Translate This Page To: Spanish German French Italian Portuguese Norwegian Brought to you From FreeTranslation.com Give a gift in honor of this child. April Dear April fan, The following is a paper written by April's friend Aaliyah for her school Reflections contest. She won 1st place and the paper went to the council level. She won first place again and moved on to the State level, where she won first place again, and is now going to compete at the national level. It's pretty sweet. "SIGNS OF COURAGE" UPDATE: 1-11-08 I haven't looked at the website in quite awhile because I try not to think too much about the details of April's illness, but we were at the 5 year anniversary mark of being cancer-free and I just wanted to let you know how grateful to God we are for that. Thank you for all your updates you did on April during her year and a half of chemo treatments and illnesses. She's a healthy 11 year old in 5th grade chasing boys and texting on her cell phone way too much and getting in trouble at school for talking too much and I wouldn't change a thing about her because she is alive!!! And there were times I thought we'd never see first grade, much less 5th! UPDATE: 5-31-05 I got a call at one minute before 5 that April's report shows the "thing" was nothing!!! PRAISE GOD!!!! PRAYER DOES WORK!!! Thank you for all your prayers. The report has a bunch of big words and the surgery nurse could only read it to me and not answer any questions, but she said congratulations and when I asked what we needed to do next, she said "Go to the mall and have fun!" So...it's all good and God is good and please join me in thanking Him for his goodness and healing my April once again. UPDATE: 5-30-05 April came home from the hospital about an hour ago! Praise God for that! She is feeling pretty good...walked around outside a lot this morning...and is eating good. Keep praying for those results from pathology...we should hear from them tomorrow or Wednesday hopefully. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers! Sherrie Sunday 11PM: Hi everyone! I came home for a few hours and thought I'd update everyone real quick. April is supposed to come home tomorrow (Monday) around noon or later. She is feeling pretty good...walked (almost ran!) down the hall today. She got her IV out because it messed up and they don't think it's worth the trauma to put another one in her so her only pain relief is now tylenol with codeine. We'll pray that's all she needs. She got her morphine pump off this morning. She also got her bandage off so now just has the steristrips over the incision. It looks pretty good...(unless you're grossed out by such things like I am:) but everyone keeps saying it looks good, so... whatever! We took her for a walk last night in a wheelchair and ended up walking outside way out past the hospital through all the gardens around the med center campus. She enjoyed that and put her feet in every fountain we came to and made lots of wishes with all my vending machine change! She's had lots of visitors so she feels very loved and cared for! Thanks for all everyone has done...prayers, visits, cards, calls, food, balloons, gifts, and well wishes...but especially the prayers. We are expecting the results of whatever this is by Wednesday. Everyone has a theory of what it could be...but God is in control and if it's not good, we'll deal with whatever it is with all the strength we get from friends and family. But I have a strong feeling He's already taken care of it and it's not going to be anything to be worried about any more. I'll let everyone know as soon as I find out and can get to the computer! Love to all and thank you!!! Sherrie UPDATE: 5-28-05 Quick update: Overnight was pretty good. Her fever was 101 but that's normal. She's thrown-up several times so they pulled her NG tube since it is doing no good. She has gone pee-pee several times so that's one sign they look for that she is recovering well. She still has the epidural in but they will pull it at 4:00 today. She is going to get Torval for pain plus she still has the morphine pda thing she can push the button on when needed. She's in pain at the incision sight and some "referred pain" in her shoulder. Another doctor said she'd be shocked if we heard from pathology before Wednesday because of the holiday! But then Dr. Puff said that dr. is always pessimistic and she was going to go see if any of her buddies are in pathology today that could rush it up for her. April is in pretty good spirits. Her throat hurts so she's been writing me notes. She wanted to know if her whole spleen was gone and she wanted to know when people are going to start coming to see her! So visit when you can!!! She's even smiling a bit! Love to all! Sherrie UPDATE: 5-27-05 April's surgery didn't start until a bit after 3:00 p.m. She was done about 5:00. Her liver (where the original tumer was) has grown back beautifully. The spleen was attached to the liver, but that is normal, so Dr. P just peeled them apart. When Dr. P went to remove the nodule, it "popped out" like a little ball. This kindof stunned her so she called April's oncologist who told her to remove a