Wow six months!!

Well I'm not sure if there are a whole lot of followers here since it's been so long since my last post. I really do hope you have been able to follow Jill's story on her Facebook page. It's so much easier for me to update her status on there. As far as Jillian goes, she couldn't be doing any better! Like seriously, she is amazing. We reached a year a few weeks ago. She is still showing no signs of any leukemia cells and is finally in maintenance. She's back at school and is feeling so great. The next two years will be a bit of a hassle because she's taking meds that require planning ahead but we are so happy to do so. I sit in disbelief about how well she has done this past year. Last year was the worst time of our lives and to be honest this month has been one of the bests. To see her kicking cancers ass like she is is so inspiring. She is one tough cookie that's for sure! Please continue to follow her sorry on face book at Jillian's journey. I am so happy I haven't needed to update this as often as I have before. It means she's doing fantastic!! Also thank you to Valarie King who made a donation to Jillian's Paypal account! Merry Christmas and happy Holidays to everyone! 

Update!

Hi everyone! I hope you have been able to follow Jill's story on her Facebook account. It's easier for me to post daily there. Please know that Jill's Paypal account that's attached to this blog can still receive donations if anyone wants to donate to Jill. Don't forget about her fundraiser coming up this Saturday. It's going to be great!! Jillian is doing amazing still. We had a few hiccups the last few weeks and were inpatient for a while but now she is home and hopefully will be home for the next few weeks. Maintenance is almost here!! I feel like we have gone through so much and are finally almost in the home stretch. Keep those prayers coming everyone! Ill try to post more often but please know you can get daily updates from her Facebook page listed in a few posts below!! 

Latest fundraiser

Hey everyone! Here is jillys latest fundraiser. Please come if you can and purchase some bar b q tickets. They can be purchased at the boys and girls club in Santa Maria or contact me and I can arrange for a drop off. Thanks so much! Jillys doing great this week. She has a lumbar puncture on Friday in Stanford, other than that it should be an easy week. 

Facebook page!

Hey everyone. So I started a Facebook page for Jillian. It's easier for me to keep updated with daily things. If you want you can search her page Team Jilly Beans Fight with Leukemia and like her page to get daily updates. Jill is home right now taking chemo at home. She's doing great and we recently shaved her head because most of her hair was gone! Ill leave you with her latest picture. Keep those prayers coming!

Waiting for counts... Again!

Hey everyone. So low counts and a low fever has caused Jillian to be inpatient for the last two weeks. We are still up in Stanford waiting for her counts to get up to 500 so we can start her chemo again. Her numbers right now are at 120. She actually contracted a bacteria that has been giving her diarrhea for the last month or so. She has been on antibiotics for two weeks treating the bacteria but she is still showing symtoms. She's been going so much that she has lost some weight but we have managed to stop the loss and maintain where she is at right now. Which is good. She's still looking pretty skinny and its hard to see her like that but she's eating and that's all that matters. 

Her mood is great still. The last week has been just a waiting game in numbers so she's been very active in the room. Since she's in isolation she can't leave the room which is harder for me I think, but I have been keeping her entertained with activities and games. I didn't come as prepared as I normally do because this stay was so unexpected and we were ambulanced up. But we are managing with what we have! 

We are waiting to start re-induction 1b which consists of regular weekly chemo and a lumbare puncture that we will hopefully get done by the end of this week. She's still doing great with her chemo and still has managed to hold in to some of her hair. It's bizarre to see how far we have come and how well she is doing. We couldn't be happier! 

We have been at this for almost 8 months now. It's a little like what I expected but also so much different since I didn't really know what to expect. Being inpatient can be so depressing at times too. You can really tell the parents who are new diagnoses and I feel so bad for them. Even though its been only 8 months I feel like such a veteran when it comes to leukemia. I want to tell them that it gets easier and better but you can never predict that. We are just so lucky that Jillian is doing as well as she is. But at any time she could turn a corner and things can change so fast. I am always so grateful for her progress right now but can never rest easy. We have done the calculations and if her treatment continues to go on without any interruptions then we should be in maintenance on November 4th. Seems is long away but to be honest these last 8 months flew by! So keep those prayers coming. We need to make counts ASAP so we can start her back up on chemo. No more waiting game!! Thanks for being patient with me everyone! Hope you are all well. 

