeping these days it’s in the 140s.  Sometimes it’ll dip down to 115.  A normal resting rate used to be in the 80’s or 90’s at night, about 105 in the day.  Her heart is working so hard. A flurry of intensity.

“I’m gonna throw up!!!” she screams and I tell her, “NO, NO, you mustn’t!  You HAVE to keep those meds down.  Your heart is hurting and needs these meds!”  She struggles to hold on, she pushes through and manages a few more minutes until her whole body is taken over by the anguished effort to empty her stomach.  Face contorted with neck thrown back, back arched and bottom jaw stretched as far down as it can go, mouth wide as the constriction of her stomach demands to eject its contents.  Retching is really the word for it.  Great green gushes of dark bile arch into the air and down into the basin.  Over and over her body is racked with contractions.  When at last she is spent and there seems to be nothing left, I ask her if she feels better.  “No, no, I feel worse,” she says with sad haggard voice.

I make her get up and walk.  “Even if you cry the entire time,” I tell her, “you will walk this lap around the Unit.”  She shuffles slowly along, one hand gripping Doggie and the other in mine.  Small warm.  Oh how I love her.  There are greetings as we move through the halls.  Cheers.  “You can do it Allistaire!”  Looks of love and compassion.  So many nurses and CNA’s that have loved us for so long, have watched Allistaire over the years, struggle and victory, defeat and perseverance.  “My tummy hurts,” she cries.  She whimpers and occasionally yells out on our loop, at last she collapses back in bed.

Her heart rate, oh man.  We’ve got to get this thing under control.  Her little heart is working so hard.  Her BNP (measure of heart distress) was 1,700 on Sunday.  I haven’t seen numbers like that in months and months.  Her BNP a week ago was 360 (normal is 0-90).  She had an echocardiogram and her ejection fraction has dropped from 36 two weeks ago to 22.  We are all hoping desperately that this is a temporary hit and not a long term regression.

Late on Thursday evening Allistaire and I arrived at my parents house with the plan to stay the night and get up early the next morning to pick Solveig up from camp.  I so wanted to see her little eager face, to have her tell me all about her week.  I wanted to see the transformation from the scared, nervous girl I dropped off on Sunday to the one that would be beaming with joy.  We had been in the house no more than 5 minutes when I felt Allistaire’s face as she nuzzled up against my leg, having returned from the other room ready to change her attitude.  Oh my gosh she is so warm.  The internal debate, the desperate desire to ignore what I sensed flooded me with heat but my mind sternly declared, “Take her temperature,  just do it, you must.  It doesn’t matter that you just drove all the way here and may have to turn right back around.  Focus.  Take her temperature.”  Solveig’s sweet face lingered in my mind.  I turned to Allistaire.  102.4  A fever.  Oh crap.  We’ve got to go, we’ve got to go.  Allistaire has no ANC, she has no defense.  Something is brewing in her and things can move fast.  103.5  We were out the door and back on the road, speeding through the night.  I talked to the Hem/Onc Fellow on call.  I want blood cultures and antibiotics ready for when we get there.  I talked to the ER.  I don’t want to have to wait.  I drove 70 mph the whole way, rehearsing in my mind what I’d say to the officer if I was pulled over.  Allistaire cried and cried, so sad to not see Sissy.  My jaw was clamped closed, hands gripped on the steering wheel, intent, scanning the night.  My whole heart screamed out into that darkness, “But I have TWO daughters!”

By 3:30am on Friday morning, we were at last settled into our room on the Cancer Unit.  Blood cultures had long ago been drawn and antibiotics were nearly ready to go in for the second time.  All day Friday she fought fevers.  At 13.5 hours something started to grow in the blood cultures – bacteria described as gram positive cocci and chains.  Another big gun antibiotic was added to cover more bad bugs – she was now on Flagyl, Cefepime, and Linezolid.  She has VRE (Vancomycin Resistant Enterococci) which means that if this bacterial infection was Enterococci, Vancomycin would not be enough to stop it, we need something bigger, broader.  With another day’s growth the villain would be revealed as Streptococcus Viridans.

As Saturday began her fevers waned but a new woe broke into the peace of the morning with sharp painful screams.  She was inconsolable.  What could be going on? An X-ray was ordered to look for overt blockage in her gut.  Nothing could be seen.  A CT with contrast was ordered.  For three hours I tried to get Allistaire to drink the contrast, but over and over she would throw it up.  I was desperate.  We MUST get the contrast in or the doctors can’t see what’s going on inside.  Finally, we just decided to go for it and hope for the best, a sufficient image.  Thank the Lord there was no typhlitus but there in the loops of her intestines were great black spaces, gas trapped and a gut that would not move, that had altogether stopped.  When we got back from the CT she threw up a huge amount of contrast.  I couldn’t figure out how she could throw up so much, how so much could still be in her stomach when she had been drinking it over the course of hours.  Well now we knew, for some unknown reason, Allistaire has an ileus.  There is no physical blockage but there is a mechanical one, her gut won’t move and so that gas is just stuck in there and whatever she puts into her stomach just sits there until it is forced upward.  She was immediately made NPO (Nothing Per Oral – meaning she can’t eat or drink). After much conversation and a consult with the GI docs, it was determined that she would be allowed a few occasional sips of water and to take her oral cardiac meds that cannot be converted to IV.

This ileus is a mystery.  We don’t know what has caused it.  Regardless, it is incredibly painful for Allistaire and she is now on frequent pain meds and anti-nausea meds.  Despite being NPO, her stomach continues to make acid and therefore regularly fills and requires her to retch it all up.  The GI doctors recommend her regularly curl up with her knees tucked under her stomach, her little bottom in the air, in hopes that the gas will slowly move up and out.  We now have an activity plan and walk around the unit hoping the movement will help her gut to get moving.  The next step will be to add a medication that can help wake up the gut by blocking certain receptors.  A third step would be to have a NG (Nasogastric) tube placed to suction out the contents of her stomach and giver her relief.  As you can imagine, Allistaire is terrified of this prospect. The reality is that this will simply take time to resolve, there’s really much we can do directly to solve this.

Not only does the ileus create immense pain for Allistaire which raises her heart rate but it also necessitates that she be on TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition) which is essentially getting all of your food by IV since her gut is not functioning.  Being on TPN is viewed as a “Grade 3 Toxicity,” which in turn bars Allistaire from being eligible for the T-cell trial.  While we assume the ileus will resolve and she will have no problem eventually returning to eating normally, while on TPN she is disqualified from participating in the T-cell trial.  Because this means that the possibility of getting the T-cells is firmly put on hold until her gut starts to function again, the cardiac anesthesiologist did not feel it worth the risk for her to be sedated today (Tuesday) for the planned PET/CT, brain MRI and bone marrow aspirate used to determine the state of her disease.  The fact that Allistaire is throwing up would necessitate he put in a breathing tube during the sedation so that she won’t aspirate.  A breathing tube increases the risks of the procedures and he was considering arranging an ICU backup plan.  All her procedures have been cancelled for now and will hopefully happen the beginning of next week in hopes that with more time her heart function can improve and perhaps so will the ileus, thus reducing her vomiting and that all in all sedation would be less risky at that time.

All of this is incredibly disappointing and scary.  Since Allistaire’s gut is not functioning, everything must be converted into IV form which means a ton of fluids are being pumped into Allistaire’s veins which in turn creates much more work for Allistaire’s heart.  Normally all her food and liquid and medicines would go into her gut, not at all adding work to her heart.  This is a vicious cycle.  She’s in crazy pain so we give her pain meds.  The pain meds, even the non-narcotic ones, act to keep her gut suppressed, but her pain causes higher heart rates.  Until the ileus resolves, she is taking in a ton of fluids (even though this is being tightly monitored, restricted and managed by Lasix) which is also hard on her heart.  You can’t use Lasix too much to get her to pee off fluid because her kidney’s don’t like it.  Already today her BUN is 42.  I want to throw up my hands.  Today her BNP was 2,600.  I know it is nearly doubled simply because she had a transfusion of red blood yesterday.  Man, we need her ANC to come up.  We need her marrow to recover so she doesn’t keep needing transfusion.  Everywhere I turn there are things we desperately need to look different if she’s going to have a shot at making it.

Dr. Cooper reminds me that this is exactly the sort of scenario the doctors have described to me that can happen with chemo that suppresses her counts to zero.  The only chemo that really has a shot at taking down her disease also wipes out her white blood cells which defend her against all sorts of bacteria and viruses.  To get an infection almost always means the necessity to respond with an increase in IV fluids of various types.  Her heart just limits everything that can be done.  But here’s how I see it: we know the outcome if Allistaire is not given chemo of any significant strength – her disease will progress and we won’t be able to stop it.  She will die.  The alternative is we give her chemo that may stop her disease while opening her up to awful infection possibilities but that she may be able to make it through.  One choice leads to only one end – death.  The other has the chance to work and just maybe infections won’t be the death of her.  Maybe just maybe there’ll be a way through for her.

Statistics.  Oh what deafening power they seem to possess.  Allistaire probably won’t make it.  The likelihood is that she will die.  Even from the time she was diagnosed she only had about a 60% chance.  Relapse wipes that percentage down to nearly nothing.  Almost exactly two years ago, when disease was found after transplant, the doctor told me Allistaire had a 5% chance of survival and probably wouldn’t live 6 months.  Okay.  So a 95% chance she’ll die.  But she didn’t die in those 6 months and two years later she is still here fighting.  Somebody has to be the 5% is what I declare to myself over and over.  Allistaire just may be in that 5%, who knows?  And you know what?  Statistics say Allistaire should never have begun this crazy path.  Her type of AML, M5, only constitutes 2.5% of all children diagnosed with leukemia.  Only .8 to 1.1 in a million children are diagnosed with M5 AML each year.  She is literally one in a million.  So while she may only have the slightest chance of survival, well chance, chance really has nothing to do with it.  Chance has no power.  Chance is simply an observation of what most often occurs.

I call out to the Lord over and over because I believe it is He that holds her life.  He is the one to determine her path.  It is not chance or probability or statistics that determine the outcome of this brutal road, but the Living God, my Father.  And it is a peculiar sort of wretchedness to know that the one I love, the One who declares to love me, the One who is able to sustain her life…He may not.  He may allow death to come and swallow my sweet child as He has so many other children.  On the surface this seems to be an ultimate hypocrisy, and ultimate deceit – not love but horrific cruelty, betrayal.  But He calls me to His Word – to fix my eyes on Him and to be reminded down into the core of me, that He is God, GOD!! It is His to give life and bring it to an end.  It is His to determine the course of my life, the course of Allistaire’s.  He reminds me to separate an audacious 21st Century American view that I have some sort of right to a healthy 80 years on this planet from what He declares this life to be about.  Because it is not about marking off the bullet points of beautiful childhood, rigorous college education, fulfilling meaningful successful career that gets me enough money to have a nice house and vacations for myself and my perfectly attractive, wonderful spouse and children followed by a leisurely retirement and at long last a pain-free dignified death surrounded by everyone who has loved me and honors my amazing life.  No, really God makes a much simpler claim to what this life is about.  He says this life is about coming to see that HE is the source of life, true, eternal, abundant life through the death and life of His son Jesus Christ.   And if you have come to see Jesus as the only source of life, then go, go, live your life in such a way as to draw the attention of others to see His resplendent beauty – Christ – not a path to life but Christ who IS life itself.  Christ is not my guide.  He is not my sherpa hauling water and nourishment for me as I walk through this life.  Christ Himself is the very way, He Himself is the water, the food, the healing.

So who am I to say what my life should look like?  Who am I to say how many days I ought to be allotted or what circumstances should fill them?  Over these long years the Lord has worn me down, cut here and there, gouged out, cauterised.  It has hurt.  At times it has been agonizing.  There is still much work to be done on this proud, self-sufficient, trembling heart.  But I can say, that somehow, mysteriously, I am coming more and more, millimeter by millimeter to trust Him more, to rest, truly rest in Him.  Honestly, I really don’t think Allistaire will make it out of this alive.  I am utterly confident that God can make a way through for her.  He has made a way through many times when it felt like all the walls were crashing down on us.  He can do it again.  He may and that would be glorious and oh how I would rejoice and rejoice and thank Him for all the days that He has carried her so far.

But there is a way in which I feel like I am just living out days that must come.  We cannot say we are done because she is far to alive.  As long as there is an open door before us and Allistaire still seems to have vitality, we will walk forward.  But somehow it feels that we are coming down to the end of things.  I guess the oddly beautiful thing though, is I’ve stopped caring so much about what will be.  I sipped warm foamy latte yesterday and realized that I have been going to that coffee shop and drinking that coffee all through fall into winter into spring and now summer.  Fall is coming.  I cannot begin to imagine Fall.  There is no end in sight and what I mean is, I am no longer fixing my gaze on the end.  At long last, I am coming more and more to dwell in this present.  To feel the incomprehensible soft wonder of peach fuzz along the curve of her forehead down across her little nose.  I am soaking up the sensation of her little bottom tucked up against my stomach as we lay in the bed together, my fingers running through her flaxen hair.  I rest my cheek on her cheek.  I listen intently to her voice.  With gentleness I change her diaper.  With sternness I demand she take her meds.  I live out each task and detail.  I want to fully inhabit not just these days but all the moments and actions that accumulate to eventually be gathered up into the satchel marked “day.”  I look over labs, all those little numbers painting a picture of her flesh, telling a story of the tug of war of life and death, sickness and health.  The numbers, how they have for so long knocked me off my feet, casting dark shadows over so many days.  Their power is slowly draining away.  I can control so little.  The doctors have so very little power.  We are all just doing our best, but really, it’s out of our hands.  I have not relaxed my guard over her, I will not let up in my fervor to examine every last angle, but no longer do I grip her with white knuckles desperate and crazed.  She is my sweet little love and I will do my best to care for her every moment and every day given to me.

Yesterday evening I stood looking out across Lake Union toward the beautiful Seattle skyline, the sun having already set, leaving mellow pinks blending with the last of the day’s blue.  Behind me cheerful, high energy music played and hundreds of people gathered.  Doug, the camera guy, said it best – “beauty and affliction.”  There’s just so much of that.  How strange that the thread weaving all these people together, people dancing, drinking beer and chatting – we are all bound together by sorrow, by loss.  Last night was the big Obliteride kick-off party at Gasworks Park.  I had the opportunity to stand up for a few minutes and relay a bit of Allistaire’s story and the incredible need to advance cancer research.  I dwell within just one story among thousands and thousands, millions really, of stories about how cancer has stolen away those beloved, cherished, bright.  Today I have the joy of having some fun team time with the Baldy Tops. Tomorrow we will put into action all that we have prepared for.  We will swing our legs up and over that frame, hoist ourselves onto the seat, clip into pedals and at long last flex…will our legs muscles to contract, propelling us forward, down the route.

Thank you ever so much to each of you who have given sacrificially of your own money, money you could have spent a thousand other ways, but chose to give to directly enable the furthering of cancer research.  I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again.  It all seems so abstract, science, experiments – weird stuff.  But it’s a real man like Stan Riddell who is an immunology expert at Fred Hutch.  I saw him standing on the outskirts of the party at Obliteride last night.  I introduced myself.  I looked into his eyes and told him thank you, thank you.  He went on to tell me that he is the doctor that trained Dr. Bleakley, Dr. Gardner, Dr. Jensen.  Dr. Bleakley is our amazing transplant doctor who designed the naive T-cell reducing transplant that is attempting to minimize the awful impact of GVHD as a complication of transplant; this was the transplant we had so hoped Allistaire would be able to have.  Well, you know Dr. Gardner as one of our beloved smarty pants doctors who has cared for Allistaire so long.  What you may not know is that along, with Dr. Jensen who is the lead researcher at Seattle Children’s Cancer Research specializing in pediatric cancer research, she heads up the amazing T-cell trials at Children’s for the more common type of childhood leukemia, ALL.  I met Stan’s family – his wife and two daughters.  I told them thank you for the sacrifices that they have had to make to have a father who would spend so much time at work, in the lab.  Your money goes to real people, doing real amazing work.  When we fund cancer research we are putting more tools and time into the hands of these brilliant minds who work feverishly to understand the staggering complexity of cancer.  You free them up from having to spend so much time scrambling to cobble together enough money for the next trial.  You help them design and pay for that crazy cool piece of machinery that doesn’t test 10 samples of DNA but a thousand.  You help pay for the lab assistant who will run the experiment and enter the data.  All of this enables research to happen at a greater pace, speeding up the discoveries that lead to cures.  This is where your money goes.  Perhaps it still seems abstract, like just writing a check because you love Allistaire, your heart hurts for our family and you just want to do something, anything to help.  Well, for that I sincerely thank you, but just know…know that not only do we feel loved and supported by your act of giving, but it is making a real and tangible impact, not just for Allistaire but for many children, many adults.  Perhaps one day you will be the one to benefit from advances in cancer research.

