1 Month...

Yesterday marked 4 weeks since the day we found out our little boy has cancer. Since then Cooper has...

*been admitted to the hospital for 6 days

*swallowed 264 pills

*received 42 insulin shots

*sat through 18 hours of doctors appointments

*had his port accessed 5 times

*received 6 IV chemo sessions

*had 3 (Tuesday will be 4!) surgeries

*8 blood draws

*2 spinal taps

*sat for 18 hours in the car driving to the hospital

*7 doctor appointments

This should not be what my 9 year old boy is doing right now. He should be playing his basketball games, going to school, playing catch in the backyard, cheering his "bestie" on at her basketball games, wrestling with his dad and all the other little things I use to take for granted for him. But this IS his reality now.

We are rounding out the final days until the completion of his first phase of treatment. Tuesday he will have another surgery where they will do a bone marrow aspiration, a spinal tap and administer chemo to his spinal fluid again.

This is a critical day to find out if his body responded well to the chemo and killed all the cancer cells. Based on his results they will categorize him as "favorable" "average" or "high risk". Each category will have it's own protocal. The worse the ranking the more chemo they will have to pump into him in the next phase. David and I are so anxious and nervous for this as the more chemo they have to do the harder the long term side effects will be on him. We are of course praying for favorable!!

We did have some fantastic news this week! We FINALLY got his antibody results back and they assured us that he does NOT have the markers for type 1 diabetes! When we got those results I immediately started laughing, crying, jumping and dancing all at once. David didn't believe me until he read it for himself. :)

I ran upstairs to tell Cooper and in disbelief he says, "Are you sure mom? So you are saying I don't have to get these shots the rest of my life?" No baby you don't!!! At that moment I swear it was the first real smile I've seen on his face since this all started and he said, "I guess miracles really DO happen!" YES my sweet boy, miracles DO happen!!!

Praying that his body can cleanse itself of those steroids quickly and regulate his blood sugars again asap so we can stop those shots! We've heard anywhere from 24 hours to 2 weeks. Either way, we will take that win!!

Thank you for joining us on this journey. Your prayers, comments, encouragement, messages, check-in's, gifts, donations, dinners, random acts of kindness, connections, creative ways of using your business to support us, showing up physically, sharing your story with us... all of it matters so much to us, helps us feel less lonely and ushers us strength to keep taking another step at a time. So, THANK YOU!!!!

Here is Cooper sleeping through another appointment yesterday and then choosing this giant hot dog as his post appointment treat ;) He's a HUNGRY boy!!!