2011 April » Following The Call

Monthly Archives: April 2011

Catching up on a little bit of everything….

04.26.11

*** I’m putting this as a pre-post post, in case you don’t make it all the way to the end of the post!! Don’t forget that this friday night is the soup dinner at The Branch. We hope to see many of you there! Click HERE to visit The Branch’s website for info, and HERE to go to the event page on facebook for more info!! Now, on to the blog post!***

Hello to all my trusty blog-readers out there in the internet world I hope you all had an amazing Easter weekend and we’re able to celebrate the rising of our wonderful Lord Jesus.

Our family had a truly wonderful weekend!! Matt’s sister is a manager at the Amway, and she is able every now and then to spoil us with a room at the hotel. Well… this weekend she worked her magic and got us a suite with a connecting room for the girls!! It was amazing! We had 3 bathrooms in the hotel room!!! We have never had three bathrooms, and it has been 10 months since we have had more than one bathroom. We had beautiful view of Grand Rapids and the river, and it was really a great time! The girls swam their hearts out and are now totally exhausted and recovering from all the fun!

And!!! Our whole family managed to go to church Sunday! Lola and I have not made it to church since we arrived back in the states. It was wonderful to be back, although Lola’s ears are so sensitive that she struggled a bit until it was time for her and Kia to go to Sunday school. Our church rocks out the praise music a bit to loud for her She had a great time in Sunday school, and Kia was happy to have her there.

We have really been enjoying having Lola feeling well, and she should stay good for the next couple weeks. She started a new treatment where they continue to increase the amount of chemo she receives until she reaches ‘toxicity.’ The lovely side effects this time can be muscle issues like she had before when she stopped walking and constipation, really really bad mouth sores and also liver issues. Sounds fun doesn’t it?! Cancer sucks.

Lets see…. What else has been going on?? An organization called ‘Love Quilts’ is making Lola a quilt. She will love it, and anyone can sign up to make a square for her quilt. Its all cross stitch stuff, which is not something I know much about, but I may just have to learn for my little Lola G . If you want to help with her quilt, click HERE to sign up!!

I was working on organizing a blood/marrow drive, but now that I know Lola may start feeling junky for awhile, I’m thinking we might wait until she gets into a more predictable treatment down the road. Although the words ‘predicatble,’ and ‘treatment’ should really never go together when talking about Leukemia…..

We are house shopping!!!! We went through a few houses a few weeks ago, and now we have a big (huge) list of house we want to go through. We are looking for some acreage out in the country. My dream house would be an old farm house, on a dirt road with 10 acres and a lovely old barn to house all our small farm friends. I would also like it to be a massively large house so I can keep having/adopting children and do foster care, open up our house to others, house missionaries, and do whatever other wonderful things I could do with a big house. The fabulous family we are living with has some brand new baby chicks and we are going to be able to keep some of those when we move to our own home. The girls each have a chick claimed, and they have lots of fun with them. I’m just thankful Kia hasn’t killed hers yet…..

Thats all for now!! Lola is back to clinic on Friday for Chemo x2. Keep her in your prayers!

-Lindsey

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mailing address.

04.15.11

I can barely believe that my daughter has been fighting cancer for 2 months. Yesterday was 2 months exactly since we received her official diagnosis. That is a day I will certainly never forget. It is a completely strange feeling to have a daughter with cancer. Just that word alone is awful. I don’t like to hear it. The amount of stuff Lola has had to go through in the last 2 months is crazy. She has been put under anesthesia 6 times. She has had bone marrow taken out of her hip 2 times. She has had spinal taps 6 times. She has taken medicine hundreds and hundreds of times. She has been poked for a wide variety of reasons many times. She has had blood taken many times. She has had 4 blood transfusions. She has lost the ability to walk. She has regained the ability to walk. She has spent 20 some nights not sleeping at all. She lost her hair. All that in 2 months. Kinda makes me wonder how extreme her ’stats’ will be after 2.5 years of this. In celebration of our anniversary, the Children’s hospital sent us a 6 digit hospital bill. Awww…. thanks children’s hospital

Sometimes I feel like I have been through so much. But then I think of how much more my sweet girl has been through, and she’s only 5!!! She is to little to understand the battle that she is in. Its probably better that way though.