Since I began this post many days ago, Allistaire’s ANC has popped up to nearly 300.  While Friday’s echo still showed an ejection fraction of 22, her heart rates are drastically lower and nearly normal.  The cardiologists have added two more medications to try to improve her heart function – Isosorbide dinitrate and Hydralazine.  There is no resolution of the ileus yet and she remains in pain but her cheeriness has improved and she’s actually joked around a bit.  Her legs have gotten stronger again and we’ve doubled the distance of each walk.  A PET/CT, brain MRI and bone marrow are all tentatively scheduled for Monday.

For Obliteride pictures and updates check out the Obliteride Facebook page and/or the main Obliteride website.IMG_0575 IMG_0576 IMG_0580 IMG_0584 IMG_0595 IMG_0602 IMG_0606 IMG_0611 IMG_0614 IMG_0620 IMG_0625 IMG_0627 IMG_0628 IMG_0629 IMG_0639 IMG_0642 IMG_0647 IMG_0649 IMG_0652 IMG_0663 IMG_0666 IMG_0669 IMG_0671IMG_0660

 

Jul21

Lead Bellied Clouds

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IMG_0453IMG_0491The dark grey blue of cloud bellies move slowly east, sheets of rain stretching out, connecting sky to earth.  Thunder lumbers and bellows.  Rain hits hard on the roof.  A flash of lightning.  Quiet.  The storm moves on and the sky opens to blue.  To the west, to the south, the sun glints on the Spanish Peaks illuminating their vertical striations of rock and ridge, Beehive bright tucked behind.  Then shrouding of white, thin wisps of rain stranding from grey to light in the evening sun.

More thunder, cracks of power break open overhead, the darkness of more clouds heading this way.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I say to Dr. Cooper with a restrained wail in my voice, “I guess you have to just live each minute.”  There is always the before and after, a thousand points marked off, striating, separating then and now, what was, what is.  Eventually the “what will be,” becomes the “is.”  A hundred thousand test results, countless days and hours and minutes for the heart to beat hard with suffocating thud, anticipating the blade coming against your throat.  The wave rips you off your feet, dark weight pressing down on you, flailing, desperation to right yourself. Gasp of air and crashing wave grinding you down again and again.

Quiet.  Eery, odd, quiet.  Calm.  Flat face.  So this is how this goes.  This is how minutes amass to hours and days, months into years.  So this is how death comes.  This is how the thievery of your child’s bursting life gets stripped away, paint ripping in shreds from boards exposed too long in harsh weather, the slow erosion of flesh, the silent march of invasion.

Dr. Eagan, the PI (principal investigator) of the WT1 T-cell trial said Allistaire’s chloromas just amounted to too much disease to have hope that the T-cells would be successful, at least at this point.  In addition to the 6-7 chloromas in her spine, sternum and pelvis seen on the last PET/CT, four out of two hundred cells tested from her bone marrow aspirate showed Allistaire’s MLL (Multi Lineage Leukemia) mutation according to FISH (Fluorescence in situ hybridization).  The Flow Cytometry test showed 0% detectable leukemia in her marrow.  There was not even enough disease in the chloromas for corresponding masses to show up on CT.  Only about 5 years ago there would have been no detectable disease anywhere – there was no Flow Cytometry and PET scans weren’t used for leukemia.  Even a year ago Allistaire had never had a PET scan, only CTs to look for chloromas.  We would all think she was cancer free, in remission.  That was then, this is now.

Since we couldn’t move forward with the T-cells with any hope of success, the goal is to see if we can get her in a better spot.  Her heart is still far too weak to endure any intense chemo.  The accumulation of hard chemo has killed muscle cells in her heart that will never be replaced.  They are dead.  There is nothing new to replace them, only the hope that the surrounding cells can compensate for their loss.  The very weapon wielded against her cancer has cut her through, has permanently wounded her.  This is why there is no transplant on the horizon.  It is for now, off the table.  There is no plan to move forward with a transplant.

So Dr. Cooper, after much thought and consideration recommended the course of treatment that we have chosen to pursue.  She began five days of Decitabine last Friday which will be followed with three doses of Mylotarg (generic name: Gemtuzumab) on days 6, 9 and 12 of this round.  Gemtuzumab is an antibody which is bound to the chemo molecule, ozogamicin, which then binds to the CD33 antigen receptor on the cell surface of myeloid cells (which is the cell line that is cancerous in Acute Myeloid Leukemia).  Once the Gemtuzumab antibody binds to the CD33 antigen, the whole molecular complex moves inside the cell where the cytotoxic molecule, ozogamicin, kills the cell.  “Calicheamicins (of which Ozogamicin is a derivative) target DNA and cause strand scission. Calicheamicins bind with DNA in the minor groove, wherein they then undergo a reaction analogous to the Bergman cyclization to generate a diradical species. This diradical, 1,4-didehydrobenzene, then abstracts hydrogen atoms from the deoxyribose (sugar) backbone of DNA, which ultimately leads to strand scission.[6] The specificity of binding of calicheamicin to the minor groove of DNA was demonstrated by Crothers et al. (1999) to be due to the aryltetrasaccharide group of the molecule.”  I included that last bit from Wikepedia because I love the wild intricacies of our flesh.  And because I’m sick and tired of people offering me simplified cures for cancer.  Essential oils do not cure cancer. Juicing doesn’t cure cancer.  Cancer is a beast of a million, trillion heads with thousands of faces ever-changing, mutating, hiding and lunging out again to strangle the life out of you.

If you read about Gemtuzumab, you will see it has a dark past and was pulled by the FDA in 2010.  Allistaire is actually only able to get it on a compassionate use basis.  However, questions about the trial that caused alarm over its perceived toxicity and lack of efficacy, have shown that it may not have been the right move to pull it.  It has remained available in Europe and more recent trials have shown promise.  Allistaire will receive her first dose this Wednesday.  The primary concerns are immediate allergic responses like anaphylactic shock which she will be pre-meded with Benadryl and longer term concerns for her liver including VOD (Veno Occlusive Disease).

….That was Monday, today is Saturday.  In the week preceding Monday, Allistaire, Solveig, Sten and I drove east on I90 all the way home to Bozeman.  Dr. Cooper supported us going home for a visit – Allistaire’s first time home since she left in October.  Sten took the girls to clinic on Wednesday morning, July 1st so I could pack without them knowing in case labs were bad and we’d be thwarted at the last moment.  But labs were fabulous and when the girls opened the door, Allistaire asked why all the bags were packed on the floor.  “We’re going home to Montana for a visit, sweet girl.”  She was beside herself.  She couldn’t articulate her amazement and joy.  I’d say she was flabbergasted and it was the best.  I loved that joy.  After staying the night in Spokane as we have done so many, many times we continued on east through a land that all cells of my skin, eyes, hair, fingernails all sought to soak in, like dear friends with whom you have long yearned to visit – blue of Lake Coeur D’Alene, marshy grasslands before Cataldo in Idaho, my great big hill I plan to climb one day – a hill already turning yellow in summer’s heat but great and white in winter’s cloak and shocking purple in spring with billions of flowers of a name I don’t know, that curve of rock that repeats pinks and purples of setting suns, a great boulder over green water – a swimming hole I imagine diving into its cool deeps and drying out in the warmth of the rock, tumbling great rounded groupings of rock like a Flintstone landscape over Homestake Pass, the river bottom with Cottonwoods in Whitehall and up that great curve of road that will soon bring my eyes to rest on the Bridgers in the distance – the mountains that are mouth to my home, to Kelly Canyon with its aspens, Rocky Creek, Bridger Creek, magpies and coyotes, black bears and deer, scores of red-winged black birds calling their eery beautiful cry in morning and evening, pairs of sand-hill cranes who sound as if they have mistaken Montana for Africa.  There a multitude of colors of grass like waves moving in the wind over the contours of the land, punctuated by the silvery blue of sagebrush, that wondrous smell of moist coolness of night soaked up in their leaves and released like blessing.  At long last we were home, home.

Every joy paired with splitting pain.  The familiar strange smell of our house built in the 70’s.  Waking to light on the Spanish Peaks, light on leaves and flowers and the great evergreens on the hill, piercing blue of summer sky.  The feel of smooth tile underfoot as I stumble to my bathroom at night – no handicap bar just lush toilet paper.  Spying Allistaire sitting on her closet floor playing with her toys in the morning, her sweet blonde head ascending the stairs to greet the day.  Birdnest ferns and mother ferns, variegated leaves and leaves pink, leaves with purple, plump sculptural succulents and fuchsia of orchid petals, light broken in pieces of rainbow color by the prisms in the windows, the delectable breeze moving up the canyon and occasional ring of wind chimes.  Sitting down together for pancakes, four in a row along the kitchen counter.  Sending laundry down the shoot, into the wash and taking it out to the line to dry in the already hot day.  When I went into the garage I broke down.  Fishing poles and life jackets and bikes and buckets and pairs of little shovels and bug catchers and gardening gloves with childish patterns, hiking boots and a bike rack – a life once lived.  A life stalled.  A life paused.  A life cut short?  I think of going to Cliff Lake last year and my heart breaks open.  How desperate I am for the smell of campfire and the negotiation of how many marshmallows are reasonable.  I pant for Hyalite, for the simple extravagant pleasure of driving up that road and seeing water ringed by mountains, of packing coolers for picnics and the heft of a pack on my back as we ascend through the forest.  I watch the girls out the kitchen window, they head to the thicket of bushes where they made a fort last summer, the little blue bucket having finally been removed from the branch where it hung for months.  They play long with a caterpillar, lovingly making it a home to enjoy and hit jackpot when I find what I told them was a baby mouse, but I now think must have been a vole.  They carry it back and forth with gloved hands, tender in their care and wonder.

We had a wonderful week all together and time with family.  On her last evening home, we celebrated sweet Per’s third birthday.  Allistaire rode the tricycle in her yellow dress with great blooms – a french girl’s dress.  Up and down the sidewalk she went.  At last it was time to say goodnight, but not just goodnight, goodbye.  And I watched as simple hugs and goodbye’s were exchanged and suppressed the desire to cry out, to yell – “do you not realize you may never see her here again?”  Every joy sat side by side with the fear that these days would never be again, that I was witness to the lasts of many things, things simple, things mightily beautiful, treasured beyond all else I possess.  Next to the image of her yellow dress and happy face in the waning light sat deep sadness that she was alone, no one to play with, a child who has so seldomly been able to play with her peers, with really any children at all.  The older two, Solveig and Haaken, were off on their big kid adventures and Per was enamored with the little neighbor girl.  Next to the image of her that night, an image of seeming lighthearted joy, sat images of Carly’s face with tumors bulging, pressing tight and purple and shiny taut against the skin, eye distorted.  I saw Benton’s face deformed by numerous tumors that contorted his features.  I saw his face laying in a casket as I filed past, tears streaming.  I knew I had seen something that terrified me.  Something I wanted to ignore, to disregard, to cover with more plausible explanation, but I turned back to it over and over and over, examining, questioning – what do I see there?  Something seems off.  Her right eye, something is not right, something is not normal.  What is it?  What am I seeing?

Sten drove her back to Seattle on Thursday so she could begin chemo on Friday.  He came to Allistaire’s appointment with Dr. Cooper with a list of questions I had, questions with answers relayed and more questions lobbied back.  Nestled in amongst the questions of did we really know if Allistaire’s cancer expressed CD33 and how do you know how many days and on what days to give Mylotarg, was the question, do you see something off with her right eye?  Yes, ptosis, a droopy or falling eyelid, an effect on the muscles of the eye.  Sten’s voice on the phone, “He ordered an MRI.”  “Oh God, why?  What is he thinking it might be?”  Later Dr. Cooper and I talk on the phone and he was concerned.  It could be a tumor pressing on nerves in her spine or in her brain.

For days Solveig and I were alone.  Just the two of us.  Just like old times.  Times when she was my little buddy and we went everywhere, just the two of us.  How dear she was to me, how overlapped with my life.  Then I had a miscarriage, a DNC, months of trying to get pregnant again, fear of miscarriage all over again.  Sorrow, fear, acrid poisons seeping into the crevasses of my heart and mind, weighing down my finger tips and shoulders.  Sober.  A turning.  I couldn’t laugh as easily.  Other private wounds and weeping added one to the other, layers pressing down.  Desperate cries to the Lord, a turning to the Lord like never before.  My first tastes of Christ as my very life, Christ the very fuel of my cells, the brightness of my eyes, my longing, my aching need for Him and the sweet, sweet knowing of really tasting the beauty of the Lord.  Sober.  Deep expanses opening up, being broken open down into the very core of myself.  A fundamental tearing, sinews strained and snapping, bleeding out, faint.  In these four plus broken years I’ve felt too weak to love Solveig as she deserves, as I long to love her and gosh, oh man do I love that girl.  I hunger for her eyes, her giddy laugh, her brown ringlets she desperately wants straight, her skinned bruised legs from play, the magnetic irresistible draw of books, of stories for her budding mind, her unstoppable creativity, the ever request for a back rub.  I love Solveig Kailen Anderson and I have missed that girl.  I have missed so much of her life because of all this with Allistaire.  When she was only as old as Allistaire is now, we sent her to Montana to live with her grandparents while I fought alongside Allistaire in the hospital.  The first relapse meant 8 months away from home and four plus more months of constant week-long trips back to Seattle.  This relapse it’s already been 9 months with no end but the worst in sight.

For three weeks I had the joy of being with Solveig, the most time I’ve spent with her in all these nine long months.  When at last Monday came and loomed as the day I would lay down to sleep knowing something more, something of that eye, I talked with Solveig.  I attempted to prepare her for what may be coming.  Dr. Cooper called around 5:30pm.  It’s not in her brain, but there is a 2 1/2 cm mass of leukemia in her right sinus.  It has begun to erode away the bone.  The tumor, the chloroma, is putting pressure on the muscles which operate her right eye, that’s why it doesn’t look right.  Right there.  Right there smack in the middle of my little sweet girl’s face dwells an insidious tumor that threatens to take more, to distort, to ravage, to gnaw.  There is also a very small one in her left sinus.  Dr. Cooper knows of children in which the leukemia eats away the bone into the brain.  Why Lord?  Oh God please, please don’t take her this way.

With shoulders slumped I came to face Solveig, to tell her this latest revelation of the onslaught of Allistaire’s disease.  I asked her, gently pleaded, be kind to your sister.  You don’t know how many days you may have with her.  Don’t fight over toys.  Treasure her, for one day we may have no medicine left to stop her cancer.  One day we may need to bring her home to this house to lovingly surround her as she dies.  I tell Solveig that she will not be the same girl she once was.  She may not be able to walk.  Her face may be distorted with tumors.  Her eyes may not work.  Will she be able to speak?  The imaginings are so brutal.  It just ravages my heart to imagine this for her.  Oh God it hurts, it hurts so bad.  Solveig is silent and then sobs heave and tears stream.  I hold her close and grieve time lost and a possible future without her sister.  How I so loved the thought of two sisters growing up together.  Solveig by herself, just another sorrow, another gaping wound.

The thing is, I can see on the other side of these brutalities.  I can imagine a life filled with joy.  I can imagine being close to Solveig, years ahead together.  I believe that there would be a day far off in the future where losing Allistaire wouldn’t decimate every day.  But to get there, to walk the possible road ahead, oh how overwhelming, how utterly horrid.  It is like facing the blackest tunnel, believing that it will eventually open up to light, but Oh God, how far, how long?  You think, I can’t do that Lord, I just can’t bear the loss of my sweet little girl – you think this is some sort of barrier to it actually happening.  I look at her little face, with that one eye askew, having many, many times a day to face that beast that is taking her.  I love her.  My whole flesh cries out – I love her TOO much!!  I just can’t lose her.  But neither is my love sufficient to hold her.

