New Year comes with Challenges!

The New Year always bring back memories of Jan 4th 2011 the Day Ellie was diagnosed with a Brain Tumor. She underwent more than 6 years of Chemotherapy and three brain surgeries.  We where extremely blessed that the Summer of 2017 her tumor stopped growing and Ellie was able to go off Chemotherapy. It has been an amazing year and half of watching and seeing Ellie grow and enjoy life.  She has since Graduated 8th Grade & began High School. Ellie had a MRI last Thursday and It is with great sadness that we received word on Friday that Ellie’s tumor has grown significantly.  Her Nuero Oncologist is meeting with the Top Nuero Sergeant at Children’s to discuss options.  We unfortunately do not know what the future holds and will not have any answers until January 9th.  We decided to wait till closer to then to tell Ellie but as everything in our life goes, things don’t always work out as we would like.  Ellie asked me the other night if I have heard from the doctor on how the scan was.  When Ellie was younger it was easy to push it off and lie a little but now that she is 14 in High School I felt I had to tell her the truth.  We really tried to put a positive spin on this tragic news but unfortunately you can only put so much positivity on this.  I held back my tears as I told her that she would have to begin Chemotherapy once again. Her biggest concern is missing school and keeping up.  My biggest concern is if she has to have brain surgery again, what does that mean?  She was so young the first three brain surgeries and her brain could adapt.  I worry about her bouncing back quickly.  I am hoping and praying that we will not have to go down that path that just Chemotherapy will be the answer this time.  I know god has a plan but I am hoping God has a plan for Ellie to live a full amazing life.  Please keep Ellie in your prayers as 2019 will be a very challenging year for her. I pray every day that Ellie’s dream of going on Americas got Talent comes true and that she can follow her dream of being a singer. It would be awesome to have a glimmer of excitement in this very sad time.