Christmas Break Concerns

This post is #152 in a year-long series ... Through this series of posts I plan to share our family's experiences during our 17-year-old daughter's year-long battle with brain cancer, which began in February of 2008. My desire is to process through the events of that year from the perspective that a decade of time has brought ... for myself, really. But if you'd like to follow along, you're welcome to join me.

December 29, 2008

We enjoyed some good visits with our extended family over Christmas break that year.  Spending time with her cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandparents was one of Hannah's favorite things to do.  When we traveled to northern Arkansas, my parents rented a room at a local hotel so all the cousins could have fun together in the swimming pool.  The younger kids had a great time ... but Hannah didn't feel well enough to swim or even get in the water.  She sat in a chair beside the pool and watched them play for awhile, then was ready to head to the room and go to bed.  This was not like her at all, and our feelings of foreboding continued to rise.

You'll detect none of that concern in my email from a decade ago ...

Just a quick update today....we are at Children's Hospital right now waiting for a platelet infusion. We will return on Wednesday for chemo and platelets and then again on Friday for more platelets. Hannah has felt pretty good for the last few days, and we were able to travel to Mountain Home over the weekend to celebrate Christmas with Jill's family. Jill's brother's family will be coming tomorrow to spend a few days with us. We are looking forward to spending some time with them, as they are missionaries overseas and we've only seen them once over the last 3 1/2 years.

Thank you so much for your continued prayers for our family. We've been so blessed by all of the phone calls, cards, letters, gifts, meals, and emails .... we can never express our gratitude enough. God is so good, all the time!

Jill and Brad