For twelve days, I soaked up Montana.  I brought my bike and at long last made friends with it.  I actually now crave being able to get on that seat, feet clipping easily into the pedals and heading out onto the curves of my dear Kelly Canyon.  I imagine the many adventures that bike opens up to me.  Morning after morning I went out into the land with vast expanse of sky opening up overhead.  Glory.  Absolute resplendent beauty.  My sweet mother-in-law, JoMarie, so generously gave me her bike, an orange bike, a bike built for Obliteride, a bike to carry my flesh into God’s wondrous creation and a means to raise money to heal the sick.  I had a fitting done at Bangtail Bikes in Bozeman and then it really became mine – it is now aligned to my body, to my outward self, propelled by the inner.  Then Wednesday morning, as the first light shone blue behind the Bridgers, Sten took me to the airport.  We embraced hoping not to see each other before planned in August, desperately hoping some new horror would not rise up in the next few weeks.  Back to the battlefield, back to a strange life of seeming ease where I regularly drink Starbucks and sit around, but just below the surface, if you have eyes to see, is an effort of epic proportions, an unyielding fight, a straining, a grasping for life.

I returned to Seattle on Wednesday morning because Allistaire had an echocardiogram and cardiology appointment scheduled in addition to her first dose of Mylotarg.  I went straight from the airport to Ron Don to drop off my suitcase and then walked as fast as I could to the hospital to make it in time for Allistaire’s labs.  How strange to wake in my bed in Montana and so suddenly and utterly cast into a different world.  The best news of the day was that Allistaire’s heart has gotten a wee bit stronger!  Her ejection fraction rose from 29 to 36 and her shortening fraction from 16 to 21!  It felt like finally being able to breathe a bit.  But blast, just as we’re making some progress with her heart, her cancer is on a rampage, spreading in terrible places with still not much to combat it.  Later in clinic she received Tylenol and Benadryl as pre-meds for the Mylotarg.  Allistaire promptly fell asleep for the next four hours while I finally had a bit a lovely down time.  Thankfully she had no reaction to the infusion and all seemed well.

After ten hours at the hospital, we finally made it back to Ron Don and I was straight worn out, having gotten up at 2:30am Washington time.  Having slept so long, Allistaire completely missed lunch and now I had only a short bit of time to get dinner and meds in her.  On top of it, about 8:30 that night, I noticed she felt hot and the thermometer read 102.6.  Well, they were expecting this right?  This is why I was given a third dose of Tylenol to give her as instructed at 9:30pm.  The truth was I was wiped out and dreaded the fiasco of having to call the Hem/Onc Fellow to report the fever which I knew would result in being sent to the emergency room for blood cultures and possibly admission and antibiotics. Dr. Tarlock had warned me on Tuesday night that she may need to be admitted on Wednesday since her phosphorous and potassium were rising, signs of tumor lysis.  She may need to be monitored, but her labs had improved on her own and we had skated by.  But not calling in about the fever was a major failing on my part, really a huge mistake for any parent of a child with cancer.  We finally went to sleep after she threw up a wretched medicine twice – a medicine meant to bind with potassium.  I already had a laundry bin full when she had diarrhea twice as well and I had to change the sheets.  In between all the wakings that night, I continually took her temperature and watched it steadily descend to normal.  It was just because of the Mylotarg I told myself.

We were back to the hospital Thursday morning at 8am for electrolyte labs.  So here’s the deal, when chemo destroys cancer cells, the cancer cells lys – they die and break open spilling all their guts into the blood stream.  This is tumor lysis and it is detected by rising levels of potassium, phosphorous and uric acid.  It becomes dangerous when these electrolyte levels rise steeply, beyond the limits of what the kidneys can process.  Then you see the creatinine and BUN (Blood Urea Nitrogen) levels rise which indicate injury to the kidneys and the potential for kidney failure.  High levels of potassium can also cause arrhythmias of the heart.  So when Allistaire’s labs results returned this past Thursday morning, it was game on time.  Dr. Tarlock and Dr. Cooper were amazed to see overwhelming evidence of tumor lysis with all levels skyrocketing.  We were going to be admitted.  Then the plan intensified with measures being taken to have an Interventional Radiology surgeon install a second central line into Allistaire with the aid of Cardiac Anesthesia for the purpose of her beginning short-term dialysis immediately.  The goal was to respond quickly to this acute kidney damage and prevent kidney failure or long-term kidney damage by taking all of the burden off of the kidneys.  Because of Allistaire’s heart failure, her heart would not be able to endure the huge amounts of fluid that would be necessary to help the kidney’s flush out these electrolytes.  And because the kidney’s were already hurt, they could not endure the assistance of Lasix to remove the fluid.  So really, dialysis was the best option.  By 3pm we were once again in the ICU, this time in Forest level 5 room 321, exactly one floor down from where we spent 80 days in the ICU before.

In the time we waited for everything to be arranged, Dr. Tarlock consulted with cardiology about how much fluid Allistaire could handle on her own and she began receiving just 60ml an hour of saline.   To lower Uric acid levels, she was given a dose of IV Rasburicase.  She was also given Sevelamer to bind with phosphorous.  The problem is, Sevelamer can only bind with phosphorous in the gut, not in the blood stream.  Because Allistaire’s phosphorous was so high, Dr. Tarlock feared this would not be enough and we would need the aid of dialysis.  At last we were settled in our room in the ICU.  Yet when the labs drawn at 2pm came back, everything was trending in a much more positive direction due to the interventions already taken.  About ten minutes into a fascinating conversation with the Interventional Radiologist about collateral veins that a young body like Allistaire’s form when other veins are damaged, the ICU attending came in to say we were going to hold off on dialysis for now and continue to monitor labs.  It ended up being a crazy short and remarkably easy ICU stay.  Basically Allistaire just watched movies, got her meds and some IV fluids while I tried to get food in her and grumbled that I couldn’t eat in the room.  Because Allistaire was scheduled to get her second dose of Mylotarg on Saturday, we were just going to stay inpatient through Sunday with frequent labs to quickly deal with any issues if they should arise.  Friday morning we were to transition upstairs to the Cancer Unit except that they had no rooms available.  Finally on Saturday afternoon, we moved upstairs to the Cancer Unit into the radiation room – a room specially designed to give MIBG radiation to neuroblastoma patients.  It is a lead-lined room with most surfaces being stainless steel.  It’s not the most cozy room and the bed is about a foot to short due to having to accommodate the thicker lead walls.  But it meant getting the show on the road and I didn’t care.  I just wanted to get the Mylotarg in and get out of the hospital.  At long last, on Sunday afternoon we burst out of the hospital into the blaze of a 95 degree day, having completed the second dose of Mylotarg with absolutely no issues, no fevers and labs still looking great.

Yesterday, it was back to the hospital for labs and possible platelets.  I was pretty sure Allistaire would need them because of the small purple pricks of petechiae (tiny broken blood vessels) mixed in like a new wave of freckles on Allistaire’s cheeks.  A single round purple bruise adorned Allistaire’s forehead right between the eyebrows like some new-age tilak mark, in this case having bonked her head on the bar of the Target cart which she was eagerly driving when it rammed a shelf.  Sure enough, her platelets were 5 and so we spent the morning at the hospital getting her all tanked up.  Today we head back into the hospital again for labs and her third and final dose of Mylotarg.  Tomorrow, yet again, for the twelfth day in a row, we will be in the hospital for her clinic appointment with Dr. Cooper.  From there…well, we wait for her marrow to eventually recover, hope no infections get her and eventually plan to do another bone marrow biopsy and PET/CT to see how things worked.  After that?  Who knows.  If she were miraculously clear of cancer, we might be able to proceed with the infusion of modified T-cells (this is not a transplant).  If she has a partial response to the Mylotarg, it may make sense to try another round of it.  If there is no response or her disease has progressed, well, it all depends…of course we would investigate all our options for other treatment or the woeful possibility of being done.

Honestly, the next several weeks terrify me.  Obliteride is coming up – only 17 more days.  I wonder what life will look like as I ride that day.  By the way, I reduced my route to the 25 mile because I just haven’t had the time to train as needed to make the 50 mile enjoyable.  Three years ago on the afternoon before Obliteride, I was told that because Allistaire had disease after transplant, that she had a mere 5% chance at survival and probably wouldn’t even live 6 months.  I was decimated, inside and out, that day as I rode on my old mountain bike.  Last year, I physically had a hard ride, not being prepared for the 50 mile, but was propelled with determination to finish in light of all the pain and hardship Allistaire had endured.  But I rode that day with hope – having had Allistaire declared cancer-free only two months prior.  This year, who knows.  These are very scary times.  The Obliteride folks had invited Allistaire to be part of the Friday night kick-off party, but as her disease has progressed, I’ve had to say no to this, not knowing where things will stand on August 7th.

A little girl, Melissa, that I knew through friends, died of AML a week ago.  Last night, my friend Kiesha and I talked as she got back labs in Missoula.  It looks like Stevie has once again relapsed with AML and they will head back to St. Jude’s today or tomorrow.  As I was praying for her yesterday, knowing she was trying to get labs because of all of Stevie’s bruises, I put myself back in that place of waiting for news of possible relapse.  You have at long last returned to the magnificence of a “normal” life.  You gaze at your child in a way that no parent of a healthy child can fully imagine – your whole self rejoices at the smallest normalcies, ordinary becomes spectacular pleasure.  But when signs creep in that something is awry, the stinging is fierce and unrelenting.  It is like watching a black storm on the horizon, you see it coming and you know it is about to engulf your life and twist and spin and splinter you and your beloveds until at long last you are spit out on the ground, broken, with the life pummeled out of you.  It is a tsunami that sweeps you away from your life in an instant and you are put back in that place of fighting every day for life.  To just simply live is all you want.

I long for a better way.  I long for a day when cancer isn’t a ravager, a likely sentence of death.  I long, oh I ache, for a day when the way you fight cancer doesn’t cost so much life and destruction of beautiful body parts like ovaries, and hearts and brains.  I see my child.  I see the children of my friends.  A few have been released back into glorious life, but many stumble around from the horrific effects of radiation to the brain, limbs cut off, hearts faint, and some in caskets.  Cancer is the number one killer of children by disease!  I have asked many times, and I will ask again.  There are so many, many worthy places to invest your resources, your money.  But I am asking if you would consider giving it to further cancer research?  One in two men and one in three women will get cancer in their lifetimes.  You may be the one desperate for a better way, and if not you, it is almost certain that someone dear and close to you will be aching for a better way to eradicate, obliterate, cancer from their life.  Cancer is personal, it comes in close to each of us.  Will you join us in putting our resources to stopping this foe?  One hundred percent of all the money given to Obliteride directly funds cancer research at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.  Do you live in Bozeman?  Do you know that the Cancer Center at the hospital is part of the SCCA – the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance which is a collaboration of Fred Hutch, the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s?  Giving to Obliteride directly opens doors for clinical trials that you in Bozeman may need!

Thank you SO much to the over one hundred different people/couples/groups that have already given to further cancer research in my name through Obliteride!  Yesterday, you helped me surpass my goal of $15,000.  But I know there are many of you still who profess your love for us, your desire to support us in any way, who have not yet given.  Would you consider honoring Allistaire’s fight in this way?

Click HERE to donate to Obliteride and directly speed up cancer research!

The research is taunting.  It is moving at such an amazing pace, but I often fear Allistaire will just barely miss the thing that would at long last put down this beast of cancer.  You don’t want to hear it.  You think I’m crying wolf.  And oh how I long for you to be right.  I long for the Lord to once again make a way through for Allistaire.  I know, I absolutely know He is able to heal her.  I listened to the Nigerian woman tell me to pray, to fast, to believe, to test the Lord and demand He heal her as she has done for her son who is getting a transplant for Sickle Cell.  She proclaimed her faith in the Lord’s ability to heal, over and over and over.  But that seems too simple to me.  I just don’t believe in some magic equation where enough people pray or my faith is somehow the right degree of strong and then out pops what I want.  God is too big for that.  He is too vast and complex and when it comes down to it – He is just OTHER than me.  He is utterly “other’ and His ways are not my ways.  I don’t begin to know how my little life and my little child are woven into His great plans.  But the thing is, I do, I do believe they are part of the bigger picture.  I don’t believe our “littleness” equals lack of significance.  And what is the purpose of my life, of Allistaire’s?  Is it not our great joy, fraught through with pain, to direct attention, to illuminate more the beauty of the Lord?  God does not need more glory.  He is not some pathetic being needing me to build Him up.  No, WE need to see the glory of the Lord!  We humans need to see Him for who He is that WE MAY LIVE!  That is why I yield my life to the glory of the Lord – because I love, because I know my own great need to be engrafted into His life blood, that I MAY LIVE!  And not just live, but live an abundant, eternal life.  And in turn, I am honored that my life may in some small way direct attention to the radiance of Christ as the only source of life!  May I be so audacious as to link my life to Christ’s?  Is this not exactly what Christ did on an epic scale?  He suffered and He laid down His life that life might spring up from His death!  This is the “otherness” of God!  Out of Christ’s death, the ground soaked by His blood, God overcame sin and death!  He resurrected the life of Christ and in so doing made the way for redemption!  Is there anything more wondrous, more mind-blowing, more exploding with glorious beauty than this?  THIS is what I am invited into!  In my own power, this awful road with Allistaire is just suffering, is just agony, is just death. But God is at work!  He is alive and HE will take this heart of mine bleeding out as He may not remove this cup from me and He will accomplish life!

I lift my eyes to these wonders.  Sometimes I am too frail and weak to even open my eyes and I need the Lord to come down low and tenderly care for me.  I went to church with Jo in Bozeman and heard God’s word preached for the first time in a long time.  I was reminded of God’s otherness. I was reminded of the way He blasts my rational understanding to pieces and shows me a better way, the way of life.  I could hardly sing the worship songs.  I just cried.  I cried because the last time I was in that place was to honor Jens’ life and to mourn his death.  I cried looking at the man playing the drums, wishing so desperately it could still be Jens.  I cried because the words of those songs were just too much.  “There may be pain in the night, but joy comes in the morning.”  Oh Father, oh Father, how long is this night?  The joy seems ever so far off – is there even a glimmer of light on the horizon?  Words about how our life is not our own, how we give it to the Lord.  That sounds nice.  You can agree to that right?  Your life is the Lord’s.  How lovely.  You sing it out with beautiful voice.  Sobs fill my throat.  Oh God, oh God, I do yield, I do lay down at your feet, but it is agony, it is ravaging, it feels like brutality.  I cry out with Christ.  My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  But I am given light on the horizon, the smallest hint of turning, I am given hope that this night will end.  I read in God’s word beyond that black moment on the cross.  I read of resurrection, of redemption, of light unyielding.  I stake my life in the hope of God’s promises.  I have tasted of the Lord and I will not turn back.

Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.  (Psalm 139: 7-12)IMG_0391 IMG_0403 IMG_0411 IMG_0418 IMG_0428 IMG_0441 IMG_0447 IMG_0449 IMG_0450 IMG_0452 IMG_0456 IMG_0465 IMG_0468 IMG_0469 IMG_0470 IMG_0479 IMG_0480 IMG_0481 IMG_0511 IMG_0521 IMG_0524 IMG_0530 IMG_0535 IMG_0539 IMG_0541 IMG_0543 IMG_0548 IMG_0549 IMG_0551 IMG_0555 IMG_0562 IMG_0565 IMG_0574

Jun24

Wednesday…come and gone

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IMG_0340Maple frosting flakes off my scone onto the table top.  I pick up each little tidbit, placing its happy sweetness in my mouth, the sun reflecting in the warm gold of the table’s wood grain.  Even as my fingers grasp the delicate skin of sugar my mind contorts asking if it’s really a good idea to just pick something up off of a table and put it in my mouth, I mean you do realize you’re putting whatever is on that table straight into your mouth.  You don’t know what’s on that table.  You’re flirting with danger.  That’s not a good idea for Allistaire, you could get sick.  In defiance or fatigue I eat the frosting, licking my fingers.  Maybe I fixate on the warmth of my latte and this maple pecan scone because I am procrastinating setting my fingers to this keyboard.  Maybe I eat sweet decadence and feel the satisfying warmth of coffee down my throat because it feels like caring for myself, feels like the tender bandaging of wounds, of soft humming over tears.

The sun flickers through the heart-shaped leaves of the Katsura tree outside the window.  Why when I had a bit of time this afternoon after my meeting, did I head into the heart of the city and pay for parking, all to go into Anthropologie?  Am I materialistic?  Yes, yes I am and I wrestle it.  But too, Anthropologie is a feast for the eyes, groupings of color and pattern, of plant life, wood and ceramic.  There is a restfulness and cheeriness too to that beauty.  It is the closest thing to walking into my house.  Oh how I just long, long, with aching yearning to be home, to dwell in a place that is my own, that feels safe, that is familiar, that is of my own making, that is not intruded upon, that is not dictated by others.  I long for ordinary common life of grocery shopping and making dinners in anticipation of seeing Sten driving down the driveway, coming home, calling in the girls from the adventures in the yard, of looking out my kitchen window at the Spanish Peaks, of cows grazing in the meadow below, of aspen leaves flickering in the sunlight of June afternoon.  Rare is the occasion that I allow myself to even conjure these images, the tears just flow, the sorrow lancing out of me leaving me even more worn.  So I go to Anthropologie walking in the midst of beauty of someone else’s expression of creativity, trying somehow to satisfy that craving to create, to put my hand to craft, that desire that has no outlet.

