What a week!

- We got the final pathology reports today and Ella's Wilm's tumor was a stage 1. It makes no difference in treatment or prognosis but it makes Greg and I feel better knowing it was caught early.

- Ella is going to have her first dose of chemo tomorrow and then we will be able to go home (we hope). Greg was supposed to go back to work tomorrow but a friend was willing to trade days with him.

- The Chemo shouldn't be too harsh on Ella's body, the biggest side effect is constipation. She may loose her hair around week 9 and it won't effect her reproductive organs. She will receive it as an out patient once a week.

- It has been a challenging few days getting Ella to cough and deep breathing (so she doesn't get pneumonia) getting her up and moving so her bowels will get moving too. Each cough, each step, each boost in the bed brought tears a few days ago. Today Ella was climbing out of bed on her own, still is wobbly, but the way she's moving is amazing- I can't imagine an adult showing us their kung fu panda moves 5 days after major abdominal surgery!

- Yesterday getting Ella to eat or take Oxycodone was a challenge today she's doing great.

- She is back to being her normal, funny, loving self!

- The child life specialist brought Ella a care bear with a port in the same place Ella has her port. E hadn't noticed her port until we were at the elevator one day and she saw a little girl getting chemo through her port. Ella mentioned that the girl didn't have her tubes going into her arm and so that opened the door for conversation right there at the elevator about how she gets her medicine through a port, being able to point out Ella's port in her right upper chest. When we got back to the room we showed Ella the care bear and she was very cute playing with it and using the syringes to give the bear pain medicine. She also put band-aids on the bear in all of the places that she herself has band-aids. Today we've advanced to giving the bear chemo.

- We are using the words "cancer, Wilm's tumor, chemotherapy (chemo)" with Ella. She of course doesn't have the same connotations as we do about these words. So the real challenge was getting me to be okay with them. At the beginning of the week I hated being given books called "Caring for your child with Cancer" and that "Make a Wish Foundation" brochure brought me to tears.

- Ella will be eligible for Make a Wish Foundation after she's done with her treatments.

- The Dr that told us the "good news" about Ella's pathology reports on Friday did it in such a bad way that Greg and I both thought she had really bad news for us. She came in with such a sad face and said she had the preliminary reports and she wanted to talk to us about them, then when we said "let's step into the hallway" she said "um, let me go find a more private place" Then when we got into the conference room she said "what were you told" and made Greg go through everything then she said "well the good news is there is no lymph involvement..." and we were just waiting for her to tell us the bad news, but it didn't come.

* Biniyam is just the most awesome baby! A few weeks ago I would have told you I wished he would cry sometimes, It concerned me that he doesn't. Ha! He's a blessing, God knew what we needed an amazingly peaceful baby. And it winds up if I'm not there putting a bottle in his mouth every 3 hrs he does let us know. The other day we got Ella into the chair with many tears, then they needed to look at her epidural and then we were waiting for them to take out the epidural and then they she got a skin tear when they removed the dressing... so I was scootching in front of her for over an hr, holding her, and Greg was occupied with her too. Biniyam was happily playing on the bed, then I looked over and he was asleep, then an hr later I look over and he's playing again. Such an amazing baby! He also has been giggling a lot more this week, something we needed. It's also become clear that he recognizes us as his parents. He gets so adorably excited to see us.