Beetdigger Tournament

Prom-A Night to Remember!

Another "Weak" Week

3-22-09

Another week has passed and I am slowly regaining my strength……slowly!!! This is the frustrating part for me. I can only eat “soft” food in small amounts so that limits the amount of energy I can get from the food I eat. I can’t tolerate anything that is sweet so jello, popsicles, and milk shakes are out of the question. How I long for my taste buds to return so that I can enjoy eating food again. I am doing better at keeping my food down, but it seems that I lose one meal a day! Hopefully that will stop this week so that I can get stronger and return to work at least part time!

Ron and the girls remain so supportive and helpful to me during this time! Ron is always there to encourage me when times are tough, he also helps me with making sure that I eat and take any necessary meds. Savanna is helpful and does her best to make sure that I have everything I need. Marie also helps out in any way that she can. Yesterday she drove me to her lacrosse games and carried my chair and camera for me. It’s sad to think that I don’t have enough energy to carry my chair and camera. I did love getting outside in the nice weather and just sitting on the sidelines watching Marie play lacrosse and Savanna coach her team. It was a fun afternoon for me!

Ron is about ½ of the way done putting in the radon mitigation system in our home. He is sore today because yesterday was the day that he sawed a hole in the cement in the basement and hauled 25 gallons of dirt outside. The pipe is now cemented in the bottom of the hole, so next week he will move into the attic and finish the project. I am thankful that Ron is so handy and does so much around our home.

Savanna stays busy with student teaching, coaching lacrosse, working at the MTC, and doing things with her friends. She is getting near the end; hopefully she will see the light at the end of the tunnel soon.

Marie had the busiest weekend…she was involved in a lacrosse tournament on Friday and Saturday, and she also went to prom at the State Capital Friday night! She looked like a princess in her dress and she had a lot of fun with the group that she went with to prom! The driver drove his mom’s Expedition and took the time to run “Bingham Blue” Christmas lights around the interior so that it looked like some type of limo. The group enjoyed the looks they got as the drove to and from prom; they also enjoyed rolling down the windows and waving to people. We are so grateful that Marie has such great friends and are supportive of her.

Hopefully I will continue to regain my strength so that I can return to a normal life soon!!!

Thanks again for everyone’s love, support, prayers, and kind thoughts. I know that all of this is helping me as I battle this cancer!!!

Bingham vs. Murray

Ron was able to take me to the game today!!! It felt wonderful to be outside and sit in the sun. We loved watching Marie play and Savanna coach. Sitting in a chair wasn't too exhausting for me, so hopefully I will have energy to go and cheer for future games!

Bingham Lax

Nausea!!!!

3-17-09

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I am home trying to regain my strength after a trying week! Today I am grateful that I didn’t have any treatments, now my body should start to regain strength!

The downhill spiral began on Tuesday of last week after my last big chemo treatment on Monday the 9th. I became nauseated and couldn’t keep anything down, including water. After 3 days of this Ron was ready to take me to the emergency room! We opted to see the doctor after radiation on Friday morning. She sent us to the infusion center at the Huntsman Cancer Institute and I was given 3 liters of IV and some medicine to help with the nausea. This helped but I continued throwing up on Saturday, so we made another trip to the infusion center for 2 more liters of IV. On Sunday I began keeping some food down, but since I am limited to bland liquids I still don’t have much energy.

Yesterday was my final radiation YIPPY!!! Afterwards Ron and I met with the doctor again, things are going better but I continue to feel weak and it hurts to swallow solid foods (side effects of radiation on my throat)! I will have a few weeks off to recover before I meet with the doctors and move on to the next level, probably more scans.

During this trying time I have come to the conclusion that it takes a community to help a person battle cancer. I am so grateful to friends, neighbors, and family that have provided me and my family with meals, treats, cards, flowers, transportation, prayers, and endless support. I continue to be amazed at the love and support that is constantly extended to us on a daily basis.

I am also grateful to the Skyline Community for their support and donations to the Utah Cancer Society! They had a “Hat Day” to collect hats for Jay Gunderson, the choir teacher who is fighting cancer, and me. At a choir concert on Friday night they collected over $1200.00 to donate to the Cancer Society. It is wonderful to have such loving and supportive friends and students at my school! Even when times are tough I can draw on the support of my friends to get me through!