margin around where it was just incase any cells spilled out in the process of it popping out. The nodule was red in color, and was solid, and mushy. It has been sent off to pathology and with the upcoming holiday, we may not have a result until Tuesday at the earliest. Please continue to pray that the nodule is not cancer. April did not need a transfusion, she only lost about a cup. She did not have to go to ICU. She is in a private room. She had an epidural last night and was on a morphine drip. She was resting very comfortably and was alert at times. She is a strong, brave little girl and we should be so proud of her! Keep April, Sherrie, Mark and the rest of the family in your prayers, and pray that we get CLEAR results very soon!!! Thanks and have a blessed day! Lori Bell UPDATE: 5-25-05 UPDATE: PM April's surgery is scheduled for 11:00 AM tomorrow (Thursday) at Children's Hospital, 4th floor West side. We still don't know how long it will take. They will take the "thing" immediately to pathology so we should know tomorrow what it is. After more review, they have determined it was on the CT scan from last October but it was very faint. So, it has grown from that to what it is now. They still say it's possible for it to be something besides a tumor, but it's definitely not a cyst or granuloma. They mentioned different types of fibroid lessions and something with a weird name that is just bone marrow that got deposited in the spleen. They also said during her last surgery something could have happened in that spot that the surgeon did that has become irritated or something like that. Sorry...I'm not the medical kid. He said it is pushing through the wall of the spleen but so far has not come out of the spleen and it still has no blood feeding into or out of it so that is good news. He suspects it will be a very slow growing sarcoma since she had a sarcoma last time, only this one would be better because last time it grew extremely fast. I'll have Lori or someone email you as soon as we know. Thanks for having faith with me and continuing to pray for April. We told her about the surgery this afternoon and she was a little upset and wrote a note that she "hates her cancer life" but then she went to a watergun fight and started thinking like a kid again. Love to everyone! Sherrie Thanks to everyone who helped me get the word out about April yesterday. Her ultrasound is at 10:00. Please say a prayer at 10:00 and think about this verse that Renee's mom sent to me: Mark 11: 23-24 "Have faith in God! If you have faith in God and don't doubt, you can tell this mountain to get up and jump into the sea, and it will. Everything you ask for in prayer will be yours, if you only have faith." I really feel like God is going to show us how powerful He is today! Thank you for praying to Him about April! Sherrie UPDATE: 5-23-05 Hi everyone. We are once again asking for major amounts of prayers to go up for April as we have hit a valley in her road to being healthy. We won't know how deep this valley is until the end of next week, but here's what is going on. Last week, I asked you to pray for her CT scan. I haven't sent out an email about the results on that yet because I was waiting on some more information. At first we were told that the CT scan was clear, except for some scar tissue on her spleen. When we asked more about the scar tissue, we were'nt comfortable enough with the answers we got from radiology, and neither was one of April's oncologists. So we were told we could have an ultrasound just to make sure it was indeed scar tissue. Yesterday, we went in for the ultrasound, and while looking at the scar tissue, they found something else in her spleen. They called it a nodule and said they won't know what it is until they do surgery to remove it. At first, they told us they would probably remove her whole spleen just to be on the safe side because they wouldn't know if it was a tumor until they biopsied it. We didn't want it biopsied while it was still in her because they told us in was encapsulated just like her other tumor was, which means it's kind of sealed up and we don't want to mess with it and cause it to possible rupture and spill cells everywhere. They also said it is not vascular which is good because it more that likely is not getting into her bloodstream. We also found out that her original surgeon, Dr. Puffinbarger, who pulled off the miracle with her liver tumor, has just returned from maternity leave and we requested her to be the surgeon again. They have told us that it's possible the nodule is something called a granuloma which is some gel like junk tissue that could have formed from her spleen trying to filter all the chemo through her. This is what we need to pray for, that it is a granuloma because then they would just remove it and everything would be fine. A granuloma and a tumor apparently can look the same on a CT scan. They looked at all her past CT scans and said this nodule was definitely not there in her last scan in October, 2004. Unfortunately, this is the first time we've had to wait 6 months to have a CT scan and her doctors are wishing we had had one 3 months ago