It's been months since we have have written. We told our selves it was because really did anyone want to hear that Brenn went to school and that she ate dinner and went to sleep day in day out. Well I'm thinking that we didn't write because we were feeling so tired of dealing with everything. We thought that coming home would be great and that our life would go back to a relatively normal day to day life. Ha were we ever wrong. Reality set in, and it has taken Scott and I by the collar our shirts and is just shaking us in the wind, flipping us up and down and all around. Being home is not as reassuring as we thought, we no longer have the safety net of having the Children's Hospital being within walking distance if we have questions or issues, although they are just a phone call away it is just not the same. The doctors and nurse here in Prince George are doing all that they can for us when situations arise but they too are not use to dealing with an oncology child and often call Vancouver for direction before anything can be done. We have had a rough road that last 6 weeks and this is where my despair is coming from.

Brenn and Scott returned to Vancouver in February for routine treatment and this is when our life turned upside down yet again. Brenn's blood counts had dropped dramatically in two weeks. After keeping Brenn for 2 extra days she was released from Vancouver with the expectancy that her counts had come down due to the meds and that after stopping her normal weekly antibiotics they rose slightly. Two days after arriving home, Brenn spiked a fever of 39 degrees for no apparent reason. She was admitted, and put on antibiotics while waiting for her blood, and culture results and taken off her daily and weekliy chemo thereapy. During this time her temp rose to an astounding 40.4 degrees, and her hemoglobin and platelets dropped by 50% from what they were a few days before. At this time Scott and I felt that it would be in Brenn's best interest for her to have a transfusion, she was 20 points below the time that a transfusion would normally be given to a child. The transfusion proved to be the boost she needed for her bone marrow to kick start into action. Her counts began to slowly rise, in saying this not all rose. Her ANC or immune system continued to drop, it bottomed out at 0.1 so admittal and isolation continued another 4 days. We are home now but still in a semi isolated environment as her ANC is still only 0.7. It is in the opinion of the Doctors that if Brenn was to catch any virus that her counts would drop again as they are still fragile and that we would have to stop her chemo therapy again. As anyone can conclude this is not okay, Brenn's life depends on her receiving her medication. So here we sit 6 weeks into this and our family has got extreme cabin fever and are suffering from extreme boredom. Brenn misses her friends and school, Samantha is having a hard time understanding why it is that we can't go out to visit friends or have them over, Scott is worried at work all the time and I am going crazy trying to keep to children occupied at every second, while trying to keep it together. Such is life I guess, but it's hard and unfair right now. Our family has been given this for a reason and we will get through this journey.....hopefully with our sanity intacted.

On a more positive note Brenn's make a wish Disney cruise is coming up.....we leave for the cruise on April 9 to return on the 19th. This will be a much appreciated and needed break for our family to enjoy ourselves, and forget for 10 days that our precious beautiful little girl is going through the biggest trial of her life.

Christmas is here we made it through the year yeah!!!!!!!!!!!! The girls took their very first fantastic photo with Santa this year...BEAUTIFUL.....but I'm bias I guess. We are ready and the girls are very excited to spend a holiday at home since last Christmas.....they both never want to leave the house since we returned from Vancouver, I'm mostly good with that except when we have no food in the house and the girls are fighting not to leave the house.....is that weird.....lol.

Everything is getting back to normal for the most part just living our day to day lives with nothing to report, hence the no blogging. We didn't think any one would be interested in hearing that we've been hanging out together, watching movie, playing games and simply just enjoy being back home. Brenn and Sam started their Christmas holidays from school, Scott is working tomorrow but then is not having to be back to work until Wednesday next week. I've been preparing our house and meal for Christmas...life in a nut shell.

Brenn had her second treatment of maintenance but the first here in Prince George last week, it seemed to go alright all in all. The hospital staff on the pedi's floor was great, Brenn wasn't scared and they made it a good experience for her. She was ill from the chemo the next day so she stayed home from school (Scott and I will need to set our alarm so that she can have an anti-nauseant med in the middle of the night), she started Dexamethasone again and it as last time hit her hard. The worst part of treatment for Brenn seems to be being on the steroid....she is unable to control her emotions, becomes ultra sensitive, she is sleeping half the amount of time she normally does (which does not help her emotional stability), she is angry all the time.....the worst of the worst is she does not know why she acts/does what she does and this confuses her. This is part of her protocol to fight off the cancer, as a parent it is hard to watch and expect her to function in a normal environment...but this is what is saving her life and so this is what we must do. None the less we are so blessed to be home with two healthy children for the holidays.