I circle my computer, giving it wide berth.  It sits silent in my bag but demands that I attend to this blog, this accounting of Allistaire’s flesh, of my heart, of this ragged road I trudge, my feet tripping over stones, fatigue weighing down my legs, pressing my face flat.  Sometimes I want to yell back, “What have I to say?  What?!”  For when I sit to write, really I am calling out again, not just at night as tears slip hot down my cheeks, not just during the day as I plead for patience, for wisdom, for grace with Allistaire as I battle her over food, over taking meds, I am calling out to the Lord.  What do you have to say oh God?  What answer do you give to my weeping, my raging, my flat silence, the groaning of my spirit, the trembling of self exhausted?  I need more Lord!  I need new!  And sometimes it just seems like silence and I yell all the more and I cry out, do you hear me?!!!  And I question if He’s really there.  And I consider whether or not all my beliefs amount to nothing more that wild speech and desperate absurd hoping.  This query ever turns to smile in the midst of my tears.  Look at the beetle in all its wild extravagance of color, pattern and fanciful design.  Does not the beetle reflect in Technicolor the glory of the Lord?  The feather, the leaf, the shell, the flower, the seed…oh do they not all answer back with endless hallelujah that the Lord IS GOD?!!!!

So I yield, I bow, No, I fall flat before Him again.  I tell Him, I worship You, I really do fall down in adoration of You, because Your beauty…it just stops me in my tracks, it stuns me, it shuts my mouth and I cry because You are too much, too gorgeous, too resplendent.  But God, but God, do you see me?  Do you see me here, with my face on the ground, my heart tearing from sorrow.  Do you not see how broken I am, how spent, how undone, how torn and shattered, how desperately weary?  What do You have to say to me?  Be not only a majestic God, far off, above with eternal plans.  Oh Lord, my sweet God, hear my cry, come down, come down low, come down to this dirty ground with me, meet me in my desolation.  Can I ask such a thing of God?  God of creation?  God of eternity?  The Ancient of Days?  The first and the last, the beginning and end, the alpha and the omega?  But I do, I do!  Come Lord I plead, incline Your ear to me, bend low and look into my fearful eyes.  Oh Lord I need to hear your voice, I need to see your face, I am faint and need to hear your voice.  Don’t I love you as much for your condescension, for your coming down as for you greatness, you vastness and infinitude incomprehensible to me?  Perhaps more, perhaps more.  Perhaps it is that You, God of the Universe, creator of all things, sustainer of the universe, You who holds the elements together, don’t I love you most that such a God as You would see me, this vapor, this flower that fades, that you would love me, that you would care for me, isn’t this what makes my heart sing of your name, because of your tender love, your gentle hand.  Oh Father how I need you.

But I tell You how You must show up.  Don’t You see my sorrow?  Don’t You see this expanse of eight long months fighting this relentless battle, separated from Sten, from Solveig, from home, from family and friends?  This battle doesn’t let up and I need more, you see Lord!  And I despise what feels like silence and I do not want to accept that what feels like a slow smile on Your face.  My 21st Century Western-American self wants the next version.  I want the upgrade.  I need the upgrade.  Yeah, that was good Lord but now I need more!  Thanks for that old comfort, that admonishment of long gone days but I’m looking for a new word, to hear your voice provide me something that meets me now!  Silence.  Silence that feels like abandonment.  Silence that feels cold and uncaring.  Silence.

He speaks, speaks in His silence.  His silence tells me, my child, I have already given you all that you need.  I have already provided for you in abundance.  “Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.”  Well thanks a lot for that Lord.  What good is that old trite, worn out saying?  How is that going to help me here, now?  “Eat the manna.”  Hmmmm.  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Same ole same ole.

But He’s right.  I can pass over those old commands, those words as familiar as the curve of my nose.  So common they’re hardly visible.  I can disregard His truths because I’ve heard them before but I am fool to do so.  The Lord is telling me, I have already given you instruction on how to live these brutal days.  When I scoff and belittle His words, I lose.  I’m left floundering.  Panting and worn out.  Brittle.  Exhausted.  I weary of who I am.  Where is the water to satisfy, to cause flourishing?  I want to be the tree planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in season, even in wilderness.  Why deprive myself?  Why leave the path of the Lord?  Because it has become ordinary?  Because I weary of perseverance?  He draws me back.  He woos.  Entreating me, inviting me to once again rest, rest.  Will I worry about tomorrow?  Or will I worship Him as the God He is – will I entrust all my days to Him.  Oh my flesh flails and rages, wild with the desire for control, to be the one who decides, because I only see my tiny finite view and I bellow with cries for what I want.  A child in a tantrum.  The Lord asks me to look up, to lift my eyes, to take His hand and rest, allow Him to lead.  Will I consent to the simplicity of living this day, this hour, this very moment to its fullest?  My weak flesh stomps its foot and declares, “But I’m just tired of having to do that.  I want to be done with this hard stuff.  I’m ready to satiate my desires.  I want the good life now, here.”  Do I really believe what I say I believe?  Is this life what the Lord says is true or is it what my flesh proclaims is most important, significant, essential?

I shake my head, clamp my eyes and open again.  Baffled, I think, shouldn’t I be fine with all this by now?  Shouldn’t this be normal?  Shouldn’t I have figured out how to live this life after so long a road?  I circle back, wandering in weary heart from the Lord and then I circle back.  Over and over again, I return to Him.

It was a spectacular sunny Saturday morning.  Allistaire, with glee on her face, climbed the stairs and sped down the slide over and over.  The air was alive, bright, crisp blue skies.  We have to go Sweets, I tell her, we have to go now.  Her shoulders slump and her smile turns downward, feet grazing the ground.  I try to make the best of it but inside I grumble that we have to leave this lovely life, this world on the outside, and go sit in the hospital for hours to get a blood transfusion.  I sit in the darkened little clinic room scanning Facebook when I come upon a post about a 14-year-old girl, Ahmie, whose mom is praying for her quick and quiet death as tumors fill her body.  Awareness floods my body, heat, suffocating.  This girl has cancer, she’s been being treated here at Seattle Children’s and she is dying.  Likely today she will die and her mom will never hear her voice again nor see bright joy in her eyes.  I turn away from Allistaire to hide the tears that overwhelm me.  Hot, tight, hard to catch my breath.  And I scramble, where is that verse, where is it?  I must read it now.  What does it say exactly?  All I can think is “LORD GOD!  Do you see this?  Do you see what’s happening here?”  My flesh fails, it groans, it groans.  All I can think is, “The whole creation groans,” waiting for the Lord to return, waiting for the redemption of all things.  And I have to be thankful that my girl is merely lying on a hospital bed on a beautiful Saturday getting blood.  Things could be so different.  What an agonizing prayer that mother is praying.  What a horrid thing to have to ask the Lord for.

I find the verse.  I read the verses just before and after, and then, well I have to read that whole chapter.  Romans 8.  Wow.  I sit stunned.  I’ve read it before, so many times before, but wow, wow.   The little boat of our life had drifted and Romans 8 was like a great tether, binding us back into His truth, connecting all the maddening details of our days, lassoing, binding, weaving ourselves and our lives into the magnificent abundance of who HE is and what He proclaims this life to be about.  I circle back.  I’m invited to rest.  He  extends His arm, His hand and asks me to trust Him, that He is in control, in a glorious way that is beyond my imagining.  His finger points, directing my gaze to the manna, the sustenance, the nutrients of this day, this hour, this moment.  He reminds me that I am not alone, though I feel my whole world in a tenuous shatter, a terrifying vulnerability of completely unraveling.  I am bound into Him, by Christ, by His Spirit.  So do not mistake the simplicity, the familiarity of His instruction as something common place, as weakness, as insufficient, as elementary and unsophisticated.  Romans 8.  Wow.  If I had one piece of paper to read the rest of my life it might be that chapter.

As I write, Allistaire’s eyelids flutter, and there is a distance in her gaze as she goes under, as her consciousness wanes.  I laid her down on that narrow bed, the one that will slide into that great whirring circle of the mysterious machine, the one that will produce an image with brightness where there is increased metabolic activity, cancer.  Then a CT image will be overlapped to reveal any masses present, a complete picture of her disease outside of her marrow.  Still sedated, they’ll wheel her down the hall where Dahlia, the nurse practitioner, will plunge the great needle into  her right hip once again, for the 21st time, to pull back a sample of her marrow.  That wee vial will then make its way to the pathologist who will peer down at cells smeared on a slide, looking for evidence of flesh gone awry, of a creation broken, of cells groaning for redemption.  The pathologist at Fred Hutch will then send more cells from the sample, joined to radioactive isotopes, speeding past a laser – each struck with light causing an electron to be disrupted, its fall documented by a wave-length of light.  A scatter plot forms and zooms in the search for even the most remote evidence of leukemia.  By the end of today I should know the results of the PET/CT, tomorrow will yield morphology results and either by the end of Thursday or Friday we will know results from Flow Cytometry.

I feel chased by two wild hounds, snarling, rabid.  I grip Allistaire’s hand and we keep running, running, trying to outrun their ferocious intent to take her down.  Cancer on one side and heart failure on the other.  Her BNP was rising, all the way to 820 last Saturday and her ejection fraction was dropping, down to 26 a week and a half ago.  I knew this bone marrow and PET/CT would soon reveal the state of her disease and decisions would need to be made.  What would our options be?  Was her heart starting to slip backwards?  In April her ejection fraction was 38 and her BNP got as low as 231 (0-99 is the normal range).  Her ANC last week was down to 54.  What would her marrow do, how would it recover?  Her cells for the WT1 trial will be ready as early as July 22nd.  More chemo?  If there’s anything more than 1% cancer in her marrow, the modified t-cells are unlikely to succeed at stopping the progression of her disease.  What then?  More chemo?  Well, it would need to be more hard-core than Azacitidine if Aza hasn’t kept it at bay.  But what, what chemo can her weak heart handle?  Even if there is a chemo that is not directly hard on her heart, a more intense chemo will suppress her blood counts longer, more severely, leaving the door wide for infection, for a sweeping torrent that could once again overwhelm her heart, this time for good, no turning back.  But what option have we?  If there is much disease at all, we must do something!  We must take the risk.  Because if we don’t, we know the outcome.  We know the outcome.  We find ourselves stepping closer and closer to an edge.  I think of Ahmie and her mom’s agonizing prayer.  I shudder.  I pray.  I call out to the Lord.  But you see, He has not promised to save her. He has not promised some number of years in this life that we think we have a right to – there is no allotment promised.  I shudder.  I pray.  I pray.

Do not worry about tomorrow.  Trust me for tomorrow.  I will provide for all your needs.  Eat the manna before you.  Love her today.  Live your today to the fullest.  Live into what I proclaim this life to be about. Because it is not about granite countertops and painting the house a color you like.  It is not about traveling to that amazing country.  It is not about finally losing that awful belly fat that wiggles like a jellyfish.  It is not about having a job and a pay check that makes me feel good about myself and gets me what I want.  It is not about my comfort.  It is not about the hundred thousand things my flesh says I need and the world clammers to echo back endlessly.  Romans 8.  Wow.  The way of the Lord is so, so contrary to how I want to live my life.  His words are hard words.  I want to turn from them because they are hard, hard.  Oh Lord, don’t you see I’m weary?  Can’t you just let up for a while?  Can’t you just let me live my own life for a little while?  Can’t I just hunker down here and indulge?  Lift your eyes.  Lift your eyes!

So I lift my eyes.  I look for the manna.  I seek to love today.  I ask the Lord to help me walk in His Spirit today.  I yield tomorrow to Him.  I call my friend, my older sister in Christ.  I confess my sin.  I ask for the Lord’s convicting.  I ask Him to transform my heart, to love like He says love is.  Forgive.  Don’t keep a record of wrongs.  Don’t let the sun go down on my anger.  Believe the best.  I seek times and ways to worship, to fellowship, to not make the mistake of trying to walk this hard road alone, without the surrounding of His people.  I keep my eyes and heart alert.  I’ve dreamt of Jens.  Both times he gives me no answers.  He is just alive.  Alive.  Jens is alive.  He smiles at me in my dreams, his big sweet closed mouthed Jensie smile.  And I smile.  Jens is alive.  Though my flesh, it be destroyed, yet with my eyes, I shall see God.  I shall see God.  Oh Father, Father, hold my fainting heart.  My heart, my flesh it groans for You, for Your return, for Your redemption of all these woes.

It’s a few hours later.  Allistaire was still recovering in the PACU from sedation from her bone marrow and PET/CT.  It was minutes before 5pm.  I eventually got through to Dr. Cooper.  Ugh.  So wretched.  Six or seven spots of cancer bright on the PET scan – too small yet to show up on CT, but there, there and some in awful places you just can’t radiate – her spine, her sternum, her left humorous, her pelvis.  I couldn’t keep track of them all, the words blurring in my ears, my heart growing faint, heat up my neck, my legs weak.  “Can I see the scan?  I need to see the image.”  Sweet Olwen, the PACU nurse, wheeled us upstairs to the Hem/Onc clinic, Allistaire still too wobbly to walk and I clutching her in my arms, cheek against the extravagant softness of her fine beautiful hair, destined to be gorgeous and curly by the looks of how it’s coming back in.  Oh God.  Oh God.  Have mercy.  An out-of-body experience.  Looking on from afar.  So this is how this goes.  This is how kids die from cancer.  This is how the story dwindles and fades and wears thin until there’s nothing left.  “But I don’t know how to be done,” I quietly wail to Dr. Cooper, the tears in his eyes because he too has a five-year old child.  Dr. Gardner thinks it would be crazy to give her high-dose chemo with her heart so weak, so bound to fail if an infection comes.  So this is how you die of cancer.  I remember asking Lysen, our nurse, long ago, over three years ago, “explain to me, I don’t understand, how exactly does cancer kill you?  What actually happens?”  I watch our path from afar and I fear I know where it is headed and my whole flesh just simply falls, fails, quietly crashes.  She is too alive. Too alive.  How?  How do you stop the fight?  We’re not there yet, I know.  We need the bone marrow results.  We need to know how much is in there before we really no what options she has.  Go down in flames?  Go quietly?  What a brutal wretched quandary.  I despise, revile it all!  Oh God!  Oh God!

Incline your ear to me Oh Lord, hear the faint beating of my heart, my haggard breaths, the silent heaving of my chest.  Be merciful.  Of Father, Father, come down low, meet me here in this dark hole.  Hold my hand, bind me to you.  I put my hope in your holding of tomorrow.  Show me the manna in this day, direct my vision to your sustaining.  Hear my cry oh Lord.  Be gracious.  See our broken family, each of us ravaged in this trial.  Come Lord, come down to us.

Romans 8 New International Version (NIV)

Life Through the Spirit
8 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you[a] free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh,[b] God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.[c] And so he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

5 Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6 The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. 7 The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8 Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.

9 You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. 10 But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life[d] because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of[e] his Spirit who lives in you.

12 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. 13 For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.

14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship.[f] And by him we cry, “Abba,[g] Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

Present Suffering and Future Glory
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that[h] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[i] have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

More Than Conquerors
31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”[j]
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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Jun3

Consent

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IMG_3193There is a woman on the other side of the earth who has offered up her life to my child TWICE!!!! Allistaire’s bone marrow donor from June 2013 has once again made it possible for Allistaire to have another chance at life!  The unrelated bone marrow donor search coordinator just called to say that consent has come through from Allistaire’s donor to use the remaining stored cells, from her original donation, to be used in the WT1 genetically modified T-Cell trial!  I am in awe and mind-blowing crazy thankfulness for her generosity and compassion!  Thank you Thank you Thank you woman out there who I long to one day thank in person!!!!!!

It will take a few days to coordinate the paperwork and begin the cell processing.  The cells should be ready in about 6 weeks but must be given in coordination with Allistaire’s chemo schedule.  There are certain thresholds for count recovery (recovery of her blood counts/marrow) written into the protocol that must be met before she can receive the T-cells.  It would be ideal if the T-cells could be ready at just the right time to be given to Allistaire once she’s sufficiently recovered her counts so that the cells do not have to be frozen and kept until she’s ready.  We want MAX viability of those cells!  We want them as agro and hard-core as possible!  But it’s all a guessing game.  Today marks two weeks from the beginning of this chemo cycle.  Last time it took 9 weeks from the beginning of one round of chemo to sufficient count recovery to begin the next round of chemo.  Of course we can’t predict what her body will do this time.  It could take longer, it could recover quicker.  But if they began the cell processing in the next several days, we would be right at about 9 weeks from the beginning of this current round of chemo when the cells could be ready – it could work out beautifully.  I’d really like to avoid yet another round of chemo.