I have not had many opportunities to be out in the ‘real world’ since we have returned to the States. Most of my days are spent at home taking care of the girls, doing Lola’s exercises, measuring multiple medications and timing when she gets the ones that need to be taken with food/water/milk or with nothing in her stomach hours before or hours after, taking Lola to Grand Rapids for therapy or to go to the clinic. The few times that I have been out on my own have been nothing short of awkward. My latest experience was earlier this week I went to the home-school building and bought some stuff out of the bookstore there. They started by asking my phone number, which I did not know. So I had to dig out my phone and figure out how to find my number and give it to them. Then they wanted my mailing address. Hmmm….. my mailing address. Let’s see. Is that the address in Tanzania where all my stuff is? Or the address f the people who’s house we’re living in? The address of our home in hudsonville that we used to live in? My parent’s address? Matt’s parents address? I always stumble over that question and I find it to be upsetting!! I mean really what are these people thinking!?? Such a rude heartless question. haha…. For most people a totally normal question. For me, it triggers way to many emotions and causes me to cry the whole way home. Cancer sucks in so many ways. No one can even come close to understanding what it is like to be in this situation. The joy we have from the little things, and the pain that come from things as simple as a mailing address.

Don’t forget we have a soup dinner coming up!!! I’m hoping lots of our friends and family can make it out so we can say hi!! We are not able to get out much, so if you want to see us (and we do want to see you all!!) come on by the soup dinner!! The dinner is Friday, April 29, 5-7pm at The Branch Church- 973 28th St. SE Grand Rapids, MI Click *HERE* for more info and to RSVP.

If you follow us on facebook, you probably already saw the pictures my amazing friend Lisa took last week!! If not have a look!

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housekeeping. Sometimes it stinks, sometimes it not cleaning…

04.05.11

So I have a little house keeping to do here. #1 on my list-

I HAVE to apologize to all the wonderful people who have been pouring out their love on us since this whole thing began. I owe so so so many of you thank you cards for the amazing gifts, cards, phone calls, meals etc. But here’s the problem. As I’m sure you can only imagine, I basically completely lost my brain and I did not keep real good track of who sent what etc. I was so overwhelmed at what was happening that I totally lost the ability to do anything even related to keeping track of anything. So thank you SO much to everyone that has been helping us out. I can not even begin to tell you how much it has meant to us, and how much it has helped. Next time I am forced to move back from Africa with out warning and have my daughter diagnosed with cancer, I promise I’ll keep better track and promptly send out thank you cards I’m sure you can all forgive me this time for my bad thank you card behavior.

Next up- Some AMAZING friends from the church that matt and I attended for a number of years have organized a soup dinner benefit for our family. We LOVE the Branch Church and are so excited to see all our friend again! We have lots of fond memories from our days at the Branch, including having both are girls baptized there. *side story*- When Lola was about 2 1/2 or so, We had Kia baptized. Our family was in front of the church and the pastor was talking about being baptized. All the sudden in her very sweet squeaky 2 yr old voice Lola says “I don’t want to be appatized!!” Love that kid. *end of side story* So anyways… the soup dinner is on Friday April 29 from 5-8 at The Branch church – 973 28th st SE, Grand Rapids. If you would like to attend the event please RSVP by click HERE. There will be a craft room for kids, a silent auction, and they are selling t-shirt!! SO fun!! I am praying that Lola will be doing well and able to attend the event, but if not Matt and I will still be there!!

Thats all for now!!

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Hello World. It’s nice to meet you (kinda.)

04.03.11

Whew. Sorry for the long time with no posts. Things have been crazy busy and I am crazy overwhelmed at trying to enter back into the world. Lets see. Where should I start.

First… some news. When we were in Tanzania I was taking care of a sweet newborn baby girl named Neema. I was really nervous about what was going to happen to Neema after we left, and I am happy to report that she is at the orphanage and doing well. I honestly was expecting to hear she had died, so I am SO glad to hear that is not the case!! Praise the Lord for that!!

Next. Lola. Sweet Lola is doing really good. She is basically back to her sweet self. She is cute, happy, and so so so sweet. She is enjoying hanging out at home and doing lots and lots of crafts. You know those little craft things that you have those tiny peg boards and you put little plastic beads on it, and then iron it and the beads melt together and your left with this colorful melted thing that kids like. Well…. I am so sick of those!!! Lola is loving it and we have created an entire farm yard full of animals including a mom and dad lamb, 2 baby lambs, a mom horse, 2 baby horses, a farmer girl, a barn and a field of grass. We are going to need to hire a field hand if we get anymore livestock. But really I am so happy to hear her little voice chattering non-stop. Funny thing. We were out of the states for 5 months to a place where most people couldn’t understand english, so Lola was not able to say random things to random people. Since being back in the states, she only started talking again last week so she hasn’t said anything random to anyone. Well…. I totally forgot about the wonderful quality of Lola that I’m going to call ‘filter free talking.’ She has no filter when she talks and says the funniest things!! We ran into hobby lobby and there was a lady probably in her 40’s or so working and that lady had on bunny ears. Lola looks at her and announces very loudly to the girl checking us out “Huh!?? I didn’t know old ladies were bunny ear costumes like that.” I don’t think the bunny ear lady thought it was funny to be called ‘old.’ haha… I totally split out laughing. Love that kid.

