Helm's Deep

tanya77:

healingelena:

Day 292 - September 16

I’m not sure I know how to write this post. The images you see here of Elena smiling and being cute are just the ones we have the heart to share. In fact, we are feeling devastated this weekend. Elena’s cancer is back, big time.

The doctors discovered some blast (cancer) cells in her blood samples upon our check-in on Thursday which was a very distressing sign. So on Friday morning, we took her for yet another spinal tap and bone marrow aspirate which sadly revealed that the cancer in her marrow had shot up from 2% in August to 20% now.

Basically this means that chemotherapy is definitely not going to cure her and that her cancer may soon overwhelm her. Had this have happened 6 months ago, we would have had no other options at this point. However, we have one last lifeline left. The more we learn about this new treatment CART19, the more promising it sounds and hopeful we are about it’s potential in curing her.

Elena’s been getting super heavy chemo all weekend to attempt to stave off an explosion in cancer cells so that we might bridge this gap of time to make it to the CART19 treatment. We’re waiting on the doctors to successfully genetically modify Elena’s t-cells in the lab to become cancer-killers, a process that takes about 4 weeks. At that point they’ll be able to infuse them back into her body. In the meantime… in the meantime… in the meantime… we wait… and wait… and wait… while life in the hospital floats by in what feels like super-slow motion. This is going to be a long, long month.

The boy in the photos, Kenmore, was at CHOP with his parents on Saturday. They were super sweet folks, and had donated a meal to the Ronald McDonald Room for all the families stuck on the Oncology floor. He was near-impossible survivor of neuroblastoma a couple years ago, and was immediately drawn to Elena and vice-versa (I’m convinced that cancer kids communicate at a frequency that the rest of us will never understand). The two of them spent a long time playing together and then hugging each other while we all watched with a certain sense of awe. It was very beautiful and touching.
You guys, this is the daughter of Yvynyl, a source for many of us of great music. http://yvynyl.tumblr.com/ Whatever Higher Power you prayto/believe in, send a thought up for Elena. Maybe she can get to the other side of this.

What she said. God, I really frelling hate cancer.

Source: healingelena