Merry Christmas to all of you, thank you for your thoughts and prayers this holiday season.

Love the Smiths

So here it goes writing the blog again, it seems like it has been so long I don't know where to start. So we've returned to PG and for the first week things were really great. For the most part they still are, but the transition back to life is huge.

Interesting bits of news..... Joe (very good family friends of ours) shaved his head on Saturday in support of Brenn, this was very emotional for us. I will post a picture when I get one from Joe...stay tuned. The Canadian Blood services called this morning and if we were still in Vancouver Brenn would have been the Christmas blood drive campaign poster child, but as we are now residing in Prince George our family has been asked to speak at two formal events educating and encouraging others on the importance of donating and thanking long term donors for their blood support......how very exciting and scary at the same time as I do not like public speaking.....good thing my husband is proficient and not so uncomfortable with it. Last bit of exciting new is we met with make a wish again and the plans for Brenn's wish are coming along we will be going on the Disney Cruise in the spring and it's going to be absolutely fantastic...yeahhhhh!!!!

Brenn is doing very well, she is back to school full time and loving it. Samantha is in preschool three days a week and sort of enjoying it, it's more difficult for Samantha to leave me it seems. Sam never wants to be away from Scott or I and she never wants to leave the house, after 5 mins in the car she spends the rest of our trip out asking to go home.....crazy girl, we thought that she would miss the hustle and bustle of activity in Vancouver.....guess not. Our whole family got sick with in a few days of returning to PG, I have had a cold and throat infection, Brenn a cold (or side effect from a new chemo....not sure which one yet), Samantha got tonsillitis and now Scott seems to have a pretty serious cold with possible infection (trying to get him to the Dr.....lol)

The reality of having a child with a serious illness is setting in hard and fast now that were home and life doesn't seem so critical.....we were told by other parents and our social worker that once we got home the real processing would begin and the auto pilot would shut off. I believe this has begun......Scott and I live on the edge of keeping it together everyday. Managing our everyday lives with the constant worry about Brenn, her health, her mental and emotional wellbeing, Samantha and if we are giving her enough attention, setting boundaries for both girls as regular rules apply again, and taking care of each other in mean time....this life is hard, RMH isn't looking so bad right now.....lol. I know that we have only been home for two weeks and that every family returning home feels the same way I just wish that I could get through the day without feeling my eyes well up and over multiple times.

There is a reason that this has happened to our family and we trust that we are learning whatever it is that we need to learn from it, we know that we will come out the other side of this a stronger, happier, and healthier family, its just getting there that's the problem....lol.

Sorry it's been so long since our last post, this one will be short as well as we are all feeling under the weather. Brenn is adjusting well to life back in PG, she is in school full time and loving it. We will write more when we are all well. I hope this finds you all well. Take care

We are all exhausted, life at home lets us just be and so all the stress, worry, anxiety, sadness, anger, joy, laughter, happiness and love from the last 6 and a half months is not so overwhelming and now are bodies are saying" just relax don't do anything". All of the Smith's were in collective agreement that we were all very tired, but to no avail we did not nap, I wish we did but we didn't. Instead we hung out as a family just doing our thing all over the house. It was great :)

Brenn was really not into going to school this morning as she didn't want to participate in french, after a few minutes of smooth talking from her mama she got ready to go. I stood at the back of the class until prayer and devotions were over (5min), blew a kiss to Brenn and out the door I went, crying all the way to the van. I felt like I was pushing her to hard to get back into the swing of things, I felt like I was leaving her to sink or swim....it was awful. Scott, Sam and I picked Brenn up at lunch, we peeked in the room several times and Brenn was smiling and participating in class. At the bell Brenn was excited and happy, she went on to say that she wanted to go to school the next day for a whole day....yeah Brenn. Brenn's favorite subject is math and she seems to be at par with the rest of the class. Brenn feels really encouraged by her teacher who told her today that she is not far behind and that she will catch up in no time. Brenn was so touched by this that it was one of the first things she told us. My fears of pushing Brenn to far have melted away and I am so happy that she is as confident as she is, because of this she will excel at everything she does :)

A new first for us tomorrow.....Samantha will be starting preschool, we are very excited for this. Sam is so energetic, and social it will be a perfect transition for her as she was always surrounded by people and activities at the Ronald McDonald House. Samantha needs something of her own to do and to talk about, this is perfect for her.

