For those of you who do not follow me on Twitter you may not know what has been going on in my life. My 12 year old daughter Lauren was diagnosed with Retroperitoneal Undifferentiated Sarcoma on December 3rd, 2009. Looking back now, she started complaining of her butt hurting last Labor Day (2008) after a 5 hour trip to LA to attend a soccer tournament. Figuring anyone’s butt would hurt after sitting for so long, we did nothing about it. It has continued to grow, spreading to her liver and lungs. On Dec. 3rd, she underwent surgery to remove the tumor, but the surgeon was unsuccessful in getting it all. A portion, wrapped around the bottom of her spinal cord, remains inside her. She began chemotherapy treatment at Children’s Hospital in Oakland on Tuesday, December 22nd. The roadmap the Oncologists have presented has her in Chemo for 6 months with spurts of radiation, 6 weeks at a time. She is a fighter and I know in my heart that she will pull through this. We have a long road ahead and we are determined to stay strong, faithful to God and with his help, we will kick cancer’s butt!!While theme development has always been therapeutic for me, this last month has spun out of control and I am just now getting back to some normalcy, only to have to return for the second round of treatment on January 12th. The only “portable” I have right now is my Mac and well, we all know that we can’t make themes on Mac’s (yet ;-)). During her stays at home, I will try to return to my love for theme making and hope that you continue to check back and even peruse the already large catalog of themes posted. Any special requests can be sent to me (themes (at) allthingsberry (dot) com) and I will try my best to fulfill them.Much love to you all! Keep us in your prayers =)

Update 04.12.10: Our original treatment plan was four “rounds” of chemo (4 days of inpatient IV chemo) & 25 radiation treatments, then surgery. After completing the chemo/radiation, we re-imaged Lauren with both a CTscan and MRI. The tumors have responded to the treatment and have begun to shrink. Still, it wasn’t enough for surgeons to feel comfortable in completing the removal of the main tumor without serious risks (nerve damage to bladder, possible partial removal of the rectum). New images were studied at both Children’s Hospital in Oakland and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital (Stanford University) in Palo Alto. We were told the surgeons at LPCH could do it, but they essentially backed out before any meetings/pre-surgery could be scheduled. We agreed to two more rounds of chemo and 11 more radiation treatments. The first round, administered a week and a half ago was with two very strong chemo drugs while the next will only be one, because she will be going through radiation at the same time. Hoping the tumor shrinks even more with this next course of treatment, we will re-image in 2-3 weeks and reassess based on the images.You can follow me via Twitter on my personal account (http://twitter.com/cherrichiodo) for updates on Lauren and generally my life, living with a child who has cancer … sometimes funny, otherwise sarcastic, cheerleading for the kids who can’t cheer on their own. NO child should ever have to go through this.

I’ve started a journal here