so we would have more info about this thing. Right now, it is just below the surface in her spleen, it's the size of a large marble, and Dr. Puffinbarger says she will be able to remove it and enough margin around it but still leave a lot of her spleen in her. The most positive way this thing could go would be for the thing to be the granuloma. But her dad asked the doctors what they thought and they said based on her history of having a tumor, they are presuming this too is another tumor. Steven asked them if that means the chemo didn't work and they said it's hard to say. Then he asked them what we would do if it is a tumor and they said they don't really have a plan because April is the first person in the state to have this type of cancer so they don't have any other cases to go by. They also said we would have to weigh the risks of putting more chemo in her because at some point, the chemo itself could kill her. Or we could just keep monitoring her more closely with scans, and if she grew more tumors just keep taking them out, presuming they would be operable. So...the outlook if this thing is a tumor doesn't look too good. But, as we all know, God is still in control of this whole thing and His will is going to be done whatever His plan is for April. Please implore Him with all your heart to let her be healed. I can't stop thinking of the alternative, but I am trying to remain positive at the same time. God can heal her, please spend the next few days begging Him with me to do that. Her surgery is scheduled for Thursday, May 26th, her first day of summer vacation. Thank you for your prayers and feel free to send this to anyone you know or put April on as many prayer lists as you can get her on. Thank you! Sherrie UPDATE: 4-30-05 Hi everyone! Thanks for your prayers for April's scan. Keep on praying because her scan has been postponed until May 11th! (long story) My dad's results aren't quite known yet either but he is feeling a little better. Thanks for your prayers for him too. I'll let you know April's results on the 11th. Love to all! Sherrie UPDATE: 4-26-05 I know you are always keeping April in your prayers, but I would appreciate you asking a special blessing on her for this Friday, April 29th. She is getting her first CT Scan in 6 months and we want it to be clear. Plus, she's already making herself sick thinking about getting the IV in her hand, so please pray that she will not be so worried about that. Thanks! Also, my dad is having tests run this week for a health concern so please remember him in your prayers. Thanks! Sherrie UPDATE: 10-11-04 Thanks for your prayers! April's CT scan was clear of any signs of cancer returning and her echo looked good too although they didn't have the official results of it before we left.. Her IV was, as usual, nerveracking. They told me to try giving her benadryl next time and maybe zoning her out a little. She gets herself very worked up...but she's still a very brave girl with a very healthy report from the doctor. Thank you God!!! They also said since she's been on a 3 month CT scan schedule for a year, she can now go to the 6 month schedule! That was great news too. Our friend Bridgett I've told some of you about got her bone marrow transplant on Saturday and everyone said she did great. Keep her in your prayers too. Thanks everybody! God bless!!!! Sherrie UPDATE: 7-21-04 Thanks for all your prayers and patience hearing back from me. (Email has been down since I sent the request!) April's CT scan was clear!!! They actually scanned her abdomen, chest, and pelvic area this time, usually they only scan abdomen and chest so she's definitely all clear. We had been told before that she can't numb her skin with emla to get an IV but when we got there the nurse said she had good veins so she got to use emla which helped a lot. Next scan is in October! We also saw our friend Monica and she looked great! She had a relapse and has to travel an hour and a half every day to the clinic to take chemo in pill form. It's experimental but so far it's working great. Our friend Bridget is not doing so good though. She has relapsed and is back in and waiting for a bone marrow transplant. She had grown back all her hair and now has lost it all again. Pray for both of these people please! Take care and we love you! Sherrie UPDATE: 7-20-04 Hi there... Marcia Leigh (Sherrie's sister) here... Sherrie said yesterday that her e-mail seemed to be down so I thought that I would just let everyone know that April's CT was clear! Thank God! Everyone's prayers are appreciated as always!!! Love, Marcia Leigh UPDATE: 7-19-04 We would appreciate your prayers for April today. She is having a CT Scan at 11:00 and we want to ask God for clear results again. This will be her first scan without her port in, so she'll have to get an IV and she's not done very well with those in the past, so please say a prayer for that too. I'll let you know the results when we get home this afternoon. She seems to be doing great! Thanks for your help! Sherrie UPDATE: 5-17-04 April is doing great. She's had two CT scans since her treatments ended and they have both been clear. She got her port