Getting Ready for Tomorrow. . .

Tomorrow Stella starts her chemo treatment.  I am definitely a bit anxious and wonder how she is going to react.  But I am also very ready to just get this thing going so we can get into a routine and get through it.  We are all ready for tomorrow - I have downloaded Stella's favorite movies onto the iPad (Barney and Wiggles), and our friend Steph made her an adorable box filled with tons of treasures that should occupy her for hours.  Steph suggested that I refill it with new stuff every week for her to discover during chemo, and I think that is a fabulous idea. Below is a picture of Stella's chemo toy box:

In the below picture you can get a decent look at Stella's port.  It is the small bump below the little bandaid. It has not seemed to bug her too much the last few days, but we shall see how tomorrow goes! We have a numbing cream that we are supposed to put on her an hour before chemo starts so that it doesn't hurt when they stick the needle into the port.   

Finally, I wanted to share a link to a paper written by a father of a child who has the same type of tumor (in the same location) as Stella, entitled Surviving a Pediatric Brain Tumor - A Parent's Perspective.  This paper discussed their first year of dealing with this disease.  I related to so much of what is in this paper, and it gave me good insight on what is to come.  If you are interested, you can read this paper at:  http://www.teamsamantha.org/uploads/2005-white-paper.pdf  I have spoken with this family, and their daughter is now a pre-teen who ended up going through two rounds of chemo before her tumor stopped growing.