A New Normal

Today my heart feels light. The lightest its felt in about 3 months, I think. Maybe longer.

This morning was bath time for the girls. Elena was with me in the livingroom, playing and dancing around, while I got Lily dressed after her bath. Elena started marching around us in circles, carrying some toy like it was a banner, saying, "Hail Pin-cess Rora! Hail Pin-cess Rora!" (from the beginning of Sleeping Beauty...). After doing this for a few minutes, she started climbing up my back and told me to be a "horsey". We did a circle around the living room and then as we got close to where Lily was laying, she said,

"Oh, horsey, what's that?! You hear that? It's a pin-cess!"

Then she hopped off my back and ran over to where Lily was laying and said,

"Oh! Sleepy Cutey! (for some reason she will not pronounce Beauty with a "b") You sleeping? I will save you!" And then she gave Lily a kiss on the cheek.

There you go - the entire 75 minutes of Sleeping Beauty, summarized in about 5 minutes. :) I got a good laugh.

We're doing lots more of that these days.

It's been almost two months since Elena was diagnosed and we are starting to slip into a new normal. Well, as normal as things can be. But, the first of the crisis is behind us and we are emerging. I think we are emerging as totally different people than we were two months ago. At least I know I am. So much has happened in so short a time and when I sit and reflect in quiet moments, I feel like I am forever changed because of this experience. Even just the little bit of it that I have experienced so far. It's like part of me has died and isn't coming back. It's a good thing though I think - in the long run. Because I think it was a shallower part of me - someone who had been just skimming the surface of life. I feel like my eyes have been opened a lot and like my emotions have been deepened. As hard as this experience has been, I know that there are still SO many, many people who are suffering infinitely more than I have. Not that I'm meaning to come across like I'm some deep, perfected, being who keeps everything in perspective now. DEFINITELY not. I still struggle so much and am so flawed. Pretty much every day, I think, "Gees, Briana! What is it going to take to whip you into shape if this hasn't done it!" But, I am learning a lot.

In some ways, it feels like the two months has flown by. But, at times, this has felt like the longest two months of my life. We've had ups and downs. More ups than downs though, I'd say. We have been so incredibly blessed. So blessed that at times it seems surreal and its hard to really feel how much we've been blessed. Does that make any sense? Every week when we are at the hospital for Elena's chemo, I see evidences all around of how much heartache and sadness and difficulty we have been spared.

-Elena's prognosis is incredibly good - 80%+ survival rate.

-She has ACUTE lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) rather than CHRONIC lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) -which pretty much can't ever really be cured - you just have to keep getting chemo for as long as you can to stay alive and deal with the awful quality of life from near constant chemotherapy treatments until your body can't take it anymore.

-She is a strong, resilient little girl.

-Her body is responding perfectly to the treatments.

-She hasn't been sick during this last round of chemo.

...I could go on all day. Just this last Wednesday, while we were waiting for the anesthesia to kick in for Elena's lumbar puncture, the doctor who was performing it was telling us that where he's from in India, most people can't afford the medicine for anesthesia and so they do the procedures unmedicated. On little kids. Wow.

Like I said, we are SO incredibly blessed. My heart feels light. Our Elena is doing very, very well. The future looks bright. Life is good. The first month was very hard - hard from the shock of the diagnosis and its implications and hard from the rough medicine Elena was on. Since that course ended, things have been getting progressively better. I can't tell you what a relief it has been to have things ease up a little. We have truly been blessed and carried through our trials. Thank you for your prayers. I know they are heard and we have been blessed because of them. Please keep praying for Elena.

Elena is in her second course of chemotherapy - called "Consolidation". The very thorough blood tests are showing no traces of leukemia left in her blood after the first course of chemo, which is expected and a good sign. However, because it is a blood cancer (and your blood circulates throughout your whole body), it is almost certain that there is at least one leukemia cell left hiding and if it goes untreated, then the leukemia will come back in full force. So, the purpose of Consolidation (and all the remaining courses of chemo, really) is to try and zap any remaining leukemia. Consolidation is a two month course - one month of medicines and procedures basically identically repeated the second month (minus the weekly procedures). We are almost done with the first month. Elena was supposed to get really, really sick this round - nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, mouth sores, etc. But, miraculously she has been spared all of that. That girl has been blessed with a stomach of steel. :) We are so grateful! On Wednesday, she got another blood transfusion. And it's looking like we will be headed back in for a platelet transfusion in the next day or two.

Anyways... so, we're back. Over the next while, I'm going to go back to the beginning (when Elena was diagnosed) and document things up to the present for my own personal record. Some of you have heard bits and pieces of the story along the way from us or from my mom's blog. And now, I'll fill in a few more details. For me and my family, mostly. But you can come along for the ride too, if you aren't bored yet. :)

For now, here are a few recent pictures of the girls:

Lily looks identical to a little sleeping baby Elena in this picture

Elena helping me make pizza for lunch

I love these girls!!