I am overjoyed!  Thank you Father above!  Thank you for overcoming what seemed an impossibility!!! You can read about the wonders of Allistaire’s transplant and this woman’s generosity from two years ago HERE.

Also, if this blows your mind that this woman has been able to offer life to Allistaire TWICE and you think – WOW! that’s so cool!  Guess what?  You too can give this gift to another person!  Go to Be The Match and sign up for free to be on the registry to be a bone marrow donor.  Sten has actually been called and he is the backup person for someone who needs a donor – if the prime person selected falls through for some reason, Sten is going to have the opportunity to donate his marrow!  What a glorious gift to offer your life to another person, a stranger!  It is just so seriously beautiful!!!IMG_2932IMG_2974 IMG_3267 IMG_2954

May31

Jail Break

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IMG_3589I used to think I was safe, that wild animals, the beasts, the possibility of having my flesh torn off of bones, lay up there, out there, far off in dark mountainous woods.  I thought it would be easy to simply steer clear of such terrors.  As though somehow my own willing of my footsteps could keep me from entering their realm, that by hope, optimism, some silly assumption of impenetrability, it would not be so hard to keep those ravages at bay.  I walked in a sunlit land, blithely believing, perhaps not even believing but never even thinking that they might tear down the hillside at terrifying speeds, absolutely bent on destruction.  They do not see a heart full of hopes, of dreams, of ideas, of lists of yearnings, eyes bright.  Their horrible feet carry them, saliva flinging back behind as their daggers flash, crazed eyes.

Flood waters tearing homes in half, separating husband and wife with children.  Father of Solveig’s classmate, life cut short from heart attack.  Jens on a mountainside.  Nine year old girls sold into slavery by Isis.  Kassidae home from yet another T-cell trial that utterly failed to stop her cancer.

What is it like to have no more options?  How can I fathom a journey where suddenly the road simply ends.  No destination reached, just a faint trail blending into nothing, melding into the landscape.  And then what?  And then what?  Where does one go from there?

I see a small child standing alone in an open space.  Nothing in their hands.  No clothes.  No defense.  Utterly vulnerable.  I stand and watch, unable to move, unable to raise my hand to stop what I know will come, what is coming.

The child shivers, confusion in their eyes.  And then you sense it, before even sound reaches your ears.  Some sort of terrible rushing, some silent invisible foe rushing through the forest.  At last it breaks through the trees, snarling, feet hardly touching the ground as it bolts for your child, savage mouth wide.  And do you turn away?  Can you stand to watch the beast tear into your child’s flesh?  Dare you know the moment their life is extinguished?  How much will be ripped and torn before their eyes go limp and lifeless?

I heard these words in a beautiful song, a song meant to comfort, a lullaby.

“Quiet your heart
It’s just a dream
Go back to sleep

I’ll be right here
I’ll stay awake as long as you need me
To slay all the dragons
And keep out the monsters
I’m watching over you

My love is a light
Driving away all of your fear
So don’t be afraid
Remember I made a promise to keep you safe

You’ll have your own battles to fight
When you are older
You’ll find yourself frozen inside
But always remember

If you feel alone
Facing the giants
And you don’t know
What to do

My love is a light
Driving away all of your fear
So don’t be afraid
Remember I made a promise to keep you safe”

My heart was breaking as I listened to these words.  Hot silent tears slid down as I drove, facing forward, intent on the task of getting there.  “You’ll have your own battles to fight when you’re older.”  But no, no, Allistaire did not get to be older before she had her own battles to fight.  She was just 21 months old when her battle against this ravaging beast first came, intent on taking her life.

“Mommy, I like that part, ‘you feel alone, facing the giants, and you don’t know what to do.”  Her soft sweet voice came to me from the back seat.  Of all the words in all the songs, these are the one’s she speaks out loud, repeats back to me, the words that most resonated with her little girl heart.

You think, unconsciously believe, that as a parent you can protect your child, that somehow, by force of will you can magically keep them from harm.  Surely there is nothing more core to being a parent, to being a mother, than protecting the life of your child.

But my love, oh my love, so fierce, stuffed full with all my might and zeal, my hope…it is powerless to protect against some enemies.  I never made that promise to keep her safe, I just assumed it would be true.  Of course she will be safe.  Of course I can wrap her up in a hug and overcome any giant.

No.  There may come a time where there are no options left and I will hear the rushing of wind through branches as that beast comes tearing through the forest, breaks out into the opening and sinks its wretched brutal teeth into the one I love, this time sparing nothing.  I may be left with my heart bleeding out in the open space, tattered, wounded, ravaged child in my lap, never again to see her bright eyes, never again to hear the most beloved sound on the whole earth, her laugh, her voice full of wonder.

But I know this.  She will not stand alone.  If such a time comes, I will stand with her, hand gripped in mine and I will face that beast with her.  I will not turn away and I will not leave her, and that may be all that I can do.  My eyes will weep until my own flesh is laid to rest.

To Shannon, to Kate, to Susan, to Becca, to Rachel, to Julie, to Beth, to Devon, to you many more mothers who have walked this road, who stood with your hand gripping your child’s as that beast came to devour, my heart weeps with yours and oh how I desperately long for a better day.

For those of you who know that Allistaire was discharged from the hospital almost two weeks ago, these words must come as a surprise.  What you see on the surface is so far from the full story. People constantly comment, “She looks great!”  They ask, “How is she doing?”  How do I answer that question?  On Monday at the playground, after having climbed up the slide twice in a row, Allistaire suddenly said she didn’t feel well, she was panicked and in pain but couldn’t explain what was really happening.  There was terror in her eyes.  I cradled her and hoped she would calm down. Maybe she just overexerted herself a little.  She cried out in anguish, “Mommy,” over and over, yet I could not understand the source of her pain or her fear.  I asked my five-year old daughter, “Do I need to take you to the hospital?” as though she could answer this question.  Was she overreacting?  What was she feeling?  She threw up in the bathroom.  Well, she was on day 6 of chemo and this was the first time she threw up, so really not concerning in itself.  Of course nausea can be a sign of heart failure too. I scan through all I know in my head, assessing her energy, her sleep patterns, her appetite, food consumption.  Could it be her heart?  She continued to freak out after throwing up and we left the bathroom.  “Mommy, can I feel the sand?”  I took off her sandals and gently sat her feet down in the sand at Golden Gardens.  Immediately she calmed.  Immediately she was fine.  What was real?  What is true?  How much of that was based on something of significance?  How much is her just working herself up?  I dreaded having to relay this incident to the cardiologists.  It’s a lovely day at the park, but just below the surface are constant swirling realities that threaten to steal it all away.

In the first days of being out of the hospital, Allistaire and I gorged on our sudden freedom, on sunlight and bird song and starlight and bright moon, on playgrounds and sleeping without interruption, on hours of daytime without nurses and doctors and hospital food trays.  Solveig and JoMarie arrived last Wednesday evening and my heart swelled with the joy of their laughter and heads clustered together in play.  Everyday playgrounds, picnics and beaches, throwing rocks into water and sun glinting off lapping waves.  Caterpillars on fingers and squealing.  My faced beamed with delight, with wonder at simple ordinary life.  How much more wondrous it is than people realize!

You think that leaving the hospital is some signal of victory, of progress, of normalcy.  And so it may be, often is, though not always.  We left on May 18th, not having accomplished what we came to do.  In some ways the girl who left the hospital was worse off then the girl who came to Seattle back in October.  The great victory was that she successfully weaned off Milrinone.  A huge accomplishment which has made way for a few options, far more than none.  But her heart is far too weak to endure a standard transplant for AML which includes TBI (Total Body Irradiation).  So we left the confines of this hospital after 130 straight days, her only moments outside were the 30 seconds here and there strapped onto an ambulance stretcher as she was transported to and from The University of Washington for radiation.  We went straight to the playground.

For 11 of the past 12 days since she was discharged, Allistaire has been to the hospital for a variety of appointments.  On Tuesday the 19th she finished focal radiation to her left leg where one new chloroma (solid leukemia) showed up on her last PET/CT scan.  On Wednesday she saw Dr. Todd Cooper, her new primary oncologist.  Dr. Gardner is pregnant with twin girls and so we are making the transition to having Dr. Cooper, who is the newly hired head of the leukemia department and an AML expert.  He is the doctor that Dr. Pollard had hoped would come to Seattle Children’s.  He has been tasked with developing a High-Risk Leukemia program for Seattle Children’s.  So when Dr. Gardner asked who I’d like to have as Allistaire’s new primary oncologist, it was a no-brainer to ask for Dr. Cooper, a kind man from Atlanta who is a super smarty pants AML doc.  In our first outpatient visit with him, he relayed that Dr. Pollard had called him about Allistaire to make sure he was up to speed with all the details of her medical history.  I cannot tell you how amazingly cared for I feel here at Seattle Children’s.  We are blessed beyond words by the team that journey’s with us.  After seeing Dr. Cooper, Allistaire began seven days of Azacitadine, the same chemo she got last time.

Prior to leaving the hospital, I met with Dr. Gardner and Dr. Marie Bleakley, the transplant doctor we’ve worked with at several significant points.  It was really great to have them both present for the conversation.  Dr. Gardner began with explaining her reasoning for waiting so long for Allistaire to begin chemo again.  I had grown frightened with the incredible amount of time since her last round of chemo, knowing the immense need to keep her in remission and being aware that she was a month beyond the traditional time of starting a new round.  Dr. Gardner stressed that because Allistaire’s marrow has been so incredibly slow to recover, her greatest immediate risk is that of an infection that one: she wouldn’t have the white blood cell defenses to fight and two: that could overwhelm her heart.  So finally, nine weeks after the beginning of the previous round of Azacitidine, Allistaire would begin another round.  She also stated again that given Allistaire’s heart, TBI, known to have long-term consequences to the heart, was not in her best interest at this time.  Dr. Bleakley went on to describe a “midi-transplant” which has much lower levels of radiation (4 centigray as opposed to 12 in TBI) and heavy-duty myeloablative chemotherapy, and a “mini-transplant” with even lower levels of radiation (2 centigray) and non-myeloablative chemotherapy but high-dose steroids.  I’ll forego going into the details of how each of these work and the pros and cons, but suffice it to say, the mini-transplant is not a good option as it is intended to extend life in the old who cannot endure hard-core conditioning.  It is unlikely to provide a cure and has a lot of potential for GVHD (Graft Versus Host Disease).  So while the “midi-transplant” is an option for Allistaire, with a gleam in her eye, Dr. Bleakley had a different proposal.

I left the room with hope.  With fear yes, always there is fear, we walk ever into black, into unknown.  But with hope, with a bit of upturned grin.  Dr. Bleakley has proposed that Allistaire’s best option is to participate in the WT1 trial.  This is a trial through Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research and uses genetically modified T-cells which have a specially designed receptor to bind to the WT1 protein found on 90% of leukemia patients cancer cells.  Normally a bone marrow test would be done to confirm expression of the WT1 protein in the cancer cells, because if it is not present, the receptor is useless.  However, because Allistaire has not had any detectable disease in her marrow since she relapsed in October, they decided to proceed without this info for now.  At the end of this round of chemo, she will have another bone marrow test performed and if there is disease, they can then test for the WT1 protein.

So far 17 people have participated in this trial.  Of the people who were in remission going into a bone marrow transplant and remained in remission leading up to getting the modified T-cells, 100% have remained in remission for over a year that they have been followed so far, this in light of a normally high relapse rate post-transplant.  There are two people who relapsed after transplant and then got back into remission and then received the modified T-cells.  This is the arm of the protocol that Allistaire would fall into.  I believe I was told these people are also remaining in remission. The remaining group relapsed after transplant and did not get back into remission and despite having the T-cells are not doing well or have already died.  It seems the T-cells work best when there is little to no detectable disease.  We will know the state of Allistaire’s disease after we get results from her next set of tests around June 16th.  How I pray she remains in remission, but she has been receiving very mild chemo and has gone great lengths of time with little to no defense.

What makes Allistaire unique in this trial, is that, should she be able to get these TCR T-cells, she will be the very first child to do so.  I will have to ask again if this is being done anywhere else, but she is certainly the first child ever to have this sort of therapy here (Seattle Children’s/Fred Hutch).  There are many kids with ALL (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia) who have by now received modified T-cell therapy.  But the targets are quite different.  In Lymphoblastic leukemia, the cancer is in the B-cell line and CAR (Chimeric Antigen Receptor) therapy is used to destroy the cancer and in doing so, it forever destroys the patients’ B-cell line, requiring life-long transfusions of Immunoglobulin.  The first child ever to receive this therapy was a little girl named Emma in April 2012 at CHOP (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia).  She has remained in complete remission since then.  Seattle Children’s Research along with the Ben Towne Foundation has provided this therapy to a growing number of children with great success.  People are coming from around the world for this treatment.  A month ago I met a woman named Solveig from Germany who was here with her son, Nicolas, who was getting CAR-19 T-cell therapy.  Allistaire’s cancer (Acute Myeloid Leukemia) is found on the myeloid line – cells that you cannot forever destroy and rely on transfusions for, cells like red blood cells, platelets and granulocytes.  Thus the scientists have needed to find another way to attack these cells.

The folks at Fred Hutch have been incredible.  I am amazed, honored and humbled by their passionate desire to make a way for Allistaire to participate in this trial.  Through conversations with Dr. Bleakley, Dr. Dan Egan (the principal investigator on the trial) and Dr. Phil Greenberg (the head of the lab who has designed this therapy), it is so abundantly evident that they see Allistaire as an individual and they see her as the child that represents the children who are also in desperate need of this therapy, children who have run out of options, children “destined to die of their disease.”  They have re-written the protocol to accommodate her, to make way for future children.  The original weight requirement was 30kg because of the numerous blood draws required for testing.  They worked it out to reduce the limit to 15kg, Allistaire was 17kg at the time they made this change.  Additionally, because this weight change equals treating much younger patients, they went through a lengthy, involved process to set up approval to give this therapy at Seattle Children’s.  Up to this point, the youngest patients have been in their teens and were treated at The University of Washington where adults are treated.  They have worked hard to make a way through for my girl.

On Sunday evening, May 17th, I was delightfully honored to be invited by Julie Guillot to the Premier Chef’s Dinner, a fundraiser for Fred Hutch.  As I have mentioned before, Julie and her husband, Jeff, lost their son Zach to a complication of his third transplant for AML.  At that time they were helping fund the research that would create T-cells that would give Zach another measure of defense against AML.  When Zach died in February 2014, Julie’s zeal and wild fiery passion to bring an end to AML and better treatment options, only intensified.  When Allistaire relapsed in October 2014, she invited Allistaire and I to a little party for Dr. Greenberg’s lab to celebrate the $1.7 million dollars Julie and Jeff had helped raise for his research thus far.  It was at that time I first met Dr. Greenberg in person and introduced he and his lab staff to Allistaire.  Jeff and Julie were the challenge fundraisers for the fundraiser on May 17, 2015, having pledged to match up to $400,000 of money raised that evening.  In making this commitment, they were given the privilege to direct where the funds would go.  Their whole motivation was to see the immunotherapy through Dr. Greenberg’s lab flourish and accelerate.  By the end of the amazing evening, $1,280,000 was raised to accelerate targeted cellular immunotherapy research at Fred Hutch.   I had the joy of standing up and representing the hopeful first child to benefit from his research.  Dr. Greenberg spoke to me on two different occasions during the evening, each time with multiple hugs initiated by him.  You could see the eager joy and hope in his eyes.  It was a wondrous thing to stand alongside a man who has dedicated several decades of his life to this research, generous donors, a fellow cancer mom who lost her son – for whom this therapy is coming too late, and I, the mom of a child who is desperate now and who needs this treatment immediately.  The full circle was there – scientist, patients, donors.