Life is good!!!!

We're home!!!!!! How fantastic has it been to be in our own house you ask? IT HAS BEEN GREAT! We are all sleeping through the night soundly, restfully, and comfortably. The girls are lounging around when life gets to be too much with their blankets on the couches watching TV, they are running up and down the stairs and all around when ever they choose and they are not hanging off mine and Scott's limbs at every given moment, they are enjoying living carefree for no reason at all :) We arrived home on Saturday morning, it was freezing in Prince George, we left Vancouver in wet snow to arrive in PG with well just freezing cold weather with snow.....brrrrr Sam loves it as she doesn't remember the winter from last year and the rest of the Smith clan well were just cold.....okay okay enough of the complaining.

We are all just taking it easy, getting the house organised, getting rid of some stuff before unpacking what we have accumulated over the last 6 months. We are getting our bearings again learning to live in an environment that isn't as sheltered as ours has been, preparing for life to get back to normal. We had dinner with some close family friends the night we returned, and lunch with new friends the next day, this is exactly what the doctor ordered for all of us, to feel the love, support, real hugs (not just phone hugs) , and conversation to hold us up when we were scared and overwhelmed with the reality of returning to our life. Brenn then returned to School this morning, it was very emotional and overwhelming for her but she pushed through and did it, she attended one and a half hours of class room time with two different teachers and a new language. Brenn was very confused when she returned from gym and found a teacher in her new class room speaking French, she did not like this one bit and begged Scott and I to take her home, after a small break away from the class and encouragement from her parents Brenn went back in and finished the period. We felt at this time that Brenn had had enough for one day and took her home. Brenn will attend school for the rest of the week for the morning, and then the following week she will attend all day. We were encouraged to do this as it has been found that children who have been away with an illness fair better jumping right back into to school than those who are slowly reintroduced. Brenn's classmates, their parents, and teachers that we know were all very excited to see Brenn back at school, it was a very smiley morning.

By 7pm Brenn was exhausted from the day and fell into bed, I expect that we will have more of these days in the near future, but we are very confident that Brenn will do great going back to school and will not have any problems keeping up with her class. She has shown us over the last 6 month how strong she is and that she can endure and take on what ever is thrown at her. Brenn is truly amazing!

So it's been a week since we've written anything, things have been going well for the Smith clan. We were informed that Brenn's "make a wish" was granted on Friday, this is very exciting for our family. Brenn's wish is to go on a Disney Cruise to the Caribbean, and to stop at the Disney private island. We are planning the trip for the spring:) Brenn really deserves something wonderful, she has been such a strong little girl throughout the last 6 months with barley a complaint and taking all that was given to her in stride. It is awesome that the make a wish foundation is able to grant such an amazing gift to our family.

We've really have just been hanging out waiting around for Brenn's counts to come up so that we can move on to the final and longest but by far the easiest phase of her treatment. Maintenance. Maintenance is given when the patient in this case my beautiful daughter is in remission, this meaning that there are no visible cancer cells left in her blood or bone marrow. The maintenance is given to keep her in remission and kill any cancer cells that may develop in the future (future meaning the next 20 months). Brenn will receive low dose chemo by mouth daily, IV therapy and steroids monthly, and intrathecal (IT~spinal) therapy for her CNS quarterly, all but the IT can be done in Prince George.

Today we got word after a quick blood test that YES indeed Brenn's counts have come up and passed the recommended count level to begin the last phase and receive her first dose of maintenance tomorrow.....what does this mean? We get to go home.....home sweet home.....all covered in snow :)