We are home!

We just arrived home after a stressful morning. It is a huge blessing that Sarah was able to come home before Christmas, but she was sad because her port had to stay assessed which is an inconvenience for her and require a daily home visit from a nurse to give her antibiotics. Although once she arrived home she was happier from playing with her sisters and almost forgot she still had her port assessed!!

It is amazing how God uses our children to speak to us. This morning we were trying to wait patiently for our discharge and Sarah said "Daddy, I really don't care about presents for Christmas anymore, I just want to be with my family." It reminded me that God ordained Jesus to be born into a family and that first Christmas was centered on family. A mother/father and child. May we all slow down enough to see how important our family is to us. I pray God doesn't send you to the hospital for a week to see that! Maybe He can use us to show you. :)

Merry Christmas anyway!

We pray you all have a wonderful Christmas as we celebrate our Lord who came to earth to be like us in order to take away our sins. This same child born in Bethlehem is truly the Prince of Peace and the One we rely on to guard our hearts and minds in Him. I pray we all admire, adore and praise Him!

We Can't Escape

We are still in the hospital waiting for a confirmation on what bug Sarah has. She is feeling fine now, but the doctors need to know exactly what bug it is in order to send us home safely with the right IV antibiotics. So, we now hope to be out of here on Wednesday! (It is starting to get really close to the 25th now!)

Another Day

The doctor just let us know that it will be one more day in the hospital. They have one more test to finish and it could not be sent over the weekend so they will not receive the results until tomorrow. At that time, they will know if it was a "contaminated" test result or the exact germ.

The good news is the second culture went the entire 72 hours without any germs so whatever it was, it is gone. The fruit of the spirit of endurance is much needed at this time. I am a little frustrated in the process. We know they have to be super conservative in dealing with bacteria infections but this is still not fun.

So we are on 38 days and counting for the number of days in the hospital in 2010. A record I never want to come close to repeating! :)

Blessings and Merry Christmas

P.S. I thought you might enjoy the picture of my beautiful women.

Update on Sarah

Thanks for all of your prayers and encouraging emails/phone calls. Sarah is doing ok. She is not really showing any symptoms of an infection. She does not have a temp and the diarrhea has almost stopped. They believe some of the diarrhea is from the powerful antibiotics.

The good news is the second blood culture is not showing any infection for 48 hours. Her stool culture is still showing negative to any of the nasty stuff like ecoli/ salmonella etc.

The problem is they still don't know why the first blood culture showed positive and it takes a couple of days to isolate this germ. Soooo that means we will be in the hospital until tomorrow or Tuesday. This of course is really cutting it close to Christmas and we are not finished wrapping presents!!

As Anne wrote the other day, this trip has been different. We have experienced a few unique opportunities to share His goodness, and love on others in the hospital. Since Sarah is not showing any signs she is easy to take care of except she is starting to get agitated because she can't leave her room. This is the biggest prayer request is to give her peace until they release her to walk around the floor and see other people.

Another Hospital Stay

Sarah had a low fever Wednesday night and she still had a bit Thursday morning, so we called the clinic. They had her come in for routine IV antibiotics since she still had some fever and they did a blood culture. Every thing else looked fine so she came home. Around 2:45am that night or morning, my dad came knocking at our door. Sarah's oncology doctor had been trying to reach us and both our phones were on silent! So she called my dad hoping she wouldn't have to resort to the police coming to knock on our door - that was the next step!

Sarah's blood culture from earlier in the day came back positive with a germ or bacteria or something in her blood, and they needed her back in the hospital right away as it could be serious.

So Jay took her to the ER in the Children's Hospital in Plano and they admitted her. She will have to stay until they can figure out what the germ is that the blood culture is growing.

Meanwhile, she is on some heavy IV antibiotics that cover a lot of different germs, but they are giving her some bad reactions of swelling, itchiness, and diarrhea and cramps. The diarrhea started at home though so they are testing that too to see if it could be part of this bug.

We will be in the hospital for a few days, so please pray for Sarah and our family. We know that God wants us there for a reason and we feel strongly that there is a ministry opportunity and some way he wants to use us to show His love and bless our family. So, we are excited about that.

Thank you for your prayers.

ps. The ironic thing is that today was Sarah and Hannah's well-checkup for turning 8 and 6 years old. Of course I cancelled Sarah's, but Hannah went and all is well for her:)

Sarah's Birthday

Today was Sarah's birthday. We are sorry we did not get a chance to send out a reminder but we were traveling this weekend and last night we had the Christmas Party for kids going to the cancer clinic at Childrens.

Sarah had a great day and we do not take these birthdays for granted. We praise God for giving us another year with Sarah even as difficult this year has been. We rejoice at her birthday but also as we get toward the first anniversay of her diagnosis, we also have painful memories. As we look back at Sarah's pictures last year from her birthday, you can already see she was starting to look pale and sick. Of course, it took a month to find out exactly what was causing it but as we look back we know these were the first signs of the cancer.

As Paul tells us in the Bible we are to forget the past and strain toward the future. This is so true for us as we get closer to the end of the year and the 15th of January when our life was turned upside down.

We celebrate today and as you can see from the picture, Sarah is full of joy and thank God for that!

In case you missed it

We had a great time as a family serving Children's Hospital.

On the radio today

If you would like to hear Sarah on the radio today, we will be on from 12-1.

The station is 103.7 Lite FM or online at http://1037litefm.radio.com/.

Blessings and Merry Christmas

Unofficial video of the parade

I thought you would enjoy our short video of Sarah in the parade. We will post the official version from WFAA when we receive it. Blessings and Merry Christmas!