March 5, 2014 - Stem Cell Harvest

Today we went to the hospital for Tye's Stem Cell Harvest.  This is where they run his blood through a machine and strip off the stem cells.  They will freeze the stem cells and then down the road he will get them back in order to recover from Chemotherapy.  He was such a champ.  He sat perfectly still for 6 and a half hours with only a couple of complaints towards the end.  They called him the dream patient.  They said they have to hold most of the kids down because they won't sit still.

Glad that day is behind us.  Now on to more adventures....

He was done with the process at this point and wanted to go home

February 21, 2014 - Second Chemo Treatment

Today we found ourselves back at the hospital for the next 5 days of Chemo.  Once again Tye did really well and we only had to stay one night in the hospital and then the next 4 days were out patient Chemo.  One of the days was a Sunday and so Zoe got to come with us to the hospital to be with her brother.  It was a great experience for both of them to get to be together for this.

Eating Some Lunch Together

Watching TV Together

Nap Time Together

February 14, 2014

Happy Valentines Day.......

We woke up to lots of Tye's hair all over his bed and all over his pajamas.  Not a very exciting Valentines present.  It was a hard day around our house.  I guess it hits hard because losing his hair was the outward sign that he is sick.

After only being able to take one day of big piles of hair all over our house we went to get his hair cut the next day.  Zoe let me know that when we shaved Tye's hair she wanted to cut her hair at the same time and donate it to locks of love for somebody else suffering from Cancer.  What a special big sister Tye has!  He loves her to pieces.  They are best friends.

Before Haircuts

After Haircuts

Best Friends with their new haircuts

Right after Zoe's haircut she was off to her soccer game

January 31, 2014 - First Chemo Treatment

Not only was this our four year old sons birthday, it was Tye's first round of Chemotherapy.  Overall he did very well.  Other than not wanting to eat much he was still running around the hospital room playing basketball with anybody that would play with him.

Now that the treatment plan was underway we realized that this was going to be our new normal for a while.  The treatments go from 1 year to 18 months.  It will consist of Chemotherapy, Surgery, Stem Cell Transplants, Radiation, and then 6 months of antibody therapy.  Each Chemotherapy round is 5 days in the hospital and then two weeks at home and then back to the hospital for the next round.

January 22, 2014

This day started out like any other day around our house.  Got the kids off to school and Roy went to work.  I had an appointment to take Tye to the doctor for what we thought were allergies.  Both of his eyes seemed swollen.  Other than that he was a healthy, active, happy two year old boy.  After our pediatrician looked at him she said allergies didn't seem to be the problem.  She consulted with other doctors in the office and then came back a few minutes later.  She said she didn't want me to worry but she did want me to go to Primary Children's Hospital later that same day for a CT Scan of his head.  At that very moment I knew something was not right.

Later that day I picked up Roy from work and we headed to the hospital.  We had the scan done and while we were waiting for the results to come back we both knew something serious was wrong.  The hospital staff was running around trying to organize a bunch of people to come down to talk to us.  A little while later we were taken into a room with a couple of doctors, a social worker and our pediatrician was on the phone.  At that time we were told that there were numerous tumors throughout his head and in his eye sockets.  That is why his eyes looked so swollen.  At that point they knew it was cancer but didn't really know what kind and to what extent.

We were admitted right away to the Oncology unit at Primary Children's and spent the next few days doing test after test to get the right diagnosis.  Eventually it came back that Tye has Neuroblastoma, a rare childhood cancer.

For sure a day we will never forget.