out last month and has about an inch of hair already! Thanks for asking about her. We've all been busy with April's new baby sister, Jennifer. April is a great big sister to her, too! UPDATE: 11-05-03 April finished her last chemo treatment on September 16th. That evening, when we got home, many friends who love April had organized a surprise party for her in our front yard. We came around the corner to see a huge moon bounce set up, streamers and signs everywhere, and about 50 people standing in the driveway cheering for April. The look on her face was priceless! We called it the "Goodbye to Chemo" party, "April Day", and "Goodbye to Shiny" party because she calls her bald head "shiny". It was a very special evening for a very special girl. We thought we had said our final goodbyes to our angels (nurses) at Children's, but by that Saturday, April had a fever and we had to go back in. The good news is, she never really got very sick after they put her on antibiotics. The bad news is that we were in for almost another week because they wouldn't release her until her counts went back up. She had 3 more blood and platelet transfusions also. In October, she had a series of tests: CT Scan, Ultrasound, Kidney Function Test, Heart Echo, Urinalysis, Blood Counts. These were done to set a "Post-Chemo" baseline. One October 16th, they called us back in to let us know April had officially completed her treatments and was free of cancer. THANK YOU GOD!!!!! She got to "ring the bell" at Children's which is a tradition for those children who finish their treatments and get to stop chemo. All her nurses and doctors came out to watch her ring the bell, and they sang her a song. It was very special for all of us. I can't tell you how many times I've walked by that bell wondering when or if April would ever ring it. It still has not fully hit me that we are finished with chemo. That was such a big part of our lives for the past year. But I am starting to realize it more and more as I see April's energy level return and her chemo-related pains in her legs and ankles becomming less frequent. She is in 1st grade again with Mrs. Manning and she is doing great! She has a the slightest amount of hair that you can see if she is in the light just right. Her goal is to have more hair than her baby sister by the time the baby is born in January. It will be a close race! I can't thank everyone enough for your prayers to our awesome God on behalf of April and the miracle that has taken place in her little body. She is a child of God and He has held her in His hands and taken care of her. Please continue your prayers that all future tests will show no signs of cancer. She will have CT scans every 3 months for a year and a half, then every six months for three and a half years. After 5 years, she will have them once a year for the rest of her life. In about 6-9 months, she will have a small surgery to remove her port. Also, please continue to pray for all the children who are still fighting their cancers. There are many of them. Please pray for their families and doctors and nurses. And please pray that God will comfort the moms and dads who never get to see their babies ring that bell. We've known some of them and they are wonderful people going through unimaginable grief. THANK YOU Children of the Promise for providing this space so that friends and family can keep updated about April. This is a wonderful service and you are all very special to me. THANK YOU GOD FOR TAKING CARE OF MY GIRL! SHE'S CANCER-FREE!! Love to all, Sherrie Horton UPDATE: 9-26-03 Welcome Home to April day. 9/16/03 April arrives home from children's its her last chemo treatment, we all where there to say bye bye to chemo. Can you believe its all over. Thank you god !!! AND THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR YOUR PRAYERS. We love you April!!!!!! UPDATE: 7-21-03 Hi everyone! Sorry I haven't updated you yet on April's bone scan. She had her legs scanned Thursday because she has had so much pain in them the past month and a half or so. We wanted to rule out the cancer metastisizing (or however you spell it) in her leg bones since I've read of that happening. She was waking up at night tossing and turning and begging for more pain killer. She usually never asks for pain killer so I knew it must really hurt. Her legs seemed to hurt all over, but mostly around her ankles. We've dealt with the ankle pain all along, but it's never been this severe. So, the bone scan was done and showed no signs of cancer in her legs! Thank you God! The pain was more than likely a side effect of chemo that has always been there but has really bothered her more than usual lately. But, in addition to that, they did find a stress fracture on her right fibula. She doesn't even say it hurts there, so I'm grateful it's not bothering her. But..no more jumping on the trampoline for awhile! I guess I shouldn't be surprised because I'm always thinking how little and brittle her leg bones look. She's gotten so tall, and now that we're in summer weather and she wears shorts a lot, it has really become obvious! Today is Monday, and her daddy took her in for a 5 