It is Christmas. We are looking for Miracles.

December is a month filled with preparations and anticipation for everyone.  There are cookie exchanges, packages, cards, holiday parties and every manner of excitement for the end of the year celebration, however you happen to name it.  The Ramers celebrate Christmas, but this year our preparations have been for a very different sort of event.

We have been waiting with diminishing patience and increasing anxiety to learn if the T cells that researchers at MD Anderson collected last month had sufficiently grown.  The call came a little over a week ago, that they were successful.  Chemo would begin on Christmas Eve and the genetically engineered T cells would be administered five days later.

Our preparations and travel arrangements were hastily made, and filled with gratitude because Brent now has circulating blasts.  It becomes a race in AML, to not have a catastrophic event as the disease overtakes the marrow, because it reduces the power of the immune system.  Infection becomes increasingly dangerous. Infection is the catastrophic event we most fear.

The day before we were to fly to Houston, Brent developed a cough.  I held my breath.

Overnight, only hours from our departure, he required more oxygen.  I wanted some for myself.

As the medical transport team arrived before dawn, Brent went into respiratory distress.  Heartbroken and despairing,  I asked that we fly anyway,  knowing that the only way that Brent might live, is if he could get to these cells.  I write this from an ICU in Houston, where Brent battles both leukemia and septic pneumonia. They have sedated and intubated him, giving his body time to fight the infection with the help of strong medicines.

While I knew that we would spend our holiday in the hospital, I did not anticipate that it would look this this.

We are so grateful for our new team of physicians and nurses at MD Anderson who are working hard to help Brent manage his dueling sharks. While still very ill, this is clearly where he needs to be.  Our whole family is now here. He is surrounded by love.

While the path ahead is filled with uncertainty,  I remain ever hopeful.  Perhaps with good reason:

We learned on this day in 2011, that Lauren had a sizable asymptomatic brain tumor. This was devastating news for Dan and me, but 9-year-old Lauren called finding it a 'Christmas Miracle.'  Two years ago, we managed to get Brent home for Christmas, nearly in remission, contrary to every medical expectation.  Last December, we had evidence of a successful skin graft between Alex and Brent, something that has never been accomplished before. This Christmas, we are hoping for another fantastic and improbable gift, better than anything available from Amazon.

I am grateful to be here, listening to the whoosh of the ventilator, waiting for the slow healing.  I have faith that it will come.

The Ramers welcome your prayers and send you our love this Christmas.

It is (frequently) New Year

I imagine that there a host of people out there today, making resolutions, starting fresh, starting over.  There is something about a brand new calendar on the wall that suggests that anything is possible and almost begs for change, for our better selves to make a showing.  It is a day for hope.


I have never been one for making new year resolutions, always thinking that when you see a change that needs to be made, today is the day to do it, regardless of how far into the month we are.  But I rarely do things in a traditional way anymore.


As an example, I cite our advent season. It read a bit different than most, being dictated by the slow but steady progression that we know all too well, of gathering information about cancer.


December opened with big scans on both kids, followed by the delay as inconclusive, but concerning results dribbled in.  Brent required a PET scan in week two, again, with requisite wait for interpretation and results.  Tumor board, surgery and the excruciating wait for pathology took up the remainder of our pre- holiday time.


Throughout the month I deliberately committed to further responsibilities as a volunteer, really hoping that I would be able to fulfill those obligations.  I continued to look for work, despite the travel to Houston or New York City that might have been required for cancer.  Instead of baking cookies, I filled my freezer with pans of lasagna.  Instead of sending out Christmas cards, I cleaned out and organized closets. I tried to be prepared, to be able to run a household from afar.  And I waited for each slow step.


It wasn't until we began our Christmas celebrations that I realized the heaviness I had been carrying around with me all month.  I am in great LFS shape, as I like to say, because I am far too familiar with the hospital process, the slow measured steps of cancer.  I did not get ahead of myself, as I did last January, trying in futility,  to push things along.  This time, I simply waited.  I knew who I would contact in case of advancing disease for the melanoma.  Or recurrent disease for the osteosarcoma.  I didn't even research the lymphoma.


I recognized the things that I could control, which wasn't much.


I do not in any way want to minimize the joy, the gratitude and the celebration that came on the Ramer's non-traditional Christmas Eve, when we learned that no malignancy of any sort was found in the suspicious lymph node that they removed from Brent.  There was a lot of whooping it up.  There was dancing.


And wine.


Believe me when I tell you that there is no greater gift than the health of your child.  These tidings of great gladness arrived three years to the day of when we learned about Lauren's brain tumor.  I sort of consider this to be a good omen, replacing the negative association that we have long held with December 22.


So, despite an overnight trip to the hospital on Christmas day for post surgical drain issues, we have had a lovely holiday season.  And it would appear that clock starts over again for me, where my time is somewhat my own, free to pursue the things that I would like, uninhibited by considerations relative to cancer.. With LFS, we are like planet running on a tighter orbit, traveling around the sun every three months instead of every twelve. New Year's resolutions can come more often for us than for the rest of the world. 


My resolution is to replace all the days and dates that have weighed me down, experiencing new and joyful things that obliterate the darkness and worry...every three months...until forever.