Day +649: Cousin Zoë

This has probably been the longest I've gone since the last update. Things have been going along pretty normal for us. Everyone is back in the routine: Keri is teaching "Islam and Gender" on Monday and Wednesday afternoons at USF, I'm back to working a somewhat normal schedule after keeping crazy hours all summer and fall, Mina is still loving her school and her school friends, and Isaac is still mostly in his own little world.

We are trying to get Isaac to think about potty-training, because we've enrolled him for the spring semester at Mina's school, and he can't go until he's diaper-free. He's been pretty resistant to the idea. He's cautious by nature, and I think he's also reacting to the pressure we've put on him, but he generally won't sit on the big-boy potty at all, even with his pants on, and even to get a "treat". Mina's teacher recommends a spoonful of whipped cream as a treat when they use the big-boy potty; I told Isaac I'd give him some if he would just sit there with his pants on, but he's not going for it yet. He knows when he's going poop at least, and he thinks it's great when Mina gets a treat for using the big-girl potty, so hopefully he's not far off.

Then again, he may not be quite ready for school anyway. He's been there several times and seems to enjoy it, but he always cries hard when Keri tries to leave. He's been very mommy-focused lately. They've had a lot of different babysitters over the past few weeks as we've tried to find a regular to supplement Meghan, so we're hoping that's part of the problem. There's also been a stomach virus going around, so he may not be feeling all that great. Mina has had it as well, and she wasn't quite herself for a few weeks. I was a bit worried, in fact, because she also had some rather large bruises at about the same time, but the bruises have gone away and her energy has returned, so I'm feeling a bit better now. Both the kids seem a bit ill today -- Isaac is whiny and a bit warm, and Mina started sniffling. Today she asked "When is this cold going to go away?" in an exasperated voice.

Mina has still wanted to wear her "princess" and her "ballerina" a lot, only now it's been supplemented with her "Snow White". Her Snow White is a beautiful dark blue velvet and white lace dress that Cousin Kennedy used to wear. We've started letting Mina wear it at home, because we frankly don't have many occasions for her to wear it out, and it's almost getting to be too small for her. She loves it. She's still into playing doctor, but this morning she had a new game she brought home from school: "haircut". She made Keri and then me sit on the stool with a blanket around our necks while she brushed our hair and pretended to squirt water on it and cut it. She says they play "dentist" at school too. She's still way into her babies, and in fact she's taken to calling one of her babies "Waah Baby". It's one that Keri bought her last fall after Waah Baby's disappearance; the doll looks somewhat like Waah Baby and Keri thought that's why she reacted so strongly to it in the store. She's been calling it Waah Baby ever since we came back from Christmas, and when I asked her if it was the same Waah Baby that was a lost or a different one, she says it's the same one that was lost. It's interesting, because there was never a screech of "I found Waah Baby!" or tearful reunion or anything. But of course we're happy to let her believe it's really Waah Baby.

Isaac has a continued fascination with pilots, bus drivers, and now the garbageman. Garbage day has always been special here, and supposedly it's that way all over San Francisco. Our kids rush to the front window when the hear the garbage trucks, and watch in rapture as the garbageman empties the cans into the big truck. The garbageman usually waves when he sees them, and one day he rang the doorbell and gave us two little miniature cans for the kids to play with: a black one for trash, and a blue one for recyclables. Since about two weeks ago, Isaac's been saying "I want the garbageman to hold me!" He says it periodically throughout the day, mostly on garbage day but on other days as well. One of these weeks we'll take him down to meet the garbageman, but I'm sure he'd been too shy to actually get near him. Pete, one of our babysitters, took the kids to the firehouse up the street, and they both got to sit in the fire truck for a minute. The next time I told him Pete was coming, Isaac said "I want to go to the firehouse!" And Keri had him at a restaurant where a bus driver was eating his lunch. Keri told Isaac that the man was a bus driver, and when he got up to leave, Isaac wanted to go with him. Keri said he was ready to leave her right there in the restaurant and walk away with the bus driver.

I've been saving the hard part for last: Mina's Cousin Zoë, who just turned 4 and who is one of Mina's idols, has just been diagnosed with ganglioneuroblastoma (http://www.emedicine.com/radio/topic293.htm, http://www.emedicine.com/ped/topic1570.htm), cancer of the sympathetic nervous system. She had a tumor removed from near her kidney a couple of weeks ago and a bunch of scans and other diagnostic tests. They suspected neuroblastoma from the beginning, and today the official diagnosis came back. Zoë is the daughter of Keri's sister Kristi's daughter Karissa, so we are her great aunt and uncle and she's Mina's first cousin once removed (I think). Keri's family was in tatters at the news, after dealing with Keri's father passing from lymphoma, Kristi's husband Bill dealing with lymphoma (he's doing great), and then Mina.

Luckily, it appears that the diagnosis is a favorable one. The treatment and prognosis for neuroblastomas can be very different depending on the stage, whether it's metastasized anywhere in the body, the specific genetic and molecular markers, and other factors. It's apparently extremely rare, like 1-2% of cases, where ganglioneuroblastomas are diagnosed before they've metastasized somewhere else, but it appears that's the case with Zoë. She also isn't showing any of the negative markers. The family met with the oncologist today, and from what we heard about the meeting, they're just going to follow her with scans for now and not even put her on any chemo. I'll post again if I hear any differently, but it would be really great if she didn't have to go through chemo. She's also lucky that she can be treated at Childrens in Seattle, part of the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, so she should get excellent care. Please keep Cousin Zoë in your thoughts and prayers along with Mina Brigitta over the next several months.