day treatment. This is course 12 so hopefully we are within 2 months of being through with all this chemo! Oh, and her ear infections have finally cleared up so she can get back to her swimming! So...she's feeling pretty good right now. I just pray this chemo doesn't bring back such severe leg pain. Her last CT scan and heart echo were both clear. There were some ambiguous things on her CT scan of her chest so we are having it re-read. I'll let you know what happens with that. Well, that's the update from here. Hope everthing is going great for all of you. Start thinking about a big party because we are having one when April is through with her chemo! Thanks for all your prayers and suppport. Love you! Sherrie UPDATE: 7-05-03 Sorry it's been so long since I updated everyone! April has had 2 chemos since the last entry. One was a 5 day. It would've been pretty routine but the doctor messed up the orders for her anti-nausea medication and she didn't get any for 36 hours, then got very sick. When I found out why she was so sick, there was much yelling. I've now been apologized to by about every doctor in oncology and they've changed their whole system of how orders are written because they messed up so much with April. Guess I'll have to start being on top of everything that is written about her and given to her again. I had gotten used to everything being routine. Anyway, she was all better and went home after that with lots of energy. We went on a campout and she went to Discovery Camp and we did lots of things. She did need a blood transfusion somewhere in the middle of all that, but I'm getting pretty used to her needing blood or platelets in between chemo. Mark and I were out of town when she came down with a double ear infection. She took antibiotics for 4 days with no results. The 5th day was a chemo treatment day, so they gave her a shot of very powerful antibiotics in her port and she was much better within a few hours. She's learned to go to the bottom of the pool and has been swimming everyday, so I think that had a lot to do with it. That chemo only lasted one day! We didn't have to spend the night for the first time. Her next CT Scan is scheduled for Monday, July 7. She will also be getting a heart echo on that day. Please pray for good results on both. This will be her first CT scan since dropping one of her most powerful chemos, but I'm pretty confident everything will be fine. If that was the only chemo working, she would be in pain again by now. I am a little worried about her legs. She has had lots of severe pain with them lately. I've been reading a lot about bone problems associated with chemotherapy so I need to ask her doctors about that. One minute she'll be running around fine, then later she's in so much pain she's begging for tylenol. I'll try to be more timely with the updates. Thanks for your prayers and concern! Happy 4th of July! UPDATE: 5-13-03 Hello to everyone still keeping up with us! Well, the in-between visit to Children's turned out to be just high fever. It climbed to 105 at one point, but never tested positive for anything identifiable. So...just a side effect of chemo. It wasn't pneumonia. She ended up having as much fun as she could on Easter. She and her nurses dyed Easter eggs and she got lots of Easter baskets to open. She wore her Easter dress and hat and we took lots of pictures. Last week, she went in for her 2-day treatment. I wanted to get out on Thursday in time for her Brownie meeting, so we went in early on Wednesday so that we could be out by 4 PM on Thursday. But God had other plans! Our chemo got started late due to pharmacy mixups, so by the time we got started with her 24 hour infusion, it was 7 PM. I knew we wouldn't get home until 8PM Thursday...too late for Brownies...so I was disappointed. Then, as it turns out, if we had gotten out at 4, we would have been home as a tornado was bearing down on our neighborhood! Thank goodness it veered north, but it was still a mile away from our home. But instead of being crammed in the bathtub freaking out with the dogs at home, we were out in the hallway at the hospital watching it all unfold on TV. This is the 2nd time April and I have been together and away from home, by some weird coincidence, when a huge tornado came within a mile of our home! Thank you again God! A big huge thanks to Briarwood Elementary School, Whittier Middle School, and Norman North High School! They have all had big fundraisers for April lately and we are very blessed because of the results. Thanks to all of you who worked so hard on helping us. Today's quote from my friendship calendar (thank you Melissa!) was very appropriate: "The Lord's goodness surrounds us at every moment. I walk through it almost with difficulty, as through thick grass and flowers." --R.W. Barber By the way, I would appreciate your thoughts on the pros and cons of April repeating 1st grade. Her very loving teacher has some good pros for it. Please pray for a good decision concerning this. As always, thanks to all! We love you... UPDATE: 5-06-03 Hi everyone! Here's a new link about April and her favorite things that I know you will enjoy. Elizabeth, please