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On June 1, 2010 our two year old, "Little Air Bear," was diagnosed with Childhood Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) Type M7. After enduring 146 days at Primary Children's Hospital, Erin is now in remission and living a full life at home with our family. Her strong will and constant happy smile is an inspiration to us all. Through our difficult circumstances we found great strength and peace in our Savior, Jesus Christ. Thank you for checking in on us.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Cancer's Roller Coaster

Our dear friends, the Smith's, who live here in Cache Valley have a 19 year old son who has AMLeukemia like Erin did.  This is his second kind of cancer that he has had to fight.  Tanner was set to have a bone marrow transplant in April, but they just got news that his Leukemia is still growing and they found 13% in his blood.  He needs to have something around less than 5% or maybe it's 0% (can't remember) in his blood before he can have his transplant.  This is hard news.  Please pray for them.

Two of our cancer friends went to D.C. last week with CureSearch to advocate for childhood cancer. One of my favorite quotes from one of her speakers was this:

"We are curing our children with drugs from the 50's, 60's, and 70's. We have only improved our cure rates by giving more, not by discovering more. We push them to the brink. Most of them will experience toxicity at some point. This is unacceptable in the adult cancer world, why is it acceptable for children? Curing is not enough. They deserve a lifetime of health. They need new drugs that aren't as toxic. We have the tools for this, but we need the funding  . . . How will history look back on this congress? By cutting back, our children will suffer."

You can read about her whole experience HERE.  One of our friends put together a book of 30 of our cancer kids.  We each wrote about our experiences and added pictures of our kids.  She gave these books to Congress.  I hope they read these true experiences and see the pictures of our kids and that they don't cut funding for childhood cancer. 

We have so many friends who are doing well and so many who are struggling day to day.  It is so unexpected how things are turning out.  It's a roller coaster.  Sometimes we're up and sometimes we're down.  But, we keep riding.  We keep fighting.

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