November News...

John was able to go out Saturday to celebrate his mom's birthday! It was great to spend some time with him other than at dialysis, chemo, or doctor appointments! This week is going to be crazy because he has appointments every day! Monday Wednesday and Friday are his regular dialysis Tuesday chemo and Thursday a ROOT CANAL! Jeeze! But we do have some good news to report. His blood pressure is great! The nephrologist (kidney doctor) really worked at getting that under control ~ by challenging him in removing lots of fluid during treatments and changing his meds around. But now that it is back in the healthy range he is able to start to slowly reduce his meds for blood pressure! The biggest side effect that John has with chemo is extreme fatigue. It also makes him feel achy all over and uncomfrontable but he is really trying to stay focused on the end result! Another positive is that John will be having his next two treatments for chemo here in the valley! We were going to Tucson every week ~ that ends up to being gone for almost 12 hours! Now it is 15 minutes from our house! The 8th treatment will be back in Tucson on December 1st. John will be having a CT scan done before that treatment and we will meet with Dr. Brown to see how the cancer is reacting to the treatment.
Thanks to all that have and continue to keep us in your thoughts and prayers!

Friends!

Greg and Linda Zehring have been so great with weekly devotions and monthly cards full of encouragement and love! They always seem to send us something just at the right time! We are so blessed to have them in our lives! Thanks ~ We love you guys!

Halloween Half Bride Half Corpse

This was one fun costume ~ thank goodness my mom can sew! This is Alaina's attempt to get both what she wanted and what dad wanted! She wanted scary dad wanted sweet beautiful... Somehow I don't think he got what he wanted at all! It was fun though with lots of detail! It was a fun Halloween, but we missed trick or treating with dad ~ he wasn't feeling up to walking around this year... We are already planning for next year's costume! Don't throw your sewing machine away Nana

She looks so pretty, but check out the "other side"

The scary side!

They cracked me up ~ such pretty girls such scary faces!

Last Mud Day of 2009

Alaina and Julia love to play in the mud, but it got a bit too cold when it came to cleaning off ~ yes that has to happen before they come in to shower! Even though it was still in the 80's washing off with a hose gets a little chilly so this is the last mud day for 2009! ~ Sorry girls there is always next year!

When You Are Sick Snuggle... :)

Wow what a week! This has been a pretty rough time for the Abram family! John is having crazy high blood pressure again. It is so hard to get it under control once it starts this cycle. He is also really struggling on dialysis. About half way through he gets an extremely painful head ache, then his pressure starts to go high. We are working with his kidney doctor as well as the nurse to see what we can do to make it bearable for him and manage the pain as well as the pressure! When John had had his first cancer treatment called Nexavar his blood pressure went so high it lead to him having the seizures. After he went off of Nexavar we were able to work with his doctors to get it back to a reasonably healthy reading. After he started taking the new cancer treatment (Torisel) it is back to a very high reading! Another concern is the glands in his neck have started to swell on both sides! They are about the size of a golf ball! We contemplated going to the ER but John felt it would be OK to wait until Monday... So hopefully we will find out what the issue is with that tomorrow. He is really exhausted and a bit frustrated with all of this. We certainly could use some extra prayers sent our way!

Also Thursday night when Alaina got home from going to the movies with Grandpa John and Grandma Kay she said she wasn't feeling very good... sure enough by 11:00PM she had a temp of 103! She ended up having to go to see Rene and received not one but two shots! Ouch! Lets just say she and John both have a huge dislike of getting shots! You can always tell when she is sick because she actually sits down! The only thing good about her being sick is we had lots of snuggle time on the couch... ! Her fever finally is down today! :)

John and Alaina had been hanging out watching TV Sunday night when my mom said I think they may have falling asleep ~ sure enough I found them both crashed out with the TV blasting! I don't know how they do that. But they looked so cute I had to take a picture! :)