add this link to her Children of Promise page if you can. Thanks!! Sherrie http://quiltsoflove.com/quilt/aprilN/aprilN.html UPDATE: 4-18-03 Instead of going to the Spud Dance tonight as we had planned, we are now going in to get admitted. Her fever is 103 and her counts are zero so we're going in. She was throwing up quite a bit this morning and that's unusual for her so I hope we're not about to deal with something new. Please pray that we won't have to stay in a long time and that she doesn't get any mouth problems. Mom, she has told me twenty times that she wants to wear the sundress you got her and purple hat to church for Easter. But it will take a miracle for her to get out in 24 hours! But we'll pray for one! Thanks for prayers, Sherrie UPDATE: 4-14-03 Hello again fans of april! We just got home today from her 5 day chemo treatment, and she is in a great mood. She spent the past few days planning exactly what she was going to do when she got home. Here are the top 5 that she made me memorize: 1)Run from one end of the house to the other yelling "I'm home! I'm home!"; 2)Wrestle me to the floor and kiss me over and over; 3)Take a long bath 4)Watch the Disney Channel; and 5) play with Max and Boomer. We've checked off 4 of the 5 in the hour we've been home! Except the wretsling didn't go well because Boomer attacked her face as soon as we hit the floor. Anyway, I know you are all wishing you could be me right now and see that huge grin on her little bald-headed face as she runs around screaming. It's really cute! Now she's running through the house saying "I wanna go to Mazzio's!" So, I better go. Thanks for all your continued prayers! We love you very much! Sherrie and family UPDATE: 4-08-03 April is now the bravest 7 YEAR OLD in the world! The week of birthday celebrations was great! Thanks to all of you who thought about her and made her birthday week special. My sister (Aunt ML to April) flew in for the week from Mississippi. We surprised April by taking her to the musical Cinderella. She dressed like Cinderella and got to go to the cast party and get a special tour backstage. They let her sit in Cinderella's carriage, try on the glass slipper, and see all the costumes from the musical. They were great to her and I can't thank them enough for making her feel like a real princess. April is feeling great. We postponed her chemo until this week so she wouldn't be in on her birthday. Now we still haven't gone in because her counts are too low. She doesn't mind at all! But, I wish we could at least go to school during our time out of the hospital. She's having a great time with her birthday gifts and of course her dogs! We go in for her blood counts again April 9th and if they are back up, we'll start her 5 day round on Thursday April 10th. A special thank you to April's school, Briarwood Elementary for their fundraising efforts. They are currently having "April Showers" to raise money and we think that is so sweet of them. Everyone at her school is awesome! Especially her teacher Mrs. Manning who always brings April right back into her classroom family every time we are able to go to school. Thank you for all prayers, thoughts, cards, and everything else you do! She's getting better all the time! UPDATE: 3-26-03 Praise to God! On March 25th, April had her second CT Scan at Children's. The results were clear, so nothing appears inside her that shouldn't be there according to the scans. She also had a good report on her kidney function test and her blood counts are up so she is no longer neutropenic. Thanks for all your prayers, and thank you God for another miracle! April is feeling great lately and anxiously counting down the days until her 7th birthday. Even as I write this she is pointing to yet another thing on TV that she wants me to make sure and get her for her birthday! She got the best birthday present today in my opinion, but when you're six, I guess toys are more fun that clear scans. But not to mommy! We're going to try to go to school tomorrow. We love you! Sherrie UPDATE: 3-13-03 April finished the "bad" round of chemo early Tuesday morning, then we had to stay a few more hours for a blood transfusion. Two days later, she is still doing great except for some jaw and ankle pain. But so far so good! Thanks for your prayers. Maybe we'll make it through this time without having to be readmitted. Thank you so much to my Oakcrest church family for organizing and planning the bean supper for April. I saw friends from church, April's school (Briarwood Elementary), my best friends from high school and their families, my parents, Mark's parents, sister, brother-in-law, and aunt, as well as many others who just love April. The fellowship was great. April's spirits and energy were high. She had so much fun hugging and being loved on, and getting to feed baby Savannah was a great boost to her spirits. She loves babies!!! And I think everyone got more than enough to eat. Thanks to Harrigan's Restaurant for donating and fixing the food. One of April's friends is named Sawyer and it was her dad who organized the donation. The fund raising part of the evening was more that I could