Category Archives: Family & Friends

FROM D#2S FB PAGE:
Tyler Update: I shared a link to his CaringBridge account, which I will post updates on as much as possible. Here is the recap of our appointment yesterday. We have been in touch with Ronald McDonald house about lodging, but are looking for some solutions for parking. There are no accomodations for longer than 24 hours for families with kids at Lurie, and all of the parking we have found runs $50+ a day, per car. If anyone has any connections with parking in downtown Chicago, please message me.

Tyler’s treatment will include 30 weeks of chemotherapy, with 5 different medicines, alternating between 2 cycles every 2 weeks. The first cycle is 2 days, the second cycle is 5-6 days. We will be back at Lurie first thing on Monday morning to get his port installed, and have the bone marrow biopsy. He will begin his first round of chemo on Tuesday, which will last for 2 days. If he is doing well enough, we will be able to come home on Wednesday. Then we will head back in 2 weeks to start on the second cycle. That means that in a month’s time, we will be at the hospital for chemo at least 9 days. The other part of Tyler’s treatment is the local treatment, meaning what they will do to the actual tumor (chemo treats the whole body). It will likely be either radiation or surgery, and either way it will be in the 13th week of treatment. We won’t know more about which until we see how the tumor responds to the chemo. We were told that it should start reducing in size, as soon as after the first few treatments.

We won’t know the staging or prognosis until next week. Based on his age, the size of the tumor (which is big for the area that it is in, but for this type of tumor, isn’t super big), the oncologists were optimistic and said they can cure this. There could be long term effects of the treatment, as well as the short term. We are going to sit down with Tyler this morning to try to explain his diagnosis, and what it will mean for him.

We have been so overwhelmed by the outpouring of love & support. We are in for a long road, but I know that Tyler is going to beat this. Thank you so much for everything, and please continue to pray for our boy. Team TFT!

THE MOTHER OF ONE OF TYLER’S LITTLE FRIENDS SET UP A GOFUNDME PAGE TO HELP THEM WITH EXPENSES.
NOTE: I AM IN NO WAY ASKING ANYONE FOR CONTRIBUTIONS.IF YOU HAVE A COUPLE BUCKS TO SEND,GOD BLESS YOU. ALL I’M ASKING IS TO KEEP MY GRANDSON AND HIS MOM IN YOUR PRAYERS. IT’S GOING TO BE A LONG,TOUGH ROAD,BUT HE’S GOING TO KICK CANCER’S ASS.

Hey CHICAGO friends! My friend’s 6 yr old son Tyler was diagnosed with a fast growing cancer and starts a 30 week chemo treatment. Does ANYONE have a parking connection solution for this family that will spend the next 30 weeks on and off at the Lurie Childrens Hospital on East Chicago Ave?
They’re making arrangements with the Ronald McDonald house but the parking is $50 a day!!

Here’s the gofundme page set up for Tyler, it tells more about his condition. Most you ZUMBA followers probably know his beautiful mother, Alisha Levine. She’s been an instructor for FitPro and is a great person with a huge heart, anyone who’s ever met her will know her by her smile.
http://www.gofundme.com/b8zn2o

We were able to get a room at the Ronald McDonald House, & arrived safely just before 8pm. This place is amazing, & we are so grateful to be here. Tyler kept saying we were going to Ronald McDonald’s house lol. We have to be at Lurie at 730am tomorrow morning for his ECG, & his surgery to install the port & take the bone marrow biopsy is at 10am.

For my grandson,Tyler
Sign in to your CaringBridge Account | CaringBridge

Sign in to your CaringBridge account and stay up-to-date with friends and family.
caringbridge.org

For far too great a part of my life I was only interested in ME.What made me feel better? What was in it for ME? At this point I put others before me. If only there were a way to trade places I would do it in a heartbeat. It just doesn’t seem fair. I never laid eyes on him until last October and was just getting to bond with my daughter after far too many years. Now this. I can’t begin to understand this,I just have to put my faith in Almighty God. It’s all I have.

From D#2s FB page:

Update: 2015 will be the year that Tyler beats cancer. He has been diagnosed with a peripheral primitive neuroectodermal tumor (pPNET). We won’t know the stage until they complete the scans on Friday, along with additional testing, to see if it has spread to anywhere else in his body. We were told that he will likely be back in Chicago on Monday to have a port installed to begin chemotherapy as soon as possible. Please don’t google. I’ve done it, and shut it down almost immediately. The most reliable information will come from his oncologist on Friday (Dr. Walterhouse at Lurie).

Our boy is resilient beyond measure, and we will fight this with everything we have. We are all still trying to absorb this, so please understand if we aren’t able to return phone calls, texts, or messages. It’s all very overwhelming, and our sole focus is on Tyler. Our core tribe will be heading to Chicago tomorrow night, and we will be telling Tyler about his diagnosis on Friday. In the meantime, I will be looking into as many resources as possible to figure out how to explain to my precious boy that he has cancer. It all just seems grossly unfair, but our only choice is to trust in God, and in his medical team, and hold his hand through every step. Please continue to pray, think good thoughts, or whatever positive vibes you can put in the universe for our boy. I will be setting up a Caringbridge account in the next few days, and will post a link so we can keep everyone up to date as we go.

One more thing. Fuck Cancer.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Makes all the complaints I can come up with seem piddling,doesn’t it?

This is an exercise in total self-indulgence. I wouldn’t read it were I you.

