Update 01/04/2017

Happy New Year!

We had a wonderful holiday break.  Katy was out of the hospital for Christmas and New Years.  In fact, she is still home with us now.  We tried to spend as much time together, in enjoyment, as we could.  Katy had some things she wanted to do while home so we have been checking them off the list.

Christmas was wonderful.  On Christmas Eve, we went out to eat and then drove to Kearns in order to drive through Christmas in Color, which is a Christmas light display set to music.  Katy didn't have the energy to walk around downtown to see the lights, so this is what we did instead.  We came home and opened a couple of gifts.  Everyone went to be pretty early except me.

Christmas Day was great too.  We had a wonderful morning of opening presents, eating brunch and enjoying each other.  A huge thank you to the Santa Hat Society for providing us with lots of beautiful gifts.  We are so lucky to have been the recipients of such a wonderful organization.  It truly helped make our day special.  Katy and I hung out in the afternoon, while Jim and Emily went to see Moana.  For dinner, the Moos Family joined us to celebrate Christmas in the company of good friends.

As a Christmas present for Jim, Katy and Emily, I gathered all our old holiday photos together and put them in iMovie.  I set them to music and gave them the DVD.  It included shots from when Jim and I were kids, all the way through Thanksgiving of this year.  The DVD includes Thanksgivings, Nutcrackers, Christmas and New Year Photos.  You can view it by following the link on the right.  A warning though - it is 17 minutes long, so not all of you may be interested in watching it.

New Year's was quiet.  Emily went to a friend's house for the Eve.  Katy, Jim and I did have a great home made dinner of crab and shrimp spaghetti.  Afterward, Jim and I watched a movie.  Katy was tired so went to bed early.

I made a photo album which includes lots of fun photos from this Holiday Season  (click on it on the right sidebar).   Hope you enjoy seeing some of the fun we had.  Also, I posted our Christmas Letter right before this post, so you can peruse that as well, if you like.

Now onto some health news.  Katy had an aspirate last Wednesday.  We received the final results yesterday. The 2nd round of chemo did decrease the leukemia significantly, however, it did not decrease it enough to move forward with bone marrow transplant.  When Katy was diagnosed, she had 19% leukemia cells in her bone marrow.  After the first chemo treatment that number decreased to 9%.  Now, after the 2nd chemo treatment the percentage has decreased to 0.5%.  In order for the bone marrow transplant to have the best chance of success, she needs less than 0.1% leukemia in her bone marrow.  The risk of the leukemia returning is just too high with any higher percentage.

So, Katy only has two options.  Supportive care or trying to decrease the leukemia again, with a 3rd round of chemotherapy.  She has chosen the latter.  She will start chemotherapy on Monday, January 9.  I know it should seem easy to decrease the leukemia by only 0.4%, but with each round of chemo, the risk of the leukemia becoming resistant to treatment increases.  There is also serious inherent risk with each round of chemo, including life threatening infections and complications arising due to damage to her organs.  However, we still have hope that she can beat this cancer.

So we are hoping that 2017 is the opposite of 2016.  Beginning with a lot of challenges, but ending with happiness, health and some normalcy in our lives.

Here's hoping your 2017 is filled with love, peace and good health.  Hug and kiss those closest to you.  Cherish all your moments.  Sending love to all.

Christina