Mr. D and Mrs. M

  My last several entries have been about James and his kidney cancer. I plan to write another update about him soon since today we celebrated his last day of radiation, but instead of writing about him today, I want to write an entry about my little Isaac. Isaac is a very sweet and happy baby. He has a great temperament and while its been challenging waking up with him and James's feeding tube each night, I feel like I couldn't have asked for a better baby to join my family. Isaac is now 5 months old and he's been a lot of fun and has given us a lot of laughs. I really enjoy data and metrics, so here is his sleep chart, which I'll describe a bit below: On the left axis you see the time of day and then from left to right is time from when he was born in May through now 5 months later in mid October. The dark spots are when Isaac is sleeping. You can see Isaac typically goes to bed around 21:00 (9:00pm) and then wakes up around 7:00am. There are little white gaps at nigh...

James’s surgery on September 8th was a big success and went as well as we could have hoped for! Today, James and David came home from the hospital after a 12-day hospital stay.  Before the surgery James was given some medicine to relax him. David was holding him and a few seconds after he just started laughing, smiling, and waving at everyone. After David said goodbye, the doctors took him to the operating room; we were told that he smiled and waved at every person he passed, charming the whole floor. The surgeons removed the large tumor and kidney on the right side and 11 small tumors in the left kidney, as well as some lymph nodes around the abdomen to test if any of the cancer spread. We are still waiting on the results from pathology to know the exact weights of the tumors, their full composition, and the lymph node results.  David called me on FaceTime after the surgery for his conversation with the surgeon and it was really special seeing her describe the results of the ...

On our last update we shared that James was going to have a biopsy to learn more about the kidney tumors and try to understand why the tumor on the right kidney did not shrink as much as expected. The doctors wanted to rule out a possibility that the tumor cells were a particularly aggressive and chemotherapy-resistant type they called anaplasia cells. If the biopsy had revealed that the tumor had those cells, the doctors would have needed to ramp up the chemotherapy treatments for James to something much more aggressive (basically the highest James could tolerate). Great news was that they did not find this type of cancer tissue, but instead learned that James had some other rare cancer tissue that had matured to be more like muscle tissue that isn't dividing rapidly. This understanding helped explain why the right kidney tumor did not shrink as much as expected. The doctors told us that the tumor would not shrink much more from the next round of chemo and the surgeon will be able...

Thank you for your continued love, support, and prayers.  An update for James is that yesterday (7/11) James had his sixth chemotherapy treatment, which is the final treatment of his first round of chemotherapy. Last Friday (7/8) he had an MRI and CT scan to check the progress of the chemotherapy treatments, which yesterday we received the results for. These results were our first chance to see how well the chemo is actually doing. Here were the options: 1) One round of chemotherapy miraculous got rid of all the cancer in his body (0% chance) 2) Chemo reduced the tumor's size to the doctor's satisfaction to proceed with surgery. Surgery will take place on Friday to remove the largest tumors and radiation to remove the smaller ones. After the surgery more rounds of chemo will be needed to prevent the tumors from growing back (pretty low chance of this) 3) Chemo isn't working as well as expected, as in the tumors didn't shrink as much as the doctors would have expected th...

James has kidney cancer.  As David and I were driving to baby Isaac’s newborn photoshoot (5/27) we were talking about how lucky we were to have three beautiful and healthy boys with none of them having any major health problems, whoo boy did we speak too soon. Six days later David found himself in the Seattle Children’s Hospital Emergency Department with James awaiting a diagnosis that would forever change our lives. James has always had a round tummy, as a baby he had rolls to rival the Michelin Man. As he grew to be a toddler, his rolls all went away, but his round tummy stayed. We always assumed that it was because toddlers often have large tummies until they grow taller and it slims out, that was our experience with Neil. However, James’s tummy was always larger and rounder than we thought it should be, but we never questioned it too much. At James’s 2-year appointment (5/9), the pediatrician examined James and mentioned that James’s large and round tummy might be due to bloati...

  Isaac’s birth story Labor was insanely fast for me. I guess my experience aligns with what they say that 3rd babies come a lot faster than first babies. I’d been ready to meet Isaac. I took the 2 weeks before my due date off (because both my boys had been more than 2 weeks early, so of course Isaac would be early too), and was pleasantly surprised when May came and then also happy when both May 5th and May 10th (James’s and Neil’s birthdays) passed by too, and I got to still be pregnant. I know most women hate the last bit of their pregnancies because they are so uncomfortable and ready to meet their little ones, but for me I was okay being pregnant because for me it meant one more night’s full rest and more likely Isaac will be just a little more fully developed and maybe fatter and a better sleeper. After Mother’s Day May 15th this year though, the day after my due date, I felt ready to have Isaac in my arms and a little foolish for taking what would be more than 2 weeks of tim...