Merry Christmas!

With love and prayers from our family to yours. May all of you  know the love of Christ this season and always.

Sandy

last day.....

please scroll down to Chip in to help bring Asher home.

Blessings,
Sandy

Gotcha!

We celebrated our 3rd "gotcha" day anniversary with Sydney on Saturday the 12th! She had a great day. The past few weeks have brought about some AMAZING changes in Sydney (only GOD)!

Friends in need....

Very sweet and dear friends of ours are adopting - again! They need help raising funds. For those of you that have adopted, you what that is like. Please consider a donation for Asher. They really have a lot of neat stuff to raffle including a Wii ;)

Love and blessings,
Sandy

What in the world.......

have we been up to? Well,we have a new baby! Baby Noah arrived July 10th and is just a joy! Sydney and the rest of the kids are getting to be pros at this big brother/big sister thing! Sydney continues to do well after her surgery and seems the picture of health. We still have some adoption related issues that we are prayerfully working through. Sydney's 3 year Gotcha Day anniversary is coming up soon. We continue to homeschool and find that we enjoy it more with each year! Happy Thanksgiving! I know that I sure have a lot to be thankful for!

Blessings,
Sandy

Home....

We came home Saturday and OH! how good it was to get here! Sydney is doing GREAT - you would never know that she had surgery ( not a minor one either) just a few short days ago. Only God! Thanks for your prayers and comments.

Blessings,
Sandy

Praise report!

Sydney came through surgery just fine! Prayers were answered - Praise the Lord! She is doing well today. We are hoping to go home soon. She still has a lot of drainage so we will be here until her drain is removed. Thank you for all of your prayers!

Blessings,
Sandy

Surgery

Sydney will be having surgery to remove a portion of her tumor. It is referred to as debulking - basically they will be removing the outer portion of the tumor. This is being done at the request of the ortho surgeon in the event that he needs to perform the spinal surgery. This will give him more room to work with. Her surgery date is June 24th. For those of you that still keep up with us, your prayers are so appreciated!

Thanks and blessings,
Sandy

Update...

The appts. went better than we were expecting. Sydney does need surgery but because of her small size the surgeon would rather wait at least a while. First she will need to have the exterior portion of her tumor removed as it would be difficult to get around for her spinal surgery. This will not be a light undertaking as these tumors typically are very vascular meaning that very likely she will have a lot of bleeding. Secondly she will need to have her chest wall repaired( the CT surgeon would rather not do this until she turns 6). Currently Sydney's spinal curvature is 71 degrees. The ortho dr. would like to repeat her xray in 6 months. If the curvature reaches 80 degrees then she MUST have surgery REGARDLESS of the other 2 factors.

Again, we are praying for healing for Sydney. We are praying that her curvature will remain below 80 degrees giving her some time to have the other surgeries addressed.

Thank you so much for your prayers and comments.

Blessings,
Sandy

Please PRAY

The dreaded appt. is finally here. Tomorrow Sydney will have her pulmonary function tests, pulmonary follow up, and the consult with the ortho surgeon. Tomorrow night she will have her sleep study. The appt. with Ortho is at 3:15. I DREAD it SO BAD. I've been praying and praying. Please pray for everyone invloved tomorrow. Ultimately I pray for Sydney's healing. I'm also praying that what the surgeon recommends is God's will.

Blessings,
Sandy

Happy Birthday!

Here are some pictures even though they're over a month overdue....

 

 

 

 

Appt. date

Sydney has been scheduled for her consults(again). We head back on March 24th. She will have a pulmonary evaluation with lung function tests at 1PM, she will then see her ortho doctor at 3:10PM, and after all of that she will check in for her sleep study at 6PM.

Please keep Sydney and the rest of us in your prayers.

For now we are getting ready to celebrate her 5th birthday - she turns 5 on Feb.9th.

Blessings,
Sandy

Update...

Sydney's MRI was uneventful - thank God! BUT the tumor is still growing, not at an alarming rate but there has been growth with the last two MRIs, obviously this is not news that we were hoping for. Her scoliosis however is progressing at an alarming rate. Normal curvature of the spine should be 0, up to 15 degrees is still considered within normal limits. Sydney's XRay on Monday shows a curvature of 71 degrees. This is up from 55 degrees in August. We are now at a point that something MUST be done. We will see Ortho again in the coming weeks as well as pulmonary to evaluate lung function in preperation for surgery. The actual repair for scoliosis may not sound that bad to some of you but you must remember that this tumor is actually wrapped around her spine as well. This will NOT be a surgery to remove the tumor ONLY to repair the scoliosis. We've been told by so many different doctors that Sydney is NOT a candidate for surgery that obviously we have concerns.

We know that she is and has always been in God's hands. We know that he can get her through this surgery. Please pray for Sydney and EVERYONE involved in her surgery and care. It will not be a routine procedure. Maybe sometime I'll scan a picture of her Xrays and MRIs - when you see them it's just unbelievable.

Once surgery is over, we plan to start the new clinical drug trial - there has been enough growth to qualify for the study. We had planned on getting her signed up this week but that will be on hold for now. The hope of this drug is to halt tumor growth not to remove it.

Please pray........

Blessings,
Sandy

Sydney's MRI

Sydney's 6 month MRI is this Monday, January 26th (Chinese New Year of all days). Please pray that she does well with her anesthesia and obviously and most importantly that there have been no significant changes. She continues to do well which is a MIRACLE - Praise God!

She also has follow up appointments with both oncology and genetics. We have yet to hear anything about the possibility of repairing her chest wall.

Needless to say it will be a very tiring and stressful day. Please pray for us to be strong and have the faith we need.

If your just finding us, check here for a bit of info on Syd's diagnosis.

Blessings,
Sandy

And the nominees are......

My sweet friend Leslie has nominated me for The Lemonade Stand award! She seems to think that I have a good attitude? When my DH sees this he'll probably pass out - NO KIDDING! So anywho, I need to nominate some people as well. This was SO EASY! These are my favorite most inspiring blogs.

Linny - A Place Called Simplicity

Michelle - Where Laughter Lives

Angie - Bring The Rain


Thanks Leslie!