Doors are opening but still the tension remains high-pitched.  There is the illusion of normalcy, there is light-hearted laughter on the surface, but there is a mighty undercurrent, ever threatening to pull Allistaire down, deep into the suffocating dark.  First financial approval for the trial was required which was confirmed by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana this Wednesday.  This allowed the Unrelated Donor Search Committee to initiate their part which is to request Allistaire’s original donor to be contacted and for a request for consent to use remaining donated cells for this trial.  At this point, unlike the CAR t-cell trials, the WT1 trial must use bone marrow transplant donor cells.  While Allistaire is not in a position to get a transplant at this time, she thankfully does have cells stored at Fred Hutch from her original donor from her transplant in June 2013.  Extra cells are stored for two years at no charge and then you have the option to pay to have them stored.  This June 18th, will mark two years.  I pray this woman can be found quickly, quickly and that her heart will be moved again to give, this time solely of her consent.  It feels sort of terrifying to know that Allistaire’s one shot is dependent on a woman on the other side of the world, but then again, she gave once in a much greater way, we so hope she will help make a way through for Allistaire again.  If we can gain her consent, processing of the cells will begin and takes approximately a month and a half.  Speed is of essence.  The T-cell therapy much be coordinated with Allistaire’s chemo schedule.  It is my great hope that there may be a way for Allistaire to get these cells prior to needing to begin another round of chemo.

This therapy could be Allistaire’s cure.  That would be BEYOND AMAZING!!!!  And if not a cure, we pray the T-cells will buy her more time, time for her heart to heal, time for her heart to gain strength to enter the next battle of a second transplant.  What’s so wild to me is that Allistaire would be inpatient for ONE day for this therapy.  ONE DAY!!!!  And this T-cell therapy does not result in the intense cytokine storm response as it does in the CAR T-cell therapy which puts most kids in the ICU for some period of time.  No one in the WT1 trial has had to go to the ICU.  In fact, Dr. Gardner told me that Allistaire would not be able be eligible for the CAR t-cell therapy because of the extreme dangers it can pose.  For the WT1 trial, they would ask her to stick around for a few weeks for some blood draws and observation and then remaining blood tests could be done at home and simply mailed over to Fred Hutch.  It all seems too good to be true.  What a wondrous world it will be when this is the way cancer treatment is conducted.  Can you even imagine?!  I must highly, highly recommend the documentary, “The Emperor of All Maladies,” by Ken Burns!  It is based on the book of the same name which is also extremely fascinating and worth reading.  It is simply thrilling to see how far cancer research and treatment has come and the heightened hope that immunotherapy will change the course of how cancer impacts our lives – for one in every two men and one in every three women who will get cancer at least once in their lives.

I am weary, so utterly weary.  But what choice do we have but to walk on?  And we do.  We walk forward, giving thanks for so much blessing.  Sometimes it feels like there being a way through for her is an utter impossibility, but then I am reminded of how many “impossibilities” have come to pass, how the insurmountable has been overcome.  My yearning for her life is like a burning fever that never lets up.  Every moment is on high-alert, racing through the myriad of questions to try to determine how she is doing, to assess what is going on for her.  There are now so many interwoven layers of medical complexity and reality.  There is cancer, there is heart failure, there are medications (13 different ones every day – 26 doses), there is being deconditioned by months lived in the cramped confines of the hospital.  I see her on the play ground and I watch kids younger than her charge a hill or climb with confidence.  She tires quickly, she is fearful.  Her legs hurt.  Is it cancer on the move?  Is it lack of blood getting to muscles?  Is it simple fatigue brought on my muscles that have not been asked to do much in so, so long?  Is she nauseous?  Is it from chemo?  Is it from the magnesium she must take because her Lasix makes her waste it, magnesium that causes tumultuous abdominal cramping?  All her pain signals are mixed up so that she just finds herself in a frenzy of discomfort, in a frightful maze desperate to get out but with no clear direction.

Leaving the hospital balloons the craving for normal, it makes you think you should be normal, all the standards shift and you see your child not as one among the many other sick kids but among the normal.  At the same moment that I am delighting in the warm day and Allistaire playing in the sand, going back to the lake shore to fill her bucket again, I am aware of the dangers in that sand, in that water.  I’ve put parafilm on the end of her tubies and tucked them tight into her swim suit.  She wears her sun hat and is lathered in sunscreen.  Her medications make her more sensitive to the sun, more likely to burn.  I’d like to avoid skin cancer.  She doesn’t know what to do when the other little girl approaches silently to play with her and share her toys.  She is fearful and defensive.  My heart sighs knowing how little interaction she’s had with other children, how to navigate such situations.  In her cardiology appointment the great nurse, Jason, calls her precocious.  Yes, yes, she seems to be quite articulate for a five-year old.  There are ways that her deficits are glaring and there are odd ways that she has walked so much further in life than the vast majority of five-year olds.  What I know is that I love her dearly, I long to keep her safe, to see her have long life.

I pray to God, I seek to be reminded, imbedded in the truth of His infiniteness.  I ask Him to remember that I am finite.  I ask Christ to pray for me as He prayed for Peter, that my faith would not fail (Luke 22:31-32).  I ask Him to help me to lift my eyes, to take in the long view, to help me in this brutal moment, these series of endless days, in this tedious fight against cancer, in this relentless tumult to see His face throughout all these circumstances.  We go to the playground.  We look for the first stars at night, our necks craning back.  Alllistaire points eagerly at the moon, not framed in the hospital window, but in the vast expanse of the evening sky.  We listen for birds and bend our noses to flowers.  Our feet follow little paths through marsh land and cat tails, spider webs bright in the afternoon sun.  We live, we delight.  We go to the hospital again and again into little rooms with blood pressure cuffs and vials of blood that tell of the world within which eyes cannot see.  We walk forward through this intertwined life, messy, unclear, wondrous, of such enormous precious value.  We give thanks to the Lord and ask for more.IMG_3470 IMG_3483 IMG_3588 IMG_3591 IMG_3597 FullSizeRender-6
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Help The Hutch 2015-355-(ZF-8131-68186-1-002) Help The Hutch 2015-486-(ZF-8131-68186-1-001)

Lyrics above are from J.J. Heller’s song, “Keep You Safe.”

Feb27

Bewilder

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IMG_2817Bewilder.  Is that the right word?  I startle to find myself out in these woods, not sure where I am, sometime between night and coming day, or is the day done and night approaching?  I am out here, cast in the land between lands, this already and not yet, ever tension.  But she is so alive?!  “So to summarize,” I say when there is nothing left to say, “You don’t believe she will make it?”  All heads nod.

I didn’t want to cry.  I didn’t want to have my heart tearing out of me be seen as with audience by these eight.  I fought the tears knowing the all consuming fatigue they bring, all the cells of my flesh flattened under crushing weight, silent and unrelenting.  I studied the tree tops beyond those panes of glass, never seeing them.  “Her heart could suddenly stop.  She could have an arrhythmia.”  Gutteral cry, “Oh God.”  It was not hard for the images of doctors swarming her to come vivid.  Throughout the day and night the speaker in the hallway, the speaker in the room declares, “Rapid Response Team, Code Blue,” always joined with the location.  “Code Blue Ocean 8 in front of the lab.”  “Code Blue River 5 room 307.”  I have seen the flood of doctors and nurses responding like blood gushing a wound.  Instantly I can hear the words, “Code Blue Forest 6 room 321,” and this time it would be my sweet girl.  I know if it came to this it would be the end.  While they might be able to bring her temporarily back, there would ultimately be no return, no recovery.  But yes, yes, yes try to bring her back because I want to gather those who have so cherished her.  I want that time to surround her with faces who hold her dear.  I want that chance to say good-bye one last time.  I want to blow her kisses.  I looked into the cornflower blue of her eyes and mourned that the one beautiful thing I clearly gave her might be lost.

Dr. Kemna, the cardiologist does not think there is a very good chance she will be able to recover the degree of heart function necessary to qualify for transplant, that far off ejection fraction of forty-five, if she can recover at all.  At some point in the future, they will try to wean her off the Milrinone.  Her ability to successfully wean off Milrinone or not will be an indicator of the likelihood that her heart can recover some function.  So while Milrinone does nothing to help the heart recover, whether or not it is needed to function well in terms of things like breathing and profusion to the rest of her body, will signal how severely her heart has been wounded or the possibility of resilience.  If she is unable to go off Milrinone, it may be possible to move her up to the cancer unit, or even possibly to Ronald McDonald House, but these moves would solely be to maximize quality time with her.  It would foretell the end.  If she can successfully wean off Milrinone she would continue on oral heart meds and consistent monitoring to see if there is any improvement in her heart function.

All efforts to improve her heart function is dependent on the resource of time.  It will take time.  The question is whether or not her cancer will allow such time.  As noted before, we are working off the assumption that she is in remission given that she started this round in remission in her marrow.  The extremely poor condition of her heart continues to make sedation unnecessarily risky.  The PET/CT scan can physically be given without sedation, it is just a matter of whether or not Allistaire can stay still enough for the 45 ish minutes it would take to do the scan and get a good image.  She can certainly lay still for the very brief 30 seconds a CT requires and so we may start with that.  Dr. Gardner said the down side of CT is that it can show lesions that are actually healing rather than solely active leukemia, with no ability to tell the difference on the image.  The advantage of the PET scan is that it shows the active metabolic cancer.  Thankfully, a PET scan carries no risk as it is not a form of radiation and so the worst that could happen is that we try it and it doesn’t yield a clear image because Allistaire doesn’t stay still enough.  For now a bone marrow biopsy is not an option, but they will be drawing peripheral blood upon which the pathologist will conduct Flow Cytometry.  While it will not be conclusive, it will be comforting if there is no leukemia present which would in turn more affirm the view that she is in remission.

Without any further treatment, Dr. Gardner says Allistaire only has about a 10% chance of staying in remission.  I can’t imagine doing nothing further.  So once her ANC reaches 1,000 she will begin getting Azacitidine.  Today her ANC is 348.  Neither Clofarabine or Decitabine are options because they suppress blood counts too much.  At this point, any further bacterial or viral infection for Allistaire could easily and immediately tip her heart over the edge.  She has no reserve.  The hope is that Azacitidine will be enough and have the same success it did in the seven rounds she had after her bone marrow transplant.  Another upside is that it can be given outpatient.  If she still has chloromas, the solid leukemia seen on PET/CT, there is the possibility of doing focal radiation which would likely be very effective.  However, radiation is given under sedation for someone as young as Allistaire.  You must lay completely still in the exact position they place you in.  Radiation is incredibly precisely targeted.  A styrofoam form was created to lay Allistaire in the last time she had radiation and three permanent little dots were tattooed on her body in order to line everything up with the rigorous calculations done in preparation.  Allistaire would be left totally alone in that room with the foot thick lead door.  I really don’t know if she could do it.  If Allistaire is not in remission, every single thing changes.  If she is not in remission, she is done, done.  There is nothing left to offer her because anything that has the potential to get her back in remission would be far too harsh for her body to endure.

One other possible option, which like transplant, requires substantial improvement of heart function is the WT1 trial with the modified TCRs being conducted by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. (Click HERE for details on this trial)  This trial requires that Allistaire’s ejection fraction be 35 or higher.  Typically the cell manipulation is done with donor cells left from a stem cell transplant, however, in Allistaire’s case they could ask the donor to donate cells directly for this trial.  The scientists would engineer the donor’s T-cells to specifically target the WT1 protein expressed on the surface of her leukemia cells and in turn destroy the cancer cell.  Check out more about TCRs (T-Cell Receptors) at Juno Therapeutics some of whose scientific founders include Dr. Phil Greenberg at Fred Hutch and Dr. Mike Jenson at the Seattle Children’s Ben Town Research Center.

The other topic that was discussed was the potential use of VADs.  The other day when I logged onto the Seattle Children’s Hospital Family Network, their website popped up and the main page was featuring the expertise at Seattle Children’s and extensive availability of a variety of VADs – Ventricular Assist Devices.  My face lit up with possibility and terror at such a possibility, such an extreme measure.  It said that VADs can be used for patients with heart failure to allow their hearts to rest and recover.  I immediately tracked down the cardiologists and said I wanted to discuss a VAD as a possible option for Allistaire.  Apparently Dr. Gardner had the same idea and discussed it with the cardiologists before our care conference which occurred yesterday afternoon.  The short of it is that a VAD is not an option for Allistaire.  You cannot go through a bone marrow transplant with a VAD.  The context in which they are successfully used in the short-term is for patients whose heart has an acute hit, from a virus for example, but was previously healthy.  The VAD can indeed give their heart the rest it needs to recover and the relative health of their heart can also recover from the actual damage done by implanting the VAD.  In Allistaire’s case her heart is exhibiting the cumulative effect of all the harsh chemo she has endured.  It has been compensating a very long time and likely cannot bounce back.  A VAD in her case would only be possible as a bridge to heart transplant, which as one with cancer, she is not eligible for.  The thought of a heart transplant is insane to me, insane.  But I won’t deny that if she were in this plight on the other side of her bone marrow transplant, I would not let up, we would walk forward to the transplantation of her most core organ.  The cardiologist noted that in cases of chemotherapy induced cardiomyopathy, it doesn’t usually show up for another 10-20 years.  That sounds like a long time.  But really, Allistaire would still only be 15 to 25 years old with a heart that has failed.

It is uniquely woeful that the very treatment that has extended Allistaire’s life these past three plus years is what has so damaged her heart.  Yesterday the cardiologists wanted an X-ray of her lungs to look for edema.  They put the little lead heart on her groin again and it was like a knife twisting in me.  In the care conference I found myself internally crying out, “You’ve already taken so much from her, so much…now this too, this?!”  I’ve already yielded her ovaries.  I’ve already acquiesced to the reality that TBI (total body irradiation) would impact her cognitive abilities.  I know her growth and bones have already been harmed.  She has already lost so many days as a child, and now her heart too will be gouged out?  It is like cutting off someone’s leg and saying, be happy, you still have one leg.  And then, oh wait, we must cut off that other leg and an arm.  Limbless, you are thankful to be alive.  But you have been harmed you see?  You have been ravaged.  The exchange for your life has cost so very much.  But it turns out you cannot live without your heart.

I asked Dr. Brogan, our main ICU doctor, if he had any wisdom he could offer, having witnessed so many families over the years walk this road.  “I don’t know how to do this,” my voice bleak.  “No one knows how to do this,” he told me.  It is not natural that a child should die before their parent.  While it happens often enough, it is not the natural order.  He was very gracious toward us.  I am so very glad to have him on our team, and like Dr. Gardner, I have invited him and asked him to speak to us honestly if and when he believes we have exhausted our options.  Dr. Gardner told Sten and I yesterday at the end of the care conference when it was just the three of us, that she thinks of Allistaire every single day.  That is all I could possibly ask for.  I just need to know that she is being fought for, that she is not being given up.  And if they believe the time has come, let them speak and at last we can yield, at last we will rest from our relentless pursuit of her life.

For now, we press on.  It is not yet time to lay down and rest.  We press on, we endure.  We put our face to the wind and cry out in anguish and fierce determination.  There may be a way through, there may.  There are so many mysteries of how our God works, of his sovereignty and the intertwining of our prayers.  I am humbled, brought low, so low with gratitude for thousands who cry out to the Lord on Allistaire’s behalf, on ours.  Thank you.  Thank you my brothers and thank you my sisters, bound eternally by the blood of our sweet savior Jesus Christ.  Thank you for sharing our burden.  Thank you for standing out in the wild night under that sweep of stars, that dense shimmer and gauze of Milky Way and crying out for the Living God of the Universe to hear your one small voice!  For we are calling out to you Oh GOD!  We do not understand your ways.  What you are doing is here is so unclear, it seems so dreadfully wrong.  How will you ever, ever redeem this loss?

I find myself again standing with the blaze of roaring furnace behind me declaring that I know my God is able to save, but even if He does not, I will not bow to any other god.  I will stand in worship, though the fire consume me.  Am I fool?  Many will nod, yes.  But you see, I have seen the Lord.  I have heard His voice.  I choose to turn my face to Him.  I will again fix my eyes on Him.  I will yield again to His call to trust though the mountains fall into the sea, for the joy set before me.  For the joy that will come, but the joy too that is, that is in this present time.  I seek to be fully present to these minutes, these gritty seconds that accumulate to the sum of minutes, hours and days.  I instruct Allistaire to consider her tone with the nurses when she is irritated with their presence.  It is not about manners, it is about love, love.  I seek to love.  I seek to love Allistaire.  I seek to love Sten and Solveig.  I seek to love each nurse, doctor and person that I encounter.  For this is my life, to love the Lord my God and to love His creation that bears His image.

