We had an extremely busy day today. We started the day by having a quick breakfast and heading off to the hospital for the first time in 12 days! We had a bit of a mix up at the hospital so it took an hour longer than it was supposed to have. Brenn had her blood work done today in order to asses her status for starting her new and third round of chemotherapy tomorrow. The next phase that we are moving into will last for two months and is called Interim-maintenance. This phase will still have some pretty big scary drugs involved, but they should be at a lower dose. It is predicted that these next couple of months, Brenn should be feeling pretty good, however, there is a change, and there are side effects that she may or may not get. It is always scary starting a new set of drugs, as it is another unknown. It has seemed that with Brenn and Ryan both being on the same protocol at the same time, that there are many similarities in the reactions they have to the medicines, and also some very major differences. Brenn had a pretty hard time of things in the first month, and an pretty easy time during this last phase. Ryan had a pretty easy go of things during the first month, but a pretty difficult time during this last month. Hopefully this phase both Brenn and Ryan will have a better go of things, because September and November sound like they are going to be pretty scary months, with lots of sickness, and back to some of the eating, and moodiness problems that we experienced during the first month of her treatment.

It turned out today that Brenns blood counts were all right around were we all thought that they should be, so we are on schedule to start her Interim-Maintenance tomorrow. This of course is good news that she is still doing quite well. Christines brother arrived in town yesterday, and once we got out of the hospital, we were off to North Vancouver via Starbucks to meet up with them. There was a TV show being filmed at their hotel today, which provided a ton of excitement for the girls. They brought their dog, and the girls were very excited to play with him. We all went out to Ambleside beach and enjoyed some sunshine. It was a bit cloudy this morning, but turned into an absolutely beautiful day. We played at the beach, had some lunch, which we got from the greatest grocery store deli that I have ever seen. It was in Park Royal malls grocery store, it was busy, but you could get anything you wanted from there. There was freshly made sushi, pork roast and pulled pork, roast beef, paninis, salads, any hot lunch you could want, coffee shop, and tons of deserts. It was all quite impressive, and above all, fairly reasonable.

After Ambleside, we headed off for a tour of Stanley Park, where we watched some boats, and sea planes taking off. We didn't really stay for long as Terry, Julie, and the dog were all pretty tired from their long drive over the past few days, so we headed back for North Van to drop them off at the hotel and came back to RMH. It was nice to come back, and relax for a little while before having dinner, bath and bed. Christine has really been having a problem with her seasonal allergies since we arrived here in Vancouver. She is now struggling with finding a medication that will work, as her symptoms seem to be getting worse not better. It has really been frustrating for her as nothing she tries seems to help, and every day seems to be at least as hard for her as the last day. She is trying to get in to see her doctor again, but it may be another week before anything changes for her.

Tonight, please pray for Brenn that everything goes okay tomorrow, that her reactions to the drugs she will be taking will not be to bad, and her body accepts the medications the way that we will be giving them to her, and also for Christine, that she starts to feel a bit better soon. I just found out that one of the other families in the house just got a call from their doctor. Their baby, Claire was born very premature. While their baby seems to be responding well to the treatments that she is on, they just found out that Claire needs to have surgery on her eyes as there is a problem with her retinals. Please pray for Johanne and Chad (Claires parents) that they will have extra strength, and that Baby Claire will be okay. It is always hard around this house when another family is having a problem, as we all grow so close together knowing what each other is going through. Thank you all for your constant and continued support and prayers.

Scott