August 27th Update

One of the things that I did not want this blog to become is a depressing destination. Like I mentioned in the previous post, we need to spend our days enjoying life while we can. That applies not just to our family, but to all of you as well. I do think it was important for the previous posts to convey the gravity of our situation, but I have no intention in making this blog a eulogy. On the contrary, this blog will continue to celebrate Isabella's life. We will continue to provide updates as appropriate and other pertinent information to spread more knowledge about pediatric brain cancer. With that said, I can't guarantee there won't be the occasional rant or stress release post ;) .

And with that, we do have some updates.

In the previous post, I mentioned that we felt that our doctors have given up on Isabella. However, this wasn't completely true as her primary oncologist is actively working on a few treatment options. We'll have to weigh these options soon and even though we don't quite know what we're doing yet, we take some comfort and relief that things are being done.

Since most of the options involve chemotherapy, we have scheduled Isabella to have another mediport put in her chest. The mediport is a central line that allows medication to be injected directly to the blood stream and also facilitates blood draws without having to poke her arm over and over. This is such a shame, too, since we just had her mediport removed in April.

Finally, Isabella starts up school again next week and she is super excited to go back. Today, we met with her new teacher and other school staff just to go over some of the precautions and logistics for Isabella to go back. Julianne and I have some pretty big apprehensions about Isabella in school, but I must admit that the school is doing an amazing job of accommodating her, and for that, we are extremely grateful.