First Step Done

Abbie came out of surgery well on Monday. She is already awake, and there is a noticeable improvement in the use of her arms. She is fighting the doctors/nurses as they poke and prod her! :) We now have to wait a couple of days for the MRI and then determine what the next step will be.
Please continue to pray!

To Clarify

Some of the details get muddled in all of this, so here are a few points to clarify the confusion some people have expressed:

• Abbie has cancer. Because most of the tumor was removed from her spine, it is primarily now just in her brain. Actually, what she has is not a tumor at all, it is an astrocytoma. So although we keep saying "benign tumor," the reality is that it is cancerous and it is growing. "Benign" in regards to an astrocytoma just means "slow-moving" as opposed to "fast-moving" malignant.
• Abbie's mobility was improving daily. Before she began to weaken, she was climbing steps and trying to run. This Monday, I told Chris that her arms seemed weaker to me, and he told me that I was paranoid. On Tuesday, he agreed that she looked weaker, and her OT told me that she was not doing certain exercises that she had been able to do previously. By Wednesday, she was slightly shaky when she walked. By Thursday she was very unsteady. By Friday her arms hung limp at her sides and she could barely walk a foot before falling over. We were admitted to the hospital on Friday.

Feel free to ask any questions you might have, and I'll try to answer them whenever I pop in here.

Bad News

We have just received some bad news about Abbie, and I am sending out the call to yet again beg all of you for prayers.

The short version of events is that an MRI of Abbie's tumor on Thursday shows that she has a very large cyst growing above the tumor in her brain stem, and that it has grown significantly again in her upper spinal cord. There is no explanation for why this has happened -- although the tumor is cancerous, it is benign (meaning slow moving) so we have no idea how it could have spread so quickly. There are several theories, but we won't know for sure until the cyct has been drained.

On Monday Abbie will undergo another surgery, where they will remove a small piece of her skull and insert a shunt to drain the cyst. We will then monitor her closely in the next couple of days to see what the tumor does, and how her mobility improves. If neither are good, then she will need to undergo another brain surgery, to remove the tumor from her brain stem. I cannot emphasise enough how dangerous that surgery would be. It is unbearable to think about, and we aren't going to dwell on it until we know for certain if it will be necessary or not.

Please, please pray for us and most especially please pray for my sweet baby.

The brutal truth

The girls and I were talking about grandmas tonight over mac-n-cheese. We had a friend over, so while he and Chris grilled some steaks on the porch, I boiled up the good stuff for our less discerning children.

We began talking about the wine glass I was sipping out of, something I cherish very much as it came from my Grandma Niccoli. (The glass, not the wine!) They were confused to hear that I had a Grandma Niccoli, someone other than their Grandma Niccoli, and this led into a discussion about generations, marriage, the passing on of names, and, finally, nicknames. The girls sometimes refer to their grandmothers as "The Grandma who sews" and "The Grandma who doesn't sew," and as we discussed this I jokingly asked them what their kids would call me.

Not missing a beat, not missing a beat! Beth responded, "Grandma Lazy Bum."

Want to see our pictures?

So, I've been trying to figure out how to make our pictures more private, so that joe-schmo-the potential-pedophile-down-the-street can't figure out how to get my kids. Paranoid, maybe, but.....So I've created a flickr account, that, as far as I can tell, is somewhat private. At least, I think it is.

So if you'd like to see the pictures I've put up (of the house and Becky's wedding) just email me (either through my profile here, or through my regular email) and I'll send you an invitation to view the photos!

Don't be shy about emailing me, either! Mom's friends, or Christiana people, or people who I don't even know who have been praying for Abbie are all more than welcome, I just need an email. :)

Forget who rocks the cradle, she who holds the remote....

We added DVR to our cable when we moved, but it's been a bear to figure out. (DVR is like Tivo, just the generic version.) Chris has messed around with it a bit, but still doesn't quite understand all the ins and outs of getting it to work. We haven't mentioned it to the kids, though, because........well, what do they care?

The other day, I called the kids up for lunch, and then ran downstairs to get something or other. To my surprise, Franklin was paused on the t.v. When I mentioned it to the kids, Katie breezily replied, "Oh yeah, we didn't want to miss the end." Seems that not only has she discovered the DVR, she is actually the current authority on how to use it.

My management of this household is on such shaky ground it isn't even funny. Any day now I expect to wake up to find Katie in the kitchen, frying up a few eggs while she sorts the bills. And I don't know how to handle it when it happens -- do I snatch the bills out of her hand and tell her to mind her own business, or do I just pull up a chair and thank her for the egg???

happy early fourth of july!

We let the girls stay up late tonight because the fire department in our neighborhood was putting on a fireworks show. The field they use is just behind our house, sort of seperated by a field and a little line of trees, so we were guessing that we'd be able to see the fireworks from our yard.

So, around 9, we grabbed a blanket and curled up on the porch to watch the fireworks. We could see them perfectly, but were far enough away that the noise wasn't freaking the girls out, and it was just really, really nice. Surrounded by lighting bugs, cuddled up together watching the fireworks light up the field behind the trees, it was a magic that we all felt. Beth, as so often happens, summed it up best when she said, "I can't even say anything about these fireworks! It's just too amazing!"

My outdoor warrior

Chris bought a riding mower.
We really debated whether he should just start with a push mower, and see if he could do it.

Wanna guess how long it took him to mow our lawn with the riding mower? Two and a half hours.

Then he had to buy a push mower anyways, because the riding one can't handle some of the hills in our yard.

Wanna guess how long it took him to "detail" with the push mower? An hour and half.

I guess the days of just using a plug-in weed whacker are really gone. Pictures tomorrow!