Thank you to so many that have given generously to further cancer research.  Thank you for your heartbreak over Allistaire’s broken heart and a yearning that there could be a better way.  If you would like to stand with us in funding cancer research so cures for cancer can be obtained without costing so much life, please consider supporting me in Obliteride which gives directly to cancer research at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Also, my dear friend and fellow cancer-fighting mom, Pam, has organized a time to call out together to God on behalf of Allistaire.  The details can be found HERE on Facebook.  The time is set for next Friday morning, March 6th, Allistaire’s 5th birthday.  Please do not send any birthday gifts.  The truth is, she has enough in the way of toys and such.  If you wish to honor her life and the hope for more life, again I ask you to consider taking that desire and investing it in cancer research, and certainly, please pray for my girl.  Prayer is not some magic equation where enough prayers by enough people yields the desired result.  Philippians 4:6-7 says much to instruct us:

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”IMG_2804 IMG_2809 IMG_2824 IMG_2822 IMG_2813 IMG_2802

 

Feb22

Wait and See

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IMG_2792Strange how you can have expectations, just ideas you’ve grabbed from where?  Thresholds and time frames constructed of air, of nothingness, no structure to sustain them and yet, they hold power, they help you to endure or enforce the heavy feeling of defeat.  Somehow in my mind, when Allistaire first moved to the ICU, I thought, oh, we’ll be here for several days, maybe a week.  Upon what basis did I come up with those numbers?  Out of thin vacant air.  Today marks her 37th day in the PICU.  Today we begin our 6th week.  I remember a friend telling me they were in the PICU for two months.  “How in the world do you do that, survive that?” I wondered.

But here we are, now with no end in sight.  Last Tuesday, 2/17, we were scheduled to be transferred to the  BMT (Bone Marrow Transplant) team.  We were supposed to be at Ron Don with a few weeks of testing to complete before conditioning for transplant was to begin.  It stings to move past those dates, knowing transplant, well, who knows if and when transplant will come.  In my mind I had counted it out and we were going to be home by the end of June and then we lost July with the idea of pushing back transplant another month to give her heart time to heal.  The reality is sinking into me that she may never get to transplant, or at the best, it could be far off.  A summer gone.  The doctors tell me we must be patient, and wait and see, that it is often best to be patient.  Patience, yes, I know something of patience.  But while I’m seeking to be patient, leukemia cells will divide and multiply totally irrespective of our best laid plans.  While I’m here with Allistaire cloistered away in the hospital, Solveig’s life goes on and I will have missed nearly an entire year her schooling, this added on to the many other months of her life from which I have been absent.  To sum it up, I just feel sad these days, a deep pool of sadness ever below.

After 48 hours of being off of Milrinone early last week, the cardiologists decided to put her back on it.  Her heart rate and respirations trended up slightly and there was the issue of nausea to consider.  They hoped the Milrinone would allow them to titrate up her Carvedilol and deal with these symptoms.  While her heart rate and respiration have dropped slightly, her BNP which was 4800 last Monday, trended down only as low as 3400 and is 4600 as of today.  I feel disheartened.  Yesterday they decided to put her on Digoxin, another heart med.  Digoxin is an older med that like Milrinone, can help with symptoms of heart failure but does not necessarily help the heart to heal.  The idea is that by carefully monitoring the blood levels of Digoxin and adjusting the dose as necessary (Digoxin can be toxic at higher levels), they can address her symptoms of heart failure in the scenario of a future weaning of Milrinone.  They will continue to have to monitor closely her potassium levels as a number of her meds can impact potassium levels.  Adverse effects and toxicity of Digoxin are more common when potassium levels are low, “since digoxin normally competes with K+ ions for the same binding site on the Na+/K+ ATPase Pump.”  Her Lasix draws off potassium which they replace in her TPN (IV nutrition).  On the other hand, she also takes Spironolactone which, “often increases serum potassium levels.”  It is amazing the delicate balance of electrolytes that allow our body to function properly and thus the need for careful monitoring by the doctors.  Blood pressure must also be monitored closely given that a number of these heart meds reduce blood pressure.  Yesterday, they held her Enalapril for one dose and then decided to gone back down a little on her Carvedilol given her blood pressures over night were a little low. Too low of a blood pressure will prevent her from being able to take the heart meds she so desperately needs.

Tomorrow she will get another echo.  I don’t feel very optimistic.  The BNP hasn’t gone down really.  We’ll see.  She did not get her BMA (Bone Marrow Aspirate) done last week for two reasons.  It was originally planned for Tuesday solely based on protocol.  If there are no blood counts by Day +35 of the round of chemo, they go in and take a sample of the bone marrow to see what’s going on.  As it happened, her ANC (absolute neutrophil count) finally started coming up last Sunday so the BMA was automatically pushed back until her ANC reached 200 which is the standard time frame with the idea that at that point there are enough cells to look at to make a determination of how her body and cancer is recovering.  However, while her ANC has reached 200, they are still choosing to hold off on both the BMA and the PET/CT because both require sedation.  At this point, her severe heart failure makes anesthesia more risky.  Any sedation would be done in the OR (versus the room or clinic procedure room) and require a special cardiac anesthesia team.  Because it is not necessary that her BMA or PET/CT take place right now, they will hold off until her heart recovers more or it becomes imperative to see what her leukemia is doing.

Coinciding with the rise of Allistaire’s ANC, she has had increased pain in her belly.  Once her ANC hit 200, the doctors decided to stop the three antibiotics she’s been on for the past five weeks.  I was a little hesitant to do so without a CT to be sure that her typhlitus hadn’t worsened.  So Friday afternoon she had the task of drinking four ounces of apple juice mixed with contrast.  After nearly 45 minutes of effort she threw up about half of what she had slowly sipped down.  The nurse re-loaded her cup and she finally got in the minimally required amount.  The results of the CT were mixed.  “There is minimal residual wall thickening involving the sigmoid colon.  The rectal wall thickening has nearly completely resolved.  New from prior, the cecum is decompressed and there are areas of mild cecal wall thickening.  There is a slight interval increase in degree of surrounding fat stranding.  The remaining gastrointestinal tract shows normal course and caliber without evidence of obstruction or focal inflammatory changes.”  So overall, she continues to heal and now that her marrow is producing cells, hopefully, the healing will soon be complete.  But because there is some additional locations that indicate typhlitus, they are putting her back on one of her antibiotics, Meropenem, for now.  Not surprisingly, but sadly, her lungs and liver show evidence of her heart failure, “Interval increase in size of small right pleural effusion with bibasilar subsegmental atelectasis and likely superimposed mild interstitial pulmonary edema.  These findings, in conjunction with apparent vascular congestion of the liver may be related to a degree of heart failure.”

The thought that Allistaire’s heart must improve sufficiently to hit that benchmark of an Ejection Fraction of 45 within two months has felt so daunting.  I was relieved to run into Dr. Gardner in Starbucks one morning and hear that she has been brain storming Allistaire’s situation.  My face immediately lights up when she says things like that – I love and am honored that she constantly holds Allistaire in her thoughts even when she is not physically near.  I love that she too is so passionate about finding a way through for her.  We are both assuming her marrow remains in remission.  So she proposes we put her on Azacitadine given that it worked before.  (Allistaire did 7 month-long rounds of Azacitadine when disease was found post transplant and it put her back into remission and kept her there.)  I wondered about possibly using Decitabine since it’s a little more hard-core than Aza.  We do still have her chloromas (solid leukemia) to consider.  She said she would consult the other AML docs.  She also mentioned Clofarabine as an option.  The conditioning chemo for Allistaire’s last transplant was Clofarabine combined with Busulfan.  Busulfan is definitely not an option but Clofarabine could be combined with Cytarabine.  All three of these chemo options are easy on the heart and have shown in the past to be effective against Allistaire’s cancer.  Wahoo!!!  I love options!  After Allistaire’s first round of chemo from this relapse, which put her into remission, I really did not think we would be in the position of being desperate for transplant.  But it seems that we are here again, desperate for transplant, a terror that may just bring her healing.

I called our financial counselor here at the hospital to see what Allistaire’s bill is.  I couldn’t help myself, knowing all that has transpired over this last month.  I told someone the other day I thought Allistaire was on at least 15 meds, so I asked the nurse to print me off her med sheet: twenty-five different meds each day, most of which are given 2-3 times per day.  Since she was admitted on January 9th for this round of chemo and the following PICU stay, her bill is $1.1 million dollars.  Her room alone is $12,700 per night and each GCSF shot costs $1,040 which she got each day for 33 days.  This puts her total bill since diagnosis well over 5 million dollars.  Isn’t that staggering?!  Isn’t it crazy that one round of chemo with ONE infection has cost $1.1 million?!  What if that money could be put toward cancer research?  What if we could invest millions of dollars upfront to find better, more effective ways of curing cancer?  What if we didn’t have to poison the body, destroying the heart and suppressing the marrow so far that the body is left without defense from even the most common attacks?  We cannot take the money that has been invested in sustaining Allistaire’s life, nor the money that will continue to be spent and give it instead to cancer research.  Such an exchange is not possible.  But the need for money put up front toward cancer research is so clearly desperately necessary!

Many, many of you have asked me how you can help.  You have felt powerless to do anything to help Allistaire.  Giving to cancer research may not feel like directly helping Allistaire but it is!  First, it is a tangible way that you can show your love and support for Allistaire and our family on this journey.  It is tangible.  I see your name when you give and I feel blessed that you would stand by my side in this fight, that you would cry out in anguish for more!  Will you stand beside me?  Will you give?  And you know what?  We don’t know how long Allistaire has, but she has lived long enough since her diagnosis to not only be witness to, but be directly effected by new developments in cancer research!  Cancer research in the last two years is literally what has provided this combination of chemos that has put stamped down HER cancer and put HER into remission!  This is not some ambiguous, indirect, vague blessing.  Cancer research is precisely what provided her last transplant which has given her life the past two years.  You say you want to help.  Your heart is heavy with grief for us.  You wring your hands wondering what you can possibly do.  GIVE!  Support cancer research at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center!  It’s not hard, it’s not complicated.  Give.  Please.

Click HERE to support me in this year’s Obliteride where I will once again have the joy, the sorrow and the honor to tangibly fight this foe that seeks to tear away the life of Allistaire and many others, so beloved.IMG_2791 IMG_2790

Feb12

Stagger, Tremble

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IMG_2751We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.  (2 Corinthians 4:8-9)

Hard pressed.  Perplexed.  Struck down.  The weight of sorrow presses so heavy on my brow.  Sensations so familiar, so brutally common.  How many times have I looked out the windows at this scene, the sky, these clouds ever in motion, wondering, desperate for a way through.  I have never had a stalker, never been abused.  But I taste the mineral tang of terror reinforced again and again, blood on the tongue.  The framework of my days is forced to contort yet again to fit these new truths, these numbers that rip and snare.  My heart exposed from tearing flesh.  Assault, violence, silent snuffing out with dark weighty force.  I weary circling round and round with this foe.  Oh hard pressed, gravity compressing my chest into the ground, threatening, suffocating, no relief.  Relentless.  I catch a breath and am forced down again.

This morning I saw it, that golden light skipping, glinting, light gleeful on current and blue so blue.  Green of trees and of grasses, bending like wave, accepting, receiving contortions not offered but forced by wind, yet mild and soothing in the acceptance.  That bend in the river approaching Ellensburg, I anticipate, I am eager for that curve and strain to catch sight of it.  Scene after beloved scene framed by car window, speeding by, brief but so known, so loved and familiar.  Great hill covered in snow, in extravagant purple drapery of flower, the color of candle warmth in autumn, I know thee beloved rise of land.  And I yearn for you.  My whole being angles forward in desire, attraction.  Without thinking, with gut response, I swoon as I see us flying over asphalt, east, east, oh home, dear home.

I will myself to turn, to be present, here, now, in this place.  Day by day I must walk.  Another day with numbers that do not change.  A BNP that rises here and bobs briefly down, never nearly low enough.  Every day the same, the same, the same, “no data,” the labs read.  “No data.”  There is nothing, not a single white blood cell in 28 days.  No sign of marrow stirring.  Silence. Absence.  Cavern empty.  And yet, she has changed.  That girl thrust so violently under dark water, held down as she struggled and flailed and at last went limp and silent, she is rising, rising.  Light returning to her eyes, giggle to her mouth and wiggle, joy, willingness to interact.  Allistaire Kieron Anderson is emerging from this ragged fray, this assault.  I gaze at her as light in perfect streams enters through window and passes over her face, illuminating a surface of perfect softness, multitudes of tiny blonde hairs.  Peach fuzz.  Irresistable to the touch, the softest soft, made more beautiful by sensational curves of cheek, perfect little nose and round landscape of chin.  She plays and talks and wants me to see what she’s done, what she’s created.  I swoon and am drawn in, her irresistible pull of delight.  I adore her, my whole being arches forward, captured by the beauty of her sweet spirit.  I cherish her.

Heart failure.  Like deep thunderous, violent thud of sledge-hammer, the words pound with brute force, threatening to explode my ribcage.  Heart failure.  I tell Dr. Hakens how I hate to hear those words.  “Well, you can’t sugarcoat failure.”  Another blow.  Monday’s echo was devastating.  The door to transplant slammed closed.  Her ejection fraction was 29 and shortening fraction 12.  The wind knocked out of me and suffocating flee, flailing to grasp some bar of hope, some explanation that in its concreteness demonstrates finiteness and thus capacity for domination.  What must be do to stop this torrent of loss, I wail?  Are we doing all we can?  We push through, we push, we walk forward.  There must be a way, there must.  This cannot be it.  Oh don’t let this be it.  How can we accept defeat.  How can we just let this bright force slowly fizzle and die?  All we have known for three years is FIGHT!  How now can we surrender; raise the white flag and say enough?  Death as end point has always, ever been there – stark on the horizon.  A black silhouette impossible to disregard, impossible not to recognize.  But my visions of that last great battle have always been a fight to the last breath, a fight with every last weapon, where if death comes, it comes because at long last we are deplete of weaponry and cancer has won.  But agony, swamping sorrow to still have great weapons to wield and yet, simply no strength left, mere collapse.  This image wounds in a uniquely awful way.  I breaks my heart a fresh.

We have devised a two-part plan.  With the direction of Dr. Hong, our cardiologist, her cardiac medications are being aggressively adjusted.  She needs to be on Enalapril, a drug she has taken the past two years but has been off of the last mouth because it must be taken by mouth, not having been an option due to her typhlitis.  Apparently, Milrinone, the heart med she has been on, doesn’t work in such a way as to enable the heart to rebuild function.  It is more of a stabilizer and optimizes blood profusion.  This has been essential with the great fluid load of her infection and need for healing of her gut.  In order to begin taking Enalapril, the team of doctors decided to push up the timing on her CT which ended up happening late Monday evening.  Thankfully the results of the CT were great and indicated “almost complete resolution of typhlitis,” and only “minimal residual thickening of the bowel wall.”  Thus Tuesday morning began with her first dose of Enalapril at half the max dose.  That night her Milrione was weaned down from .47 to .3.  Yesterday, her Enalapril was increased to its max dose and Milrinone turned down to .25.  The goal is to also add on Carvedilol today and Spironolactone tomorrow.  Carvedilol blocks beta and alpha-1 receptors which results in slowing “the heart rhythm and reduces the force of the heart’s pumping. This lowers blood pressure thus reducing the workload of the heart, which is particularly beneficial in heart failure patients.”  Spironolactone is a diuretic than helps reduce fluid retention.  Enalapril is an ACE inhibitor.  ACE (angiotensin converting enzyme) converts angiotensin-1 into angiotensin-2 which causes constriction of the blood vessels.  As an ACE inhibitor, Enalapril blocks this action thus reducing blood pressure and easing the work load of the heart.

Right about now I want to jump up and cheer and sing and dance and smile, smile, smile.  I am constantly, non-stop blown away by nature.  The complexities, the intricate inter-relations – oh I just swoon and swoon and am enamored of it all! Yes, I hate, hate, ragingly despise that the heart of my sweet girl has been so weakened that it might cost her life.  But I cannot deny the wonder of it all.  The spectacular, pure extravagant beauty of God’s creation.  He made this!

The second component of the plan to get Allistaire’s heart back in a condition sufficient to move forward with transplant, is to delay transplant.  At this point, her transplant is scheduled for March 19th.  This gives very little time for her heart to recover as these medications are not necessarily fast acting.  Before I even talked to Dr. Gardner, I knew this was likely the course we must take.  At the very bottom of the list of downsides of delaying transplant, is it means another month at the very least out her in Seattle.  It has now cost me July, oh July, sweet singing green exuberant July, perhaps Montana’s most perfect month.  The bigger issues with delay are that there is a now a longer window in which unexpected harm can enter; a mere cold could throw everything off.  More significantly, the rash of measles outbreaks which are largely connected to unvaccinated children, could literally be the death of her.  The measles virus can linger for 1-2 hours after someone infected leaves the area.  It hangs in the air, impossible to detect and thus avoid.  In a person with a normal immune system, measles can be awful.  In a child like Allistaire with little to no functioning immune system, it could very easily kill her.