A couple of you may have noticed I haven’t posted for awhile. There are persistent issues with this here Univac machine. Long story short…I made contact with a tech who lives 35 miles north,in Southern Wisconsin. He wasn’t the cheapest but he guaranteed his work. He asked me to load a program called Teamviewer,whereby he could repair my PC remotely from his location after I gave him the ID and password. When I downloaded it,five more programs sneaked onto my machine that were all popup nightmares. I managed to uninstall them all except one called Comodo Geek Buddy. It kept asking me to upgrade rather than uninstall. Hopefully he can fix this stuff today. I’m sick of pages not loading and slower-than-sorghum performance. Hopefully I’ll be regaling you again soon with things like cops being murdered, demonstrators being run over, hypocritical libs crying racism and the media telling us how Jeb Bush would be such a fine republican presidential candidate.

HERE COMES THE SELF-INDULGENT PART:

We had a really nice Christmas at Casa Pistol. DW’s son,daughter and her hubby and Miss Isabel and Miss Olivia and our best friends. Miss Olivia loved the latest addition to her Brown Bear family and Miss Isabel really liked the Olaf we found a couple months ago and bought because we knew they would be gone shortly.

Saturday we went to Daughter#1’s house to exchange gifts. D#2 was there with her boyfriend and our Tyler. After they left to take Tyler to his dad’s, d#1, her hubby, and DW and I talked for hours. I informed SIL his gift to me was going to be some pictures, since I don’t have any of the family.
This is DW and I with the flesh of my flesh:

These are my grandchildren. They’re all I have. It infuriates me that they will bear the burden for the profligate spending the drunken hacks in DC are doing right now. Rihanna, RJ, Tyler, Peyton, and Karissa don’t even get a vote for years yet.

We are taking D#1 and her beloved to our favorite little Italian restaurant Friday. Tonight,as every News Year’s Eve for years,we’re going to our favorite steak place,which we can only afford once a year. Our kids got us a gift card from there that should cover most of it.

Facebook is such a wonder. My cousin,Trish,who I met by accident a couple weeks ago, invited me to breakfast with her and her dad yesterday. There’s always so much to talk about after not seeing each other for years. Later she posted a picture her mother had of my older brother,Russell. It hung in our living room for many years. He was seven and I was about three when he went into our backyard to play. He jumped out of the tree he was playing on and mom’s clothesline,which was wrapped around the bottom branch, caught around his neck. My dad went out later to do some gardening and found him with his feet about 3 inches off the ground. It was shortly after that my parents split up and my dad,being a severe diabetic,quit taking his insulin. When he was found in a downtown hotel room the coroner determined he’d been dead for three days. His birthday and death day are the same.

This really brought back memories. He’d have been almost 70 today. How different would things have been with a big brother and a dad? Who knows?

Thats all I have until my PC issues are resolved.Thanks for not listening.

I have no idea what a shockwave plugin is but apparently it’s not working, according to the message that keeps popping up. Plus I get a slow-running script thingy to stop,continue or debug. I am not an experienced de-bugger,so I don’t know what to do. The tech guy I was using did a miserable job,so I need to try someone else.

Anyhoo,Tyler’s home. We’re planning on going to oldest daughter’s tomorrow to exchange gifts. Hopefully youngest will feel up to coming. I sure miss them. The news is not good,folks. It looks like it’s a tumor. They just don’t know how to proceed yet.

Christmas Eve Tyler Update: We heard from his neurosurgeon today. Pathology is not done with testing yet. Ultimately, we know that it is a tumor. The challenge now is to figure out if it is a fast growing type or slow growing type. Pathology is going to do a special molecular testing to try and figure it out, and will likely send it to another place/hospital to have it tested and confirm the diagnosis. It sounded like they would almost prefer that it is fast growing, because some are very responsive to chemotherapy, which would allow them to get better control of it, and go in after to remove anything residual. If it is slow growing, there is a chance that he may have to have some sort of fusion, because it is growing from his bone, and they may have to remove some of it to get the whole thing. We won’t know anything final from pathology, or diagnois, until at least next Friday 1/2. Once they know, they will want to act right away. So it’s hurry up and wait some more, and then it’s go time. Yes, chemotherapy. Yes, fast growing means cancer. And yes, that is the best case scenario. My 6 year old having to endure chemotherapy is likely the best case scenario. Not something you want to hear. The bright side is that he gets to be home for Christmas and New Years, and is not in any pain. The biggest physical discomfort for him has been dealing with the brace, and recovering from the biopsy & being under general anesthesia 2 days in a row. For now, we are we are taking it day by day, and trying to keep things as normal as possible for Tyler. Thank you for all of the prayers, texts and messages, love, and support. Please continue to pray for our boy. No matter what happens, we will get through it.

Day after Christmas morning success. Santa got the memo about what Tyler really wanted. Someone is a happy boy this morning, & Mommy has a lot to learn about Skylanders lol.

I hate to ask you guys,but I don’t know anybody else. Please continue to pray for my grandson. I’ve only just met him and now this… it’s really hard on him and his mom. They need all the support they can get.

My youngest daughter posted on FB yesterday that the growth on the back of my 6 year old grandson’s neck was putting pressure on his spine. She’s taking him to a specialist in Chicago today. I’d like to ask you to remember Tyler in your prayers.
There are things far more important than politics.

Among the reasons Barry dropped the sanctions against his fellow communists in Cuba was so he could get some really good cigars

BE SURE TO CHECK YOU LOCAL LISTINGS TO SEE WHAT MOVIES NORTH KOREA WILL ALLOW YOU TO SEE THIS WEEK

THE OBUMMERS ARE JETTING OFF ON THEIR ANNUAL 17 DAY PILGRIMAGE TO HAWAII ON THE TAXPAYER DIME