There Has To Be More

For a while now, I have been thinking that The Erickson All-Stars blog is purposeless.  Sure, it is a wonderful space to update on Emilie and other family news, but there just has to be more.  There has to be some "good" to be done outside my little family's sphere, so here is some "good" that you all can help us with.

This is sweet Matthew.  Matthew is a fellow LPCH patient who has been battling ALL since he was 2 months old.  Matthew is now 22 months old and is in the fight of his life.  You see, he relapsed around the same time as Emilie and was planning on receiving a bone marrow transplant.  The cancer has been relentless despite numerous chemotherapy treatments and NK cell therapy at St. Jude Children's Hospital.  He and his family will be headed to St. Jude's again for a bone marrow transplant.  I am shamelessly asking that you consider making a donation to this family.  Matthew has two sisters and one brother and his parents are self employed.  Having a child with cancer and dealing with treatments, clinic visits, prescriptions, travel, etc. can be financially overwhelming for a family.  Please consider making a donation.  Any amount can help. Perhaps skip your lattes for a week and donate your savings.  Maybe pack your lunch  for a week and send your savings to Matthew's family.  Please, please help!!  You can donate and read Matthew's story HERE.

This is precious Kayla Rose.  I first learned of Kayla's malignant brain tumor on the same day that we learned of Emilie's relapse.  I was in clinic waiting for Emilie to be moved to recovery after her bone marrow aspirate reading my email when our Purple Peep, Bobbie, informed me of Kayla.  My heart just broke knowing that another child was diagnosed with cancer.  So unfair, I thought and then a couple hours later I learned of Emilie's relapse.  Kayla was diagnosed in November of 2011 and underwent brain surgery here in the bay area.  She is on her second stint at St. Jude Children's Hospital receiving chemotherapy treatments.  Both of her parents and her cute little brother are also in Memphis.  Again, I am going to ask that you consider making a donation to help support this family.  Both Kayla's parents are in Memphis yet the mortgage and other bills still have to be paid in addition to other medical expenses. I can't even imagine.  Please, please consider helping out this family.  It happens to be Kayla's 8th birthday today; you can read her story, wish her a happy birthday and perhaps make a donation HERE.

Please consider helping these strong, brave and courageous families as they travel the road that is called cancer.  Thank you!

All Systems "GO", We Have NK Cell Infusion 1717 Hours CST

Today was the big day!  Emilie had her NK cell infusion at 5:17p.m. today.  The tech arrived with the NK cells in a small cooler ready to go.  We asked him a few questions regarding the harvest and processing.  The harvest was plentiful:  285,000,000 cells were harvested which is 4 times more than what they expected to harvest.  The tech was very excited to have processed such a large amount of healthy NK cells. The processing took approximately 10 hours. The actual infusion was 10mL over three minutes.  Emilie was on the monitor for two hours post-infusion in the event of a reaction.  Thankfully, she did really well and did not react to the cells. The first image above is the infusion showing the actual syringe with NK cells.  The second image is our NK team: "NK Master" Carleton, Nurse Miranda, and Nurse Wanda.  The last image is post-NK cell infusion recovery.

We are so grateful that God gave our doctors and researchers wonderfully creative and smart minds and that He gave us this opportunity to further eliminate any remaining cancers cells.

We have very happy hearts today and are singing this song.

My favorite Veggie Tales song, The Thankfulness Song"

I thank God for this day,
For the sun in the sky,
For my mom and my dad,
For my piece of apple pie!

For our home on the ground,
For His love, that's all around,
That's why I say thanks every day!

Because a thankful heart is a happy heart!
I'm glad for what I have,
That's an easy way to start!

For the love that He shares
'Cause He listens to my prayers,
That's why I say thanks every day!

Go NK Cells, Go!

Tomorrow is the 7th day of December.
Tomorrow is exactly 6 months from the date of Emilie's diagnosis (7th of June).
Tomorrow is the most important part of our St. Jude treatment.

Today, I had the NK (natural killer) cell collection process which turned out to be a piece of cake; a four hour piece of cake.  The procedure filtered every ounce of my blood and my NK cells were "harvested".   The cells will be processed tonight and tomorrow morning with Emilie's infusion being tomorrow afternoon.  The infusion is actually about 5-10mL of cells that will be pushed through her line in about three minutes.  Pretty easy!

My NK cell understanding is this...Emilie's NK cells did not see her cancer cells as "enemies", so they were allowed to grow crazy in her body.  My NK cells are just different enough to see her cancer cells as "enemies".  So, if there are any cancer cells that survived the chemo attack, my NK cells will seek and destroy them.  Go NK cells go!

We are very grateful that this treatment was available and that we had a parental match.  God is so good!
Please pray that 1.) the NK cells will identify, attack and kill any leftover cancer cells and that 2.) Emilie will not have any adverse reactions to the infusion.