ever have expected. I was in the balcony when they announced how much was raised and those around me heard me gasp! then shed a few tears at how much God can provide. I know how much you love April and want to help us and you have done so much. I know the Lord will richly bless you for taking care of my little girl. As I said in my thank you note, my child has cancer, but I haven't felt this much at peace in a long time. I love you all! Sherrie and family UPDATE: 3-03-03 Dear Friends, We have gotten so much support from our church family at Oakcrest. And now they have organized a benefit for April. Here are the details: Benefit Bean Supper for April Nowlin Saturday, March 8 5:30 - 7:30 (Come and Go) Oakcrest Church of Christ Family Life Center 1111 SW 89th Street Oklahoma City (on 89th between Penn and Western) Harrigan's Restaurant is donating the food. Thank you Oakcrest and Harrigan's for all your support! April will have her 7th treatment this Thursday and Friday, March 6-7. This is the odd number treatment that makes her so sick. So please keep that in your constant prayers for her. We will try to make it to the bean supper the next day if she is feeling up to it. I'm hoping that close to chemo she will just feel tired, if anything, and not sick. We are going to school this week and getting lots of homework finished and books read. April has delivered most of her girl scout cookies and has enjoyed sneaking into the boxes and eating a few. (Yes, I replace them with new ones before I deliver them!) Thanks to all of you who supported her cookie efforts. I think she's had fun with it. During this chemo, Ms. Jade and the rest of her Brownie troop are planning to come to Children's and see April. We are both looking forward to that. Thanks for checking this site. We'll send more updates soon. We love you! UPDATE: 2-23-03 April's 5-day treatment finally began on February 13. It was delayed because her platelet count was too low. We decorated her room with LOTS of Valentines decorations and she got a whole bag of toys and candy donated to the kids from Walmart. (Yes, we need more toys! Does anyone know an easy way to add a large addition to our house for all of it?) Anyway, she was fine with this treatment. She's gained some weight back and is looking much healthier. For those of you who haven't seen her, the hair that didn't fall out is getting longer and very curly so it really looks like she has a lot more hair. But she's only got 2 eyelashes on one eye and 5 on the other so her face is looking more like a chemo kid. She had to have another blood transfusion before we could leave on Monday. We slept late Tuesday, but Wednesday and Thursday she was able to go to school. Her wonderful teacher Mrs. Manning really knows how to get her back into the swing of first grade, even though we are only there every once in a while. I got to teach her class while she went to a funeral, so I think April enjoyed that. Her 189 boxes of Girl Scout cookies arrived while we were in the hospital, so we've been busy delivering those. Most of them were sold to nurses and people in the Clinic at Children's. One of the highlights of her week is her visit with "Miss Amy", who is my good friend Amy Hakimipour. We went to Whittier and she got to play in her room. Then Amy came over and played with April. That is always a big deal to her and Taylor both. On Wednesday night, we got our church picture taken and April wore her hip hat, which is a really cute pink knit hat with a very long blonde wig attached to it. She looks really cute in it! Thank you to the Leukemia Society for buying her that. On Thursday night, she got to go to her Brownie meeting. They were talking about Greece and she tasted Gyro meat and loved it until she found out it was lamb. We went back to the clinic Friday and found out her AGC is already dropped to zero! We usually have 5-6 days before they drop, but this time they dropped on the 3rd day out of chemo! I hope she didn't get exposed to something already. So, here we are isolated at home for the next several days until her counts go back up. As far as her everyday changes, she is getting very set in her ways. I guess because everything changed so drastically for her that she is a control freak about other things. She won't try anything new when it comes to taking her meds, getting her injections, etc. She gets very upset if we try to change even the slightest thing. I can tell all of this is still upsetting her emotionally, even though for the most part she is pretty calm. She is extremely funny when she feels good. Mark and I have often commented that chemo must make you more funny because that's what it seems like. We've had several roommates at Children's who are in worse shape than April, so it really makes me thank God all over again that her prognosis is so good. We have an 80% survival rate, and no one we've roomed with has that much so far. We also don't have a tumor to deal with since hers was completely removed, and many of our roommates still have tumors that can't be taken out yet if ever. Please pray for all these children with cancer. Their stories are just like ours. There