Lola is starting to walk again on her own. We need to use a wheelchair to go more than 20 steps or so as she tires out super fast and is super slow… but she is improving very quickly. She is going to physical therapy and seems to like it. We definitely like it better than being at Mary Free Bed Rehab hospital. She will continue to have issues with walking throughout the duration of her treatment due to the chemo. It will probably be kinda an up and down situation, where she will go back to being unable to walk again, but then back to walking and repeat cycle. While I would rather her be running around all the time, I’m just thankful shes starting to walk at all. After she gained 7 lbs in 7 days… my back was really starting to hurt carrying her everywhere! And yes, its true. She gained 7 lbs in 7 days. She was on an appetite stimulate and it sure worked. She started out on 2 pills a day, and it didn’t take matt and I long to cut her down to a 1/2 pill a day and she was STILL eating more than matt. It was a constant cooking/eating bananza at our house. I had visions of this discover channel show I watched years ago called ‘Hewy, the 100lb toddler.’ Thankfully Lola’s name is not Hewy, and she does not weigh 100lbs. Lola has one more clinic date (tuesday) for this phase of her treatment. That means one more time of being put under, and one more spinal tap to have chemo put into her spine. We are hoping the chemo did its job and got any of the nasty leukemia cells that may have been hiding in there. Lola is struggling with insomnia. We are hoping that its getting better, but its really hard to tell because we are exhausted and sleep sound, and when lola is awake during the night she just lays there. I usually have no idea she is awake until I have to get up to help the screamer (listen… if my younger daughter chooses to scream all the time, I can choose to call her the ’screamer.’ don’t judge me.:) ) with whatever random thing she decides she needs my help with at 3 am. Its usually something like she doesn’t know what to wear the next day, or wondering if the doors are locked to keep animals out of the house. Really REALLY important stuff. I’ll walk into the girls room and Lola will just be laying there wide awake and you can tell that she has been awake for a longggg time. Breaks my heart as she will be so tired, but just can not sleep no matter what. It really sucks. Everything about Leukemia sucks. It sucks that she is on 1 chemo med at home every day, yet has to take 11 additional meds to deal with the side effects. But… without the meds where would we be?

We are working on getting back to life. It is an incredibly strange feeling to be in the situation we are in. Even if you take the leukemia out of the picture, it is still strange. We had the next 2 years of our lives planned, and this was not part of the plan!! So we are now needing to look for jobs, a place to live, I had to buy a car, we need to figure out what to do as far as school for the girls. And did I mention that Matt promised Lola a PONY?!!!!! And did I mention how excited Lola is so there is just no way of getting out of this one! So we are looking for a house in the country with some land, and getting a miniature horse or two, a goat, a few chickens and living the country life. Sounds good to me. I’ll be the girl in cow boy boots and a flannel shirt with the world’s biggest belt buckle. You’ll totally think i’m a cow girl until you see my horse thats only 30 inches tall. haha… really mini horses are so tiny!! Is this my future!??? At least I’ll look good in a blazer. Anyone know anything about mini horses?

Here’s some pics from the last few weeks- the first ones are from hen Lola was in the hospital the last time and it was literally the worst week I have ever had in my life, and then are some happy ones to make up for it!!

I had to take a picture of her hair. She now has maybe 15% of her hair left. She really looks darling. Lola at clinic passing time playing ‘angry birds’ on my phone. This kid has an addiction issue to that game. But… when your at clinic for 5 hrs at a shot, there’s just not much to do. Look!! My baby is back!! Aren’t these kids cute?!! Can you tell which one of the girl has received crazy amounts of stuffed animals in the last month?? Craft time for the DeYoung girls!!

We made the outrageously bad decision to go to the icecream store the day it opened for dinner. It was like 20 below zero out (well… maybe not quite that bad..) and freezing!! We bundled up and off we went!

What are you guys staring at? I don’t see a kid rolling around on the ground anywhere….. and if there was a kid rolling on the ground it sure wouldn’t be my kid. My kids are perfect.
Everyone needs a foot long hot dog.