Celebrating Brayden...6 months & counting!

Last night we decided to surprise Brayden with a big celebration. It was a little tricky; he's still on strict isolation from his Oncologist's orders. Dad was SO helpful in doing the running for me since I don't get out of the house much anymore while taking care of Brayden. He picked up a surprise cupcake-cake ("Brayden's our MVP", football theme, of course!), some little balloons for us to blow up, and some streamers. Dad hid the loot and after showering and changing clothes from work germs, took Brayden for a fake ride in the truck. Meanwhile, thanks to Nini's help, we QUICKLY decorated and put up the posters everyone made for the Chick-Fil-A night.

I also made another special poster for Brayden...one that I wanted to use as the centerpiece for his celebration. Brayden's 6-Month Journey...Look How Far You've Come!! I went through and recapped for him how much he's gone through in a visual sense. We definitely wanted him to grasp just how much he's accomplished in this Journey to fight Leukemia in this 6-months. We wanted to celebrate him and make sure he knows how proud we are of him!

His reaction was so sweet. He was so excited and so thankful and I loved the hugs he kept giving me. The evening had its tough moments while hearing Brayden recall a lot of the emotional details of those first 24 hours: the ER visit, the fear, the life-flight to Arkansas Children's Hospital, the diagnosis, the days spent in PICU, then the Oncology floor stay and visually realizing how different his life would soon become. He remembers so much more that I wish I could protect him from, but hearing him recall it, he's so positive and I'm so thankful for that. We've always taken our lead from Brayden, yet try to approach everything as optimistically as we can. Everything he endures is in an effort to keep him safe, healthy, and free from relapse.

Seeing the counts of all that he's done was really more than I think any of us realized. He took pride in those stats...well, some of them he'd rather forget! We went through his beads and it was almost too much seeing how many he has. He wore them as a badge of honor and kept reminding us, "this is just the first 6 months! I still have 3 years!"

So here's to Brayden! You are such a strong boy and we are SO proud of you! We love you so much and want you to remember how much you've endured and how hard you've fought. Here's to all you've accomplished in your 6-month Journey:
- 129 Beads of Courage
- 132 doses of Chemotherapy from 8 different drugs
- 68 blood draws
- 1,748 pills taken
- 11 ACH Clinic Visits
- 8 different AR Children's Hospital stays for a total of 31 days
- 4 days in PICU
- 26 Highland's Visits
- 1 Life-flight on Angel-1
- 6 Chest X-rays
- 4 Catscans
- 1 Chest Tube
- 2 Echocardiograms
- 1 EKG
- 13 Spinal LP's w/chemo and sedation (yeah! dizzy meds!)
- 8 Bone Marrow aspirates
- 2 yucky foley catheters
- 1 platelet transfusion
- 2 blood transfusions
- 1 port surgery
- 8 PICC line dressing changes (this # seems like it was WAAAAY higher with the tape nemesis!)
- 224 PICC line lumen flushes with van-hep & saline
- too many alcohol wipes and clorox wipes to count!
- 2 proud parents and many other friends and family who love & support you!!!!!