lives were normal, they thought their child had a common virus, then suddenly they were living at Children's hospital and learning more than they ever wanted to know about cancer. April is so strong and brave about everything she has to go through. She has so much fun learning how to follow in her Aunt ML's footsteps as a nurse. Her favorite things now are betadine pads and alcohol pads. She cleans all these lines and ports the nurses have given her to play with. They even let her clean her own sometimes and she's very thorough about it. She has me sneaking around the hospital looking for betadine and alcohol pads laying around! But it is a way to have fun if you have to be in the hospital. Her next CT scan should be in the middle of March. She had an echo done on her heart this last visit and it looked fine. Thanks for all your cards, calls, gifts, prayers, and support. We love you all! Sherrie UPDATE: 2-08-03 Well, everything was going much better than I could have ever expected, and then came chemo round #5. After chemo #5, which is the 2-day infusion of the worst/strongest drugs, April came home and slept for most of each day. Within 24 hours of coming home, her jaw hurt so much that she couldn't eat much. That's a common side effect to the Vincristine and we've dealt with that before. She got some painkiller and was eating a little bit the first couple of days, then the side effects of the Doxorubicin kicked in. That's the worst drug she gets. She was extremely tired and she had absolutely no appetite. Not for anything, anywhere, at anytime. And believe me, we tried everything! For the next 6 days, she was more alert, but still only ate a bite or two of food each day. Then on Friday, January 31, she woke up with a fever and I knew we were going to be going in. Her counts would be at zero by then, and her fever was over 102. So, sure enough, they admitted her and started the heavy antibiotics. Which caused the inside of her mouth to be covered with white stuff called thrush. Which went down her throat and caused that to hurt so that she could barely swallow water. So they gave her an anti-fungal to get rid of that. All this time, her counts were so low that she couldn't leave the room, her fevers kept spiking to 102-103 range, and she was eating nothing. She had to get one transfusion of blood and two transfusions of platelets during those first few days. On Sunday night, she went to sleep and (with the exception of a few potty breaks) she didn't wake up until 8:30 Monday night. When I asked why this happened, I was told her body only had enough calories to keep her heart beating and her other organs functioning, but not enough calories for her to be awake! By this time, she was down to 35 pounds. She had weighed 40 pounds just a week and a half before when she finished that round of chemo. They finally decided to give her nutrition through her port IV. They hadn't wanted to do this until then because getting fed through IV is hard on your liver and there is more risk of infection to the port when you use if for food. Then, they told us the antibiotics had killed the bacteria in her gut which caused her to have microplasma (a respiratory infection), so they added more antibiotics! The microplasma caused her blood to have cold agglutinins, which means it clumps up because it's cold and they were having to heat up her blood samples every morning before they could run lab tests. Then on Thursday, they told us she had rota-virus, which is the stomach bug to most people, but to a chemo child, it's apparently equal to an 8 day stay in the hospital! So, they say that's what started the fevers and everything else that happened. But they also said she could have picked up the rota-virus after being admitted and something else had caused the fevers. She also had a cough all this time. So finally, we came home today. She still is not eating by mouth, so we have to get home health care to come out and hook her up to another IV for her nutrition. We have to do that every night for several days because they have to wean her off the IV nutrition. She still won't eat anything, and the nutrition takes away her appetite. So...we are home for 3 days, then we get admitted on Tuesday, Feb. 11, for her 6th round of chemo...and a lovely 5 day stay in the hospital for that! But at least she tolerates the even rounds better than the odd rounds. Keep those prayers coming! I know you will. Thanks to all those who are reading about her on this web site and praying and emailing me. You are all very special to me and to my family. I miss you! Love, Sherrie ADDED: 1-24-03 April will be 7 years old in April. I want to let everyone know that April's chemotherapy treatments are going well. Thanks to the prayers of many people, she is tolerating these with hardly any side effects. She had her first CT Scan since her tumor was removed at the end of December and it came back clear, so nothing else is growing and the chemo is working. Please continue your prayers for April. She is strong and brave, and we thank God for bringing our girl back to us one day at a time. I will keep you updated on her recovery through this site.