Has it been that long?

Wow! I didn't realize it had been so long since one of us posted. Zoe is doing great here in Eugene. She has a wonderful teacher that comes to our place 4 times a week for an hour of school. This is free by the way, supplied by the school district until she has completed treatment. She loves it, and is learning to tell time, count money, the months of the year and much more. Summer is pretty much over, but while we had some sun we really enjoyed it. Grandpa has a big field out his back door, and Zoe's running laps around it every chance she gets, and dragging one of us out to play hide and seek or soccer with her. It's also been so wonderful to be back near our friends. The play dates and "normal" life activities have helped to center us all. As far as Zoe is concerned she's a normal kid who just got sick, but is doing so much better now. She's happy to be feeling better...plain and simple.

I've been on a bit of an emotional roller coaster. Trying to come down still from all the trauma drama that we were living every day not to long ago. It's just going to take time I guess. So, Houston turned us down, but we're in contact with a doc at Mass General in Boston now. I'm writing up (from my point of view) Zoe's complete medical history, chordoma history, extended family medical history, and medication list for him. I'm also gathering all medical records that exist on her to send to him. It's safe to say that I'm about half way done, and I've been working on this for a month already. He will review everything and then decide if he can treat Zoe with proton beam in Boston. Obviously, we are very hopeful that this is it for Zoe. It's not my ideal task at the moment. Reliving every illness that she went through (that I went through with her), pre and post diagnosis is not something I really want to be doing at this moment in time. Ideally, I would be pretending that none of this ever happened right now, and putting my fingers in my ears and singing "lalalalalalalalala" as loud as possible. That's just not an option....this is such an in your face disease and there is no option for denial. So.....I'm doing it and praying every day along the way that this is another source of power that I have in the fight to save my daughters life. It's turning out to be a very long book. Such an important document for Zoe, and when she is old enough I will give it to her to read and keep. She will beat this cancer.

Thanks to all our family that's helping us with the family med. history. The info has been invaluable.

Love,
Colleen