Weekend fun

I wanted to share an amazing picture my sister captured of Jillian yesterday when we were at the park. We had such a fun day playing and being goofy all day. It's great to see her so alive and playful. We head to Stanford on Monday to get some chemo done and check labs. My wonderful oldest best friend forever April is coming with us so we will have someone to entertain us! :-) hope you enjoy the picture. Jill is having a great weekend!!

Doing amazing, as always!!

Well after lots of guilt from my husband for neglecting my blog I am back and ready to update. I am hoping to post regularly now since we are home for a while. Lots has happened since my last posts. Jills doing amazing, as always, and we are home with the family. It is so nice to be home and be able to be with both my babies. We are getting back into our regular routine, although i do think William is missing hanging out with his grandparents so much! I don't know what we would have done without them these last few months, we are so grateful to have such amazing parents. Thank you to you all!

So Jill got through the worst of her treatment. The three months spent in Stanford (off and on) were tough, really tough. We battled lots of side effects from her chemo, nothing too serious, so we got lucky. Home sickness was at the top of our list. But we had each other and we got through it. She is so happy to be home and is currently in Re-induction phase. Which is similar to her induction phase and she is doing pretty good so far. We had a little scare yesterday from one of the chemos she received. She had a reaction that caused her to get a 104 fever. It spiked super quick so it was a little scary. This is the first time she has had a reaction to one of her meds. She comes down with symptoms but not reactions. So we did the usual CBC, cultures and tylenol. Her counts came back great, probably the highest that they have ever been so if she did have an infection then her body should be able to fight it. If her counts had been low then we would have been sent to Stanford. Her oncologists have allowed us to get her treatment done here at home and we have 30 days away from Stanford, as long as she doesn't come down with anything, so we were a bit freaked that we were going to have to head up there. So her numbers came back great so I was able to take her home and watch her here. I kept on eye on her all night and her tempt never went back up so I held off on Tylenol. Since then she has not gotten a fever which leads us to believe that it was just a reaction to the chemo. Its good and bad. Its good because we know what it is but bad because she could react again to the medicine. Over time she can get more and more reactions to the meds so pray that she responds to it good the next time she gets it!

She has been doing really well at home. We have managed to keep her pretty healthy. It would be great to never have to be inpatient again, but the odds of that are pretty slim. But we are going to do our damnedest to keep her healthy! Her hair is finally growing back! She is still holding on to a decent amount and when the rest of her hair grows back I'm hoping she wont look so bald! She still is not having any issues with her hair which is great. This kid is so amazing and is happy all the time. Her hair isn't something that will bring her down! We are so lucky that she is such a terrific child!

This is where i want to give a shout out to a great organization. I think i may have mentioned them before in a post but i wanted to talk about them a little more again. Jacks Helping Hand which is based out of San Luis Obispo has been such a great organization that has helped Daniel and I out so much! Mary who runs the organization has been truly amazing to us. As of now Daniel and I have managed to pay off all our medical bills with all the donations we have received from all you amazing people and from the help of Jacks Helping Hands. Im going to post a little bit of personal information because i really don't care if people know some of our financial business. Because Daniel works for such an amazing company we are so lucky to have really good medical insurance. We love working for ExxonMobil! So as far as our medical bills go it costs us a total of 5 thousand dollars a year to treat Jillian's cancer. No matter how much her treatment costs we will always only pay 5 thousand dollars a year. Unfortunately Jillian got diagnosed in December of 2012. So our insurance hit us with 5 thousand for the month of December (one month of treatment costs well of 5 grand a month) so after January of 2013 we had already racked up ten thousand in medical bills. Quiet daunting don't you think?? Well because we know so many amazing people and Jillian is loved by so many we managed to raise about ten grand from donations and fundraisers. You are all amazing!! We had to use a lot of the money for expenses and living while we were going back and forth to Stanford so much. We were able to use about 7,000 on medical bills. Maybe more too. Well the amazing Jacks Helping Hands helped us with the last bit of our bills this year and we are now officially debt free with medical bills!!! Its such a relief to not have to be so stressed out about how we are going to pay for Jillian's treatment and we can just treat her. So THANK YOU to everyone who donated to JIllian to to Jacks Helping Hands for being so amazing! We now can focus on saving the five grand we need for next years medical bills. Thank you thank you thank you to everyone!!!