Sullivan Sunday

Sullivan is my nephew.  He is the 5 year old son of Brad's sister, Kari and her husband James.

In January, he was diagnosed with anaplastic medulloblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. We are all so thankful that most if not all of the tumor was removed in surgery.  After recovering from surgery, he began aggressive treatment which consisted of 6 weeks of radiation along with chemo. He recently had a few weeks off to build up his strength and on Monday, May 9th, he began receiving large doses of chemo.  He was hospitalized for the week to receive the poison-like drug and to be monitored. He came home and was doing great but as expected, he ran a fever on Thursday and was admitted again to be monitored.  That turned into a few more nights in the hospital and a blood transfusion. We hope he comes home today! The doctors say that Sullivan's white blood cell counts will be at their lowest days 7-10. That is why they expected the fever. But I don't think we quite expected all of this! Since this time frame is when his immune system is its weakest, we are all staying away for a few more days, especially since who know what germs our kids bring home from daycare even if they don't show any signs of being sick.  We hope to get to spend some time with him next weekend.  His counts should be up then and continuing to rise as the 28 day cycle comes to an end. Once he is strong enough, he gets zapped again. This treatment plan will continue for 6 months, or 6 major doses. One down, five to go!  He is also receiving other drug therapies and taking many more drugs to manage appetite, nausea, and other side effects.

Sullivan has a 3 year old sister and 7 month old brother. He is an absolutely amazing kid. Brad and I love him very much. He is fascinated by airplanes and one of his favorite things to do is go to DFW to watch planes take off and land.  He is so personable. Not long ago, he sat down at our kitchen table with me and said, "so, Auntie Rachael, how is school going?" and we carried on a nice conversation about what he does at school and about teaching math and how I will teach him this type of math when he turns 16.   He notices the simple, pleasant things. "Uncle B-rad, it is such a beautiful day today! The sky is so blue!" He loves books, soccer, baseball, bowling, school, that x-box kinect dancing game, things that glow in the dark, tackling adults, playing board games and swimming! We've worked hard to make him a Redskins fan but he is still torn between them and the Cowboys. =)  Regardless, Sullivan is awesome and I'm thankful he is such a strong little boy to take on this disease!  He is very aware of his fight and is fighting hard!

Visit Sullivan's Caring Bridge website here: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/sullivanjones

I believe in the power of prayer, hope, positive thoughts, vibes, whatever you call it.  Please send some of it to Sullivan and his family.  Their patience and strength continues to amaze me.