Welcome to our life!!

Well it's definitely been a challenging week for our little family and everyone close to us. I just wanted to write out this note for all the people who know a small part of what's been happening w/ Caleb but might be interested to know more of the details on the situation.

As many of you know Kyle was diagnosed with the same cancer (retinoblastoma) in his eyes when he was just 5 months old and it was so bad in his right eye that they had to remove it right away before it spread. It was also in his left eye but it was small enough that the doctors were able to freeze it off and he has been cancer free since the end of his chemotherapy as a little guy! They were always told that the chance of him getting this cancer was the same liklihood as getting sick in any other way and that it wasn't hereditary...or so we thought. Turns out that if he carries the gene for retinoblastoma his chance of passing it on to his children is 50% and unfortunately we are on the sad side of that statistic. (side note to Gayle: i hope I got that information correct, but feel free to add or correct anything I may have been mistaken on!)

Now onto my other guy: Last Wednesday we had an eye appointment set-up for Caleb thinking we would just give him regular check-ups starting at a young age as a precation. We woke up thinking it was just going to be a "get-in, get-out, get on w/ your day" type of appointment...boy were we about to get a slap in the face! The doctor dialated Caleb's eyes and looked at them close up with a light and then he left the room w/o really saying a word, but I didn't think anything of it until he came back with a look on his face that any parent knows is not a good look to see from a doctor. He told us that Caleb's eyes has extra white reflex, which basically means that they glowed (like a dog's eyes do in the dark). He said he was on the phone w/ Children's hospital in Seattle and that they were expecting us there as soon as we could get there. Completely in shock I broke down in the hallway out the door and we sat in the car together crying and praying that this wasn't happening to us.

At Children's the only way they could fully diagnose that it was in fact a tumor was to take him and put him under anesthesia. When the nurse came to get Caleb from us and saw how hard I was taking the fact that he was being taken from us she made sure that I got as many kisses on him that I could and when I broke down again she turned back with my sweet boy in her arms and love in her eyes and said "i'm going to take care of him as if he were my own." Cue the tears from both of us! After they were finished w/ the procedure we met the doctor in that stupid little room you see in the movies where you know that only horrible news is coming your way. He verified that it was in fact a small tumor in each eye and that he would need to start chemotherapy soon. The good news was that on a scale from A-E his level was only a B and that in a human retinoblastoma has the most success rate of any cancer!

We were able to have a few "normal" days as we went home that night. When my parents and brother and sis-in-law heard the news they selflessly took a plane home early from Disney World to be w/ us during this time. Kyle's whole family was also w/ us at the hospital the day before. What would we do w/o family?!

Yesterday Kyle and I, along w/ Kyle's parents, met w/ the oncologist who will be treating Caleb's chemotherapy treatments and we loved him!! He talked to us on a level that we could understand, basically telling us that within a few days they will insert a port in his chest that the medicine will go into, and chemo will only happen twice a month which they will do at the hospital which is a huge answer to a prayer i didn't know i had... I was scared to death that we would have to do everything and we don't have to do ANYTHING except love on our little guy! The goal of each treatment is to shrink the tumor each time so it's at a size where it's safe enough to freeze or lazor off and the chance of his vision remaining is 90%!

It's been an absolutely horrible week, but each day gets easier for us, although we still have moments of pure heartache and exhaustion. Throughout this whole process I have learned to put all my trust in God who already knows how our story starts and ends which helps ease the pain and scary unknown.

Please continue to lift us up in prayer throughout this journey as we learn to give it all to Him!

Love to all!! <3 <3