Secondly, there is ever the beast, ever the threat of being devoured by cancer.  Time is a scarce resource in the life of a person battling cancer.  Time is a luxury.  If Allistaire’s cancer is currently suppressed, it means nothing about what may happen in the coming weeks.  Being undetectable in no way means it is nonexistent.  Next Tuesday, 2/17, rather than being transferred to the Bone Marrow Transplant Service as originally planned, she will have a bone marrow aspirate taken.  If we are still in the PICU (if she hasn’t weaned off Milrinone), then the procedure will be done in her room with the ICU attending providing anesthesia.  Otherwise, it will likely be done in the operating room where they have better support than in the procedure room of the Hem/Onc clinic.  For the last 28 days her marrow has not produced one blood cell.  In her last round of chemo, her marrow began to recover after 14 days at zero.  This significant delay is likely a combination of being pounded hard twice in a row by this chemo and her severe, traumatic infection. Looking in her bone marrow will tell the doctors if there is any recovery happening or in the worst case scenario, her marrow is so packed with leukemia that no healthy cells are able to be produced.  I think a packed, cancerous marrow seems unlikely given that in the past two years, whenever even a very small percentage of disease has been present, there have been blasts in her peripheral blood.  Thankfully, there continues to be no evidence of blasts.  Depending on how her marrow looks going forward, the proposed month’s delay in transplant could require more chemo (probably Decitabine), though perhaps she wouldn’t need anything.  As is simply ever the case, we wait.  We wait and see.  We wait.

Every single day feels like an impending death sentence.  Every single day a new number can indicate the tide has turned once again.  This morning’s BNP, which they are only looking at twice a week now, was substantially increased to 1420.  Everyday begins with these numbers.  It’s like being constantly pushed around, shoved hard this way and that, ever a precipice waiting to swallow.  Waiting is hard, really, really hard.  But I have discovered a secret, a mysterious way of God.  He loves to make us wait.  Not because He is cruel, but because He loves, because His aim, His hope for us far supercedes our own.  We dwell on this earthly, temporal plane, wailing in pain, thrashing about, desperate for things to work out as we so desperately hope.  We have set our eye on our desire immediately before us.  But God…He is over all, under and around, above and below and on all sides.  His view engulfs our little view.  He waits.  He waits with us.  He restrains His hand because He is holding back the tide to make room, to provide space in which we are invited to face Him, to wrestle, to grab hold of His extended, merciful gentle, powerful, loving hand.  He allows the tension of waiting because it is often in this electrified static that we have most bountiful opportunity to turn to His voice, to seek His face.  This is His aim.  This is His yearning, His craving, His unbridled passion, to draw us to Himself.  It is not that He is unmoved and cold toward my bleeding heart.  It is not that He is powerless to change my circumstances, in a flash, in the blink of an eye.  It is that He has clarity of vision.  He declares that life comes solely, only, directly from being bound to Him.  Love is patient.  Translated in the King James, it says love is long-suffering.  This is the very first descriptor of love.  God is love.  God is long-suffering.  He suffers with us in our sufferings.  He endures with us.  When at last will we come to the end of ourselves and see that He offers us life.  Life abundant.  Life eternal.

Father, thank you for drawing out this suffering, for expanding its parameters.  For You have filled this space with your bounty, your halting beauty, with light unearthly.  I swoon as I fix my eyes on You.  You have patiently walked by my side and I rejoice to know that no matter the days ahead, you will never leave me nor forsake me.  You satiate and I come running for more, more of you Lord!  I come weeping, weeping, calling out for mercy.  Mercy Lord!!!

If by any chance your heart breaks knowing how broken Allistaire’s heart is from all of her harsh treatment…if you wish for some better option for her…if you wish her cancer could be cured without destroying her…if you wish there was just a way to put an end to cancer, to obliterate it…

There is something you can do.  When we join our resources together, we really CAN make a difference in the options available to children like Allistaire.   By joining me in raising funds for cancer research at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, you are furthering, accelerating the chances for life for kids and folks like yourself, like your mom, your brother.

Click HERE to join me in donating to cancer research as I participate in Obliteride again this summer.

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Feb4

Get STOKED!

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The above three pictures are of Allistaire on February 4th in 2012, 2013 and 2014.  Each of the last 4 February 4ths she has either been in treatment or about to begin again due to relapse.

Today is World Cancer Day.  Today is a day to take note, to lift up your chin and force yourself to look cancer in the eye.  Because let’s be real, most of the time we want to look the other way and pretend we don’t see that dark shadow looming in our periphery.  Look around at your life – how many of those you love have been touched by cancer?  And I don’t mean “touch” in the desirable sense.  Maybe impaled, scarred, lacerated, bruised, wounded, ravaged.  Maybe these are better words to describe cancer’s impact. Yes, cancer has also brought a lot of good in my life, but I will not for a second pretend that I wish cancer on anyone.  How can I not desperately want cancer to be stopped, forever?!  And it’s not just Allistaire.  It’s my sister-in-law who didn’t have her mom there when her sons were born.  It’s my friend Megan who lost her baby because of her own cancer.  It’s my aunt who had to make the hard choice to have a mastectomy because her mom died of breast cancer.  It’s my cousin who has decide whether or not she must cut out parts of her body because she bares a gene known to show high risk for breast cancer.  It’s my friends’ sad, weary eyes that long to have their child back.

Today I bring you videos to tell the story.  The first was made by our friend Abi who was in treatment with Allistaire, also with AML.  I love this video because it is a window into our world.  I love this video because it’s full of faces dear to us.  But what I can’t ignore is how many faces are now gone, dead.  Cancer does not leave one unscathed.  If you make it out alive, one almost always bears the scars and damage of treatment.  The second is of a little 3 year old boy named Ben who died of neuroblastoma.  Out of the deep well of their grief, his parents started the Ben Towne Foundation which is linked to Seattle Children’s Research.  The goal is to find cures for cancer that do not rely on chemotherapy and radiation and to accelerate research to get to real patients who are desperate for options now.  The next three videos provide a window into one of the most thrilling and promising areas of research today – the idea that researchers can genetically modify our most powerful fighting cells, T-cells, to identify and destroy our individual cancer cells.  Lastly, to lift your spirits there is the “Stronger,” video filmed on the cancer unit at Seattle Children’s while Allistaire was in treatment the first go around.  Life is worth fighting for.  These kids are worth fighting for.  Your mom and brother are worth fighting for.

If you’d like to tangibly support cancer research, I invite you to support me in Obliteride which is a fundraiser bike ride for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.  Every dollar you give goes directly to cancer research.  There are a number of very worthy places to give your money to support cancer research.  I have chosen to focus my efforts to support research at Fred Hutch because Allistaire’s life has been directly sustained by their research through the clinical trials that have yielded her last transplant and holds the promise for her cure with this next transplant and subsequent T-cell trial.

Click HERE if you’d like to support me in OBLITERIDE – accelerate the cure and put an end to cancer for good!

Look At Me Now

The Story of Ben Towne

T-Cell Therapy Explained

Fighting Fire with Fire

The Mighty T

What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger

 

 

Feb3

Numbers

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IMG_2733This morning I spent nearly an hour on the phone with Lisa Getzendaner, the Unrelated Donor Coordinator, getting a lot of information on the road ahead.  I am daunted by the incredible number of details that all have to fall in place.  It really feels like we’re on a bullet train, speeding toward our destination of transplant, with a frightening number of steel gates currently down across the rails.  They may open.  They probably will.  Lisa has twenty years of experience with this work and I have confidence in her abilities to coordinate the massive endeavor before us.  The gates may open, but the thing is, every single gate must open to get where we so desperately need to go.

Allistaire came to the ICU because of a severe infection in her gut.  A few comments in recent days have opened my eyes to just how serious her typhlitis was.  On our behalf, the resident asked the surgeons if Allistaire could start having some little bits of ice.  When she brought back the answer that she could indeed, she also brought news that the surgeons were surprised that Allistaire was able to make it through this gut infection without needing surgery.  I knew that for them to operate on her would have been extremely dangerous given her complete lack of white blood cells, so to hear that they really thought she would need surgery impressed upon me the danger she was in.  When I relayed this perspective to Dr. Gardner, she stopped and looking me in the eye, said that the way Allistaire’s colon looked on the first CT was the worst she’s ever seen.  She sure did a good job of not letting on about how precarious her condition was.  Apparently, had her bowel perforated, a likely uncontrollable infection would ensue.  This is in fact how my grandmother, Lillian, died.  She died fast.  I sat in a plane on the tarmac in Atlanta, trying to get to her, when she died.  I am now much more aware how optimistic my assumption was that she would make it through this, that she would be fine.  Thank you Father that you preserved her life.  Thank you to each of those donors who took a serious chunk of their time to donate their granulocytes.  Thank you amazing team of doctors who so expertly and rapidly diagnosed the likely problem and initiated an aggressive and effective plan to support her little defenseless body through this sepsis shock and resulting tremendous insult on her heart.

Now that her typhlitis is so wonderfully on the mend, Allistaire’s primary issue remains her heart.  Dr. Gardner talked to Dr. Bleakley, the transplant doctor, who said that her ejection fraction must be 45 or higher in order to be approved for the transplant protocol we so desperately hope for.  Since her last echo that showed an ejection fraction of 23, the team has continued to carefully monitor her fluid intake and output, adjusting everything from the concentration of meds and TPN, to giving and timing lasix to pull of more fluid.  They are doing everything in their ability to ease the burden on her heart.  As Lisa said, if her heart function doesn’t improve enough, this “could be a show stopper.”  She has continued on Milrinone.  Thankfully, her BNP (a measurement of heart distress) has been trending downward and was 583 this morning.  A normal BNP falls in the range of 0-90 and hers started at 2350 from the first time they checked it.  Additionally, her SVO2, which is the level of oxygen in her blood that returns to her heart after circulating through the body, has risen to 80 which the attending doctor told me this morning is perfect.  “Perfect,” I have not heard that word used describe almost anything with Allistaire lately.

The general plan is to keep Allistaire on the Milrinone until her blood counts have recovered in order to provide optimal blood profusion to her gut, thus aiding healing.  We will also wait until count recovery (ANC of 200) before allowing anything to go into her stomach.  It will be a process to get her gut working and her eating well enough to provide her the necessary calories and thus to come off the TPN.  It is very possible she will get a feeding tube given how small her stomach will have shrunk.  The feeding tube would allow constant low level food.  This is a bit of a bummer for me as we have managed to keep her off a feeding tube since she was diagnosed.  Oh well, something else new to learn.  Her blood counts remain in decline.  Today she is getting platelets (which she seems to need every 2-3 days) and red blood.  Her white blood count remains zero.  Today is the 17th day of zero white blood cells despite getting daily GCSF shots to stimulate her marrow to start producing cells again.  I sure hope her marrow perks up soon because so much of her healing depends on her ability to heal up with the white blood cells.

Regardless of these challenges to overcome, planning out the details and timing of her transplant must proceed.  Allistaire will be transferred to the BMT (Bone Marrow Transplant) service on February 17th.  I will have an Arrival Conference, the next day on the 18th.  The purpose of the Arrival Conference is to review the process before us, what we know about Allistaire and what testing still needs to be completed. Then for the next two weeks, a great deal of testing and evaluation will take place to determine if Allistaire’s disease and overall health is stable enough to move forward with transplant.  She will likely have a bone marrow test February 19th or 20th.  Once all the data collection is complete, there will be a “Data Review Conference,” on March 3rd or 4th.  Assuming everything is in order and we are able to proceed, Allistaire will begin conditioning on March 9th.  This will involve 4 days of TBI (Total Body Irradiation) in which she is sedated and radiated twice each day over at the University of Washington which is just a few miles away.  She will then have five days of chemotherapy which includes 5 days of Fludarabine and two days of Thiotepa.  There will be one day of rest and then the actual transplant, the infusion of the donor cells, is set for Thursday, March 19th.

March 19th feels so far away.  This whole process is taking a month longer than I had ideally hoped.  Yet this may be for the best as it gives Allistaire lots of time to recover.  Her heart, marrow and gut have been severely injured.  This morning the new attending Hem/Onc (Hematology/Oncology) Dr. Hawkins, reiterated that Allistaire’s typhlitis was very bad.  The timing is being dictated in large part by the openings available in the radiation schedule and apparently the T-cell manipulation “takes such a huge amount of resources,” that they can only schedule one per week.  This time will also allow for finalizing details of payment for transplant.  Because both the transplant and the subsequent modified T-cell immunotherapy we hope her to have after transplant are Phase 1 trials, Lisa said she would be “flabbergasted,” if Blue Cross Blue Shield approved them.  It looks like our hope rests with Washington Medicaid and ultimately Social Security Insurance based on the view that Allistaire’s cancer constitutes a disability due to her long time hospitalization.

Behind it all, however, is the promise that should all else fail, Seattle Children’s Hospital Foundation will cover the cost of these trials.  This boggles my mind.  Her last transplant cost $1.1 million.  Sometimes I shudder at what Allistaire’s care has cost.  I look at my one beloved child and know she is not of greater value than each of the thousands of children who die every day in developing countries.  It is not fair that so much is given to her.  The Super Bowl helped add a little perspective.  Thirty seconds of Super Bowl advertisement time costs four million dollars.  That’s about what it has cost to keep Allistaire alive the last 3 years.  She is not worth more than the thousands of children’s lives that could be saved by four million dollars, but she is sure worth more than a measly 30 seconds of TV add time.  What a world.

Another steel gate is in the hands of the donor herself.  She has to consent to both the large volume of cells needed in order to complete the depletion of the naive T-cells for the transplant and for the genetic modification of the T-cells for the trial after transplant.  She has agreed to donate and has agreed to the time frame requested but she still needs to give these specific consents.  There is not one single thing in the universe I can do to impact her decision.  In a stringent effort to in no way coerce the donor, this woman knows absolutely nothing of Allistaire’s condition, her age, the severity of need – nothing.  So many gates barring the road before us.  Most of this post was written yesterday morning long before results from Allistaire’s echo came in.  The day ebbed by at a painfully slow pace.  I felt I could not leave the room because at any moment the cardiologists would come in with news of her heart.  Yesterday the weight of sadness lay heavy.  Day became evening and then night with still no word.  The nurse graciously harassed the resident in hopes she would in turn harass the cardiologist for results.  Corrine, the resident, came in just before 9pm beaming once again.  She made the cardiologist repeat himself several times to be sure she heard the number right.  “The ejection fraction is 45,” she said with nearly uncontainable smile.  FORTY-FIVE??!!!!!  “That is the exact number it has to be for her to move forward with transplant,” I told her with laughing, shocked joy.  God, who are you?  Really who are?  I know your face is just beaming, beaming with joy, with delight to bring us delight.  So what you’re saying, Lord, is that you have her in your hands?  What you’re saying is that this is not hard for you?  We need 45, well here’s 45.  Thank you Lord, Thank you.  I think we were all flabbergasted at that incredibly glorious number.

It has been 19 days since Allistaire was transferred to the ICU, quite a bit longer than I had ever guessed we’d be here.  This is not how I envisioned this round of chemo going.  The funny thing is, just two days after her chemo, when she was detached from her IV pole and it seemed we had three easy weeks ahead of us, I thought, “God, this is what you have for us?  This seems too easy.  We never have it this easy.  Three weeks just to hang out and wait for her counts to come up?  Well, show me what you want this time to look like.”  Two days later she was in the ICU.  Today was a delightful day of progress.  The morning began with the removal of the NG tube in her nose that was used to pull out any stomach contents.  Then through immense protest and fear, the IV in her foot was removed.  These days she is literally terrified if you come near her with anything.  She knows she gets a shot every night and has had many painful experiences in the last two weeks.  Even her bath elicited cries of, “I’m scared, I’m scared.”  It was her first real bath in nearly three weeks and now she smells lovely and her cranium is extra shiny.  Lastly, we changed her dressing.  I am thankful for so much progress and the opportunity to get her up and trying to walk again.

The top picture is one Solveig drew last Tuesday after doing FaceTime with Allistaire and I.  This is Solveig’s view on Allistaire’s world.  It sobers me.  I’ve also included some fun pics from a joyous weekend recently that my two sister-in-laws, Jess and Jo, came out for a visit.  My mother-in-law has been here this weekend, giving me some nice breaks and enjoying time with Allistaire.

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