Winter Wonderland

This was the day last year when … oh no, don’t worry, I’m not going to replay every miserable moment of last winter. I actually have a somewhat lighter story to tell, still replete with drama and suspense. Braedan had an appointment with the psychologist this afternoon and Austin was scheduled to have labs drawn. […]

Another Year

What a difference a year makes. I find myself struck day after day after day by the power of the memories of last year. Right before Thanksgiving (last Thanksgiving), Austin had an ultrasound that revealed a new spot. New, as in not the same spot we’d been watching and worrying about all fall. So we […]

Great Deals

I was ordering photos from Snapfish tonight and finally uploaded some off of Mark’s phone that he took last December. I was quietly scrolling through picture after picture of Austin in the hospital — sad pathetic faces as he was recovering from surgery in the PICU, goofy silly smiles as he played with Braedan on […]

Thanks and Giving

Thanks for all the responses to yesterday’s post. First and foremost, I am no saint of a mother. Not at all. I’m impatient with my kids and short-tempered and have learned (the hard way) that screaming, “BE NICE!” is not the most effective parenting technique. But I am quite pleased at the number of people […]

The Gimmes

My boys have a bad case of the gimmes. And the early arrival of the holiday season is only making it worse. Braedan has already circled every single toy in the Target and Toys R Us catalogs, with the exception of princess and Barbie gear. He then stapled together seven sheets of paper to create […]

Unremarkable

I just got an email from our oncologist (complete with smiley face) with an updated report from the radiologist reviewing Austin’s scans. She was able to go back and find some older chest CTs that had been done without sedation and she determined that these two tiny nodules have been there as far back as […]

Almost Perfect

So, yesterday was pretty good. As we’ve all had to learn (the hard way), nothing in this game is ever straightforward, there are always always nuances. First, the good stuff: His kidney and liver are unchanged. The spot on the liver is still there; it’s still hard to see clearly (visible in some planes but […]

A Long Way

Last Tuesday, we went to the Natural History Museum and I took some photos of the boys sitting on the stone bear outside, right where we’d taken pictures last March. Check out the difference: More hair, same big smiles To see these images of my boys sitting in the exact same spot, just eight months […]

Havin’ It All

Braedan brought home his school pictures yesterday: images of a widely grinning boy, standing happily amidst friends and peers who adore and admire him. He has been doing fantastically. I think some of his struggles in August and September may have just been about adjusting to the start of school, due in part to the strong […]

Full of Mystery

Aw shucks, thanks everyone.  It was a pretty incredible story, especially the fact that I first wrote about that license plate on the CarePage a full five months after the last time I’d seen it and then it was spotted again by friends within one week(Make sure you read the comment from Linda Yonkers on […]