One Year After Kelley's

Make-A-Wish Trip, January 2000

 

Hello our fine friends, family and Well Wishers.

I have been receiving eMails from many of you and thought it was time to update this page on Kelley. I had thought that it's usefulness had passed and was going to take it down but a quick link search shows that there are over 100 sites around the world linked to it. Amazing, I had no idea. Sites ranging from Brain Tumors, Cancer, prayers for kids.. you name it. In view of that I will leave it up until deemed no longer useful. Thank you all you webmasters that find Kelley's tale on interest.

I have not been updating this site because quite frankly, very little has changed in Kelley and her condition. We are still doing the MRI's every 90 days and the results have all been great. No new cancer growth! Kelley has been attending public school retaking the 7th grade and the three report cards she has received this year have been all A's and B's. She attends 3 half days and two full days each week. The half days she has therapy for four hours after school. She has done well in therapy and rebuilt a lot of her lost strength.

Unfortunately she has not been able to walk unassisted. Kelley has the strength to support her self at this stage but lacks the balance to stand or walk. It is an uncertain issue if the balance will ever return, the brain may at some date in the future relearn that skill but it can not be predicted if that will happen. This has led us to the path to accept that Kelley may always be wheel chair bound and we are making arrangements to deal with that in our lives. We have undertaken the search for a specially equipped handicap wheelchair lift van to aide in transporting Kelley and saving our backs from transferring her. It will also help with having family that are unable to transfer her have a means of taking her places more often. Kelley stays pretty bored since she is dependent on being confined to a wheel chair, the bed or regular chairs in the house. She does a lot of craft type projects, listens to a lot of music and watches T.V. and movies. We get out to do the Zoo and bowling, shopping (her favorite) and movies to break up the boredom but it can be a little demanding when we have laundry and housework stacking up.

We had a great year since our last update, Kelley had a fun Summer in the pool, we went fishing and sailing on our sailboat once and plan to do that more next spring. Kelley had experienced a period of terrible depression when it did finally hit her that she may not ever walk again. I think she was under the impression that after the effects of the Chemo wore off she would just wake up one day and be able to be whole again... When she realized that was not the way it would happen she cried and sobbed for a full day. I could only hold, comfort and reassure her.
I had just this week finally finished the production of the video tape from our Hawaii trip and when we watched it she was amazed at how far she had come in the past year. It really did her some good to see that improvement is still happening, just very slowly.

Here is a photo of her first real haircut since the treatments. Our friend Marilyn did a cut and color for her and it was a blast!

As you can see she was a smiling little lady!

Here is another of Halloween 1999 and probably the last year Kelley will dress up in costume, she was, is and will always be our princess.

Christmas and New Years was great, we had extra family in town to help make it special. We have at last put furniture in our dining room and had a house full of family over for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New years Eve.

The future for Kelley seems to look bright, although she may never walk under her own power again at least she is with us and enjoying a pretty good quality of life.

I again thank you for keeping up with us and wish all the best for you and your family.