Rainbows Ahead!

It was 3:45am when our alarm went off but it didn't matter because I was already wake. Weary from one nightmare filled night after another I was just waking from yet another dream I care not to finish. We packed up the girls in the van hours before the sun would wake to travel down to Children's Hospital for an MRI. It was our 5th MRI but easily the most important. This test would tell us if the last ten weeks of chemo were saving Emma or doing nothing. My nightmares were from the later. What if it wasn't helping? What if that tumor was still growing? What if these ten weeks of nausea, driving, appointments, ER
trips, temperature readings and fights with the scale were all for nothing? The nightmares were worse then my reality and that is saying something. We arrived at 6am, got checked in, went into testing and waited. After Emma woke up crying from the anesthesia I rocked her like a baby while we both shared some tears.

An hour later we were in the Oncology department waiting for the results. Our Cancer Coordinator, Kim, walked in with a huge smile but she is always so happy and loving so I tried not to get my hope up. I read it but I didn't believe it, the tumors are shrinking! At one point her cancerous tumor around her optic nerve, the one that caused her to go blind, was traveling toward the other eye. It was going

Take that cancer, I get rainbows!

to cause all sorts of issues with her pituitary gland and possibly make her go blind in her other eye. There was no detected space between the tumor and the orbital chasm in our last test, today there was a 1cm space! What does this all mean? It means we are winning! It means we made the right choice, it means this suffering was all for something, it means there are rainbows ahead.

So what does this look like going forward? It will mean that Emma will continue chemo as planned, it is working and saving her life so we will keep it up. Hopefully the tumor continues to shrink and we can remove it entirely at some point. The road ahead will still be filled with trials but right now we have the first sign that we are fighting a battle that we might be able to win. One that I always knew Emma could win but now I have the proof in my hands!

We also have some amazing things coming up very soon. The launch of the Cancer Can Be Project will happen next week! Also, we heard back from Make a Wish and they let Emma pick between Disney World and Hawaii. After taking the weekend to look at videos of both places Emma picked Hawaii! So in January, during Emma's break from chemo, we will all be traveling to Aulani thanks to

What are you going to do next? We are going to Disneyland!

the amazing Make a Wish foundation! Also, once our dear friends at ABC News LA found out that Emma picked Hawaii they decided to gift her their own Disneyland passes so she could do BOTH wishes! This means that instead of sitting in a Neurologist's office being told our daughter has 6 brain tumors like last Christmas we will be playing at Disneyland this Christmas! After all the darkness over the last year we are overwhelmed with gratitude for all these blessings. A huge thank you to Make a Wish and Andrea and her co-workers at ABC News LA, we can't wait to let Emma go be a kid!

Our calendar cover! Go to www.throughemmaseye.weebly.com to order next week or now to sign up a cancer warrior.