Ingram the Conqueror: Thursday July 12th, A Special Accomplishment!

Where to even begin is so hard sometimes! There are so many things rolling through my head right now it's starting to make me spin. I'm not sure if everything has sunk in yet either, but we are praising God for such good test results and for using everyone involved as His handiwork to comfort and care for us.

Ingram did such a great job today getting all his labs drawn. He even did something that he's never done before and I had to see a picture of it before I believed it. His nurse, Virginia, was so proud of him that she gave him a special bead that celebrates "A Special Accomplishment" like today. For Ingram's second round of labs, Craig was at the hospital with us and Ingram wanted Daddy to take him to the lab. Ingram did not want to sit in Craig's lap, but instead wanted Daddy to watch him do everything. He took off his tape, undid his butterfly cord, took off the bandaid, cleaned the clave, flushed the line, attached the syringe, drew his blood, then flushed it again, pushed the heparin, and sealed it again all with the assistance of the nurse. He has never, ever done this before and got the biggest kick out of being a super big boy! This was a huge accomplishment for him!!!!

While we were in the lab the third time he wanted me with him to show me how he does things so we left Daddy in the clinic to wait for the doctor. Into our clinic walks Tim Howard from the United States Soccer team, only the best US goalie ever! He plays for Everton in the English Premier Soccer League and is one of the best goalies in the world; and he recognized Craig (they know each other) in a waiting room at St. Jude Children's Hospital in Memphis, TN. How crazy is that?? Of course Craig came and got us and we went walking around until we found Tim and let Ingram meet him; our girls (fantastic soccer players themselves) are going to be sooooo jealous! When we were talking with Tim, Ingram stood behind me, peeked his head out, and said "I can beat you at soccer!" and everyone around us just started cracking up. They were also comparing bald spots! I love seeing both of my guys with big grins on their faces!!

Ok, back to business. We talked in depth about Ingram's cancer today and are very pleased with everything so far. No signs of tumor on the MRI and the spinal fluid was good too; they always look at these results more than once and we anticipate the next look being good as well. Ingram will start Chemotherapy Monday and the doctors are scheduling 6 rounds instead of 4 as we initially thought. On the good news side, we only have to be inpatient for three nights at a time and that will make managing a home, a husband, and two active daughters much easier than we were coming into this thinking. Each round is about a month (give or take) with the worst being the first two weeks of each round. We're gearing up for the long haul and are really excited about spending another good weekend together as the girls come home from camp before we get rolling.

More big news...Pretty soon, we will have a link available for the video that the girls made about Ingram and St. Jude; all I can say is that the video is remarkable and you won't want to miss it! It even has information about St. Jude, Team Ingram, and of course Ingram the Conqueror on it. Speaking of Team Ingram, there's a link at the top of the page that takes you directly to the website!