If You Haven't Noticed, We Don't Like Him At All! :)

Great News today! Brent is amazing and has aced his GRE test! I did not know it was possible to get 100% but he did! Congratulations Doodle, you ROCK! Alex and Lukas are very proud of you! I have a feeling Valerie is glowing with pride tonight too!

Little Snail- A Poem by Tom

Little snail oh little snail, I have to say I turned a little pale,

when your news came my way, I started to pray.

Happy times, are in my memory set,

so trust in those and do not forget.

You fight an enemy you can not see,

so sharpen your fangs and I'm sure it will flee.

There may be times you're feeling quite frail,

just use your poison beautiful snail.

Do not retreat inside your shell,

I know it must be hard, when you feel so unwell.

Keep your chin up and fight, one day at a time

feeling down is not such a crime.

Little snail oh little snail, I've no doubt you will crawl out the other side victorious,

Now wouldn't that victory, simply be Glorious.

Deep Breaths, Snail

Tuesday turned out to a be big day for our little snail. The cat-scan results came back showing a couple spots of pneumonia however the doctors said they caught it really early so they changed her medicines to go after it and told her she needs to walk a lot more. Then Valerie had an allergic reaction to the new antibiotic and had a rash from head to toe etc. Honestly it is a miracle that she has not reacted before, she is severely allergic to penicillin and we have always been scared when she got sick because she was so limited in what she could take. So, they changed her meds again and got the reaction under control. Please pray she reacts ok to the new drugs and her pneumonia clears up quickly.
Valerie decided to take things into her own hands in the afternoon or rather the fabulous hands of Ian the hairstylist. She is a fuzzy snail now and making use of the wonderful hats and such that people have sent her. Mom says she looks cute because her beautiful eyes look huge now! Valerie is upset about it because she thinks she really looks like she is sick now but glad she made the choice.
The final results from the spinal tap came back and there are no signs of the leukemia in her spinal fluid or brain! This is amazing news!
I have not mentioned it before but in the middle of all of this, Brent is studying for his GRE or entrance into grad school test. I understand very little of what Brent does mostly because he is a math genius economist and I can barely do Alex's homework. I do understand this, he has a 4 hour test today, Wednesday, that he has put a lot of pressure on himself for. We all know he is brilliant but it is a difficult test and since he has a few distractions right now we would like to pray for peace and clarity while he is taking his test. We know he can do the rest!

O2 for the Snail

We have lots of numbers and tests to update you on today. Valerie's preliminary spinal tap test came back good and they are running some more tests. Valerie has been put on oxygen because she was not getting enough and they are doing a chest ray and a cat-scan to make sure she is ok. Her WBC's were 200, RBC's at 8.9 and platelets only at 10,000 so they gave her platelets today. She is feeling better today because of the oxygen and platelets are just fabulous!
For anyone in Denver, Cathryn has set up a Team Snail for the Light the Night Walk on Thursday night. Visit

http://pages.lightthenight.org/rm/DenverL09/TEAMSNAIL

Good Luck Ladybug For the Snail

They say that when a ladybug lands on you it is good luck. Well, this ladybug tried really hard to land on Valerie. Sorry for the bad picture but I took it with my phone. This ladybug landed on Valerie's 8th floor window!

A Tropical Snail Focus

I think it was the first day we were here but Brent told Valerie that when this is all done she could pick any trip for them to go on. She chose Kauai! Brilliant idea for many reasons but it has given her something to focus on in some bad situations like the inside of an MRI or during a lot of pain. So we took the tropical theme to another level! Here is a pictures of her room:

Tropical everything! Bright colors, the digital frame filled with 700 pictures of everyone and everything she loves and all of the cards taped to the wall.

Snail's "Vegetarian" Snack

Yesterday was a really hard day for Valerie. She had the spinal tap and the bone marrow biopsy at the same time and all of the pain meds they gave her made her really sick. She had to spend 4 hours laying flat on her back after the procedures but thankfully she was able to sleep for most of that time. All of this took up a good portion of the day and she was also able to sleep pretty well last night.
We are in waiting mode this weekend because we will not get the results of either test until at least Monday. Today has been a good day so far with no real events to speak of except she is getting 2 Twilight "not so vegetarian" snacks today. She will need red blood cell and platelet transfusions about every other day now. We are so grateful for the people who do this out of the kindness of their hearts or for college beer money, either way it is keeping her safe and she feels so much better afterward.
I head back to Colorado again tomorrow so my update will be late in the evening.