Ron has been amazing with being my “nurse”! He has gotten me up in the middle of the night to give me medications; he has taken time off from school to get me to doctors and the Huntsman Cancer Center. He has been there to cheer me on and encourage me when all I wanted to do was cry! I love him so much and cherish our marriage!

The girls have been supportive too during this hard week. They do whatever they can to make me comfortable and help to keep our home running smoothly. I look forward to seeing them participate in lacrosse games and other activities.

I hope that I will continue to regain my strength so that I can return to my normal life.

Thanks again to everyone for your prayers, thoughts, service, and concern! I truly am surrounded by angels.

Exhausted!!!!

March 8, 2009

Hello everyone, this is Marie. My mom is too tired to write the weekly letter so she has delegated me to do it for her. :) This week has been normal I guess, just the normal stuff going on.

Jolene had Chemo and Radiation every day this week in the mornings. Thank you for taking her Ruth, Linda, Grandma, Savanna this week and Stephanie next week. Thanks a ton, it helps out a lot! I know that she has appreciated it a lot, and my dad appreciates it too. My mom is feeling really, really tired. She sleeps pretty much all day. I think her routine is to wake up, go to Marv’s, shower, eat breakfast, go to her treatments, come home, eat, and then she goes to bed until she wakes up for dinner or a snack or whatever. When I get home from school she’s asleep, and then when I get home from practice she’s eating dinner. Then at like 7 we have prayers then she’s asleep by 7:30. So basically she sleeps a lot. She also doesn’t have a lot of energy. She’ll get better though. And I know that she’s excited to be done at the end of this week. On Monday I think the doctors will tell her what is going to happen after this round is done. She thinks that they’ll probably give her some time without any treatments to let her body recover, and then they’ll do the scans all over again. We don’t know for sure, but we’ll find out. Thanks for thinking about her and praying for her, it really is helping.

Ron is finally done with his hours!!! He is so excited to be done with all his administrative hours! Now he just has one more class I think, then he’ll be ready for graduation in May. He is also looking forward to be able to do what he wants to do when he goes off track. Pretty sure he’s going to be going to Moab for like a week in May. That’s what he did last year with Cleo and he absolutely loved it. I think that he will probably miss being at Bingham though. It was funny to see how excited he was about getting to wear one of those walkie talkies in his ear, and being on the inside of everything that goes on about Bingham. It was kind of nice to have him know everything about Bingham cause then I could get some information from him, like what the basketball schedule was and everything. Congratulations Dad for getting all 450 administrative intern hours!!!

Savanna was busy this week too. On Tuesday she took the day off from school to take Jolene to treatment. Then she had coaching lax all week and school. I think she likes her new class of 2^nd graders. It’s funny to hear all the stories she tells about what goes on in the life of a 2^nd grader. She is going to be a great teacher. I’ve realized from her stories, that it takes a ton of patience to be a teacher. Good for her for having that patience. Savanna is also turning out to be a pretty good lax coach. At the beginning of the season I didn’t think she’d do that great, but she’s proving me wrong. She really does know a lot of stuff about the game and now I wish that she would’ve told me some of this stuff 2 years ago! Oh well, its fun to have her be there everyday and coach, I like it.

For me this week it was a normal week. Busy with school, lax, homework, and hanging out. It was sad for Bingham this week. We did well at basketball but lost by like 20 pts in the semi-finals to Lone Peak. We also took 2^nd in Debate which is really sad cause we’ve won state for like the last 3 years in Debate. Oh well, maybe next year. Ha ha but it was really funny at the basketball game cause we had a theme of superhero’s so the fans all dressed up in superhero attire and aw man, it was great. There were these two kids that were dressed up as Luke Skywalker, and the red guy, Darth Mal? But anyway, they had their light sabers and the force, so during half time they had a duel with the force and their light sabers, it was so good. Ha ha, I guess you had to be there, but it was pretty funny.

That’s about it for our family I think. Daylight savings started today so that’s weird but it’s exciting cause that means that summer is closer! It’s still freezing cold outside though, but oh well. Thanks for all the support and the prayers that you give our family! It helps us out more than you know. We love you all and have a great week!!!

-The Davidson Family :)