Ingram the Conqueror: Thursday October 4th, Wake Up!!

At our house we have what is commonly known as a "fire drill" quite often. However, it's the kind of fire drill your thinking of; there's no fire, no smoke, and no "stop, drop, and roll." The Dismuke Fire Drill normally occurs when we're trying to get out of the house in super speed or when we're trying to pick up the house in super speed. It's all about being fast, faster, and fastest when these drills are happening. Today's fire drill was typical Dismuke style... and it was pretty funny!

Before I say what happened, let me preface this by saying that we've had two nights in the hospital with little sleep, came home and threw a huge birthday party for Ingram the very next day. Then Craig left town on business, we've had soccer and homework every night, and I've been up till after midnight for several nights in a row. I guess you could say we have all just been exhausted! I set my phone alarm for 7am so that I could text Craig before he went into a meeting and then I set my phone down to get up. Well apparently I fell back asleep in that split second because I jump up from the bed and realize it's 8:25am and no one's awake except Ingram playing in the den by himself! Not only did we miss the school bus, but also we'll miss our last of three neighbors neighbors that we could catch a ride with in 5 minutes!

FIRE DRILL!!! I ran upstairs to get the girls up and they got dressed as fast as they could; they ran down to eat breakfast (don't remember what they ate it all happened so fast) and make lunches and head to the car. I was getting Ingram dressed and I had to get dressed and poor Beau finally got out of his crate and sent straight outside to be forgotten for the rest of the day. It wouldn't have been as rushed if we didn't have to leave for St. Jude at 9am either, but we had appointments and didn't want to be late. The girls made it inside the school by 9am so I didn't have to go inside and sign them in; the funny thing was that Madison had to stop at her locker and ended up being late for class so she had to walk laps at recess for being late. She loves her teacher and thinks he funny too so I'm pretty sure she didn't mind walking her laps for Mommy's mistake; I'm sure her friends walked right along her and chatted the whole time! Neither one of the girls were upset with me, but you better believe they reminded me to "wake up" in the morning so we don't repeat our fire drill!

Ingram's counts were so good on Tuesday that we were starting to wonder if his chemo worked this round. Let's just say it did since his ANC dropped from 3300 to 100 and his hemoglobin dropped from 8.1 to 6.9 and his platelets dropped from 180 to 80 all in less than 48 hours. Ingram got a blood transfusion today that included a side of energy and we go back Sunday for labs and a platelet transfusion. The predictable pattern has once again started but at least this time, we know that this is the last time to wear a mask, get blood transfusions, get platelet transfusions, and that makes us happy.

Craig surprised us today and also made us happy! He wasn't supposed to get in from his trip till after 9pm tonight and I was already trying to figure out how I was going to keep the kids awake and happy till he got home. We had a long day at St. Jude and the girls had a long day at school already; we also knew we had soccer and homework and Ingram had all this extra energy and poor Beau had energy from being left outside all day by himself. I was on the phone with him thinking that he was heading in drop off his rental car in South Carolina before he flew home when he was actually parking his car and sneaking inside our house to surprise us! He knew just what we needed to end our crazy day!

Please continue to pray for the Christensen family. Our sweet friends were told by their Oncologist that Cole had anywhere from 4-8 weeks left. This is heartbreaking news and we are all devastated and can't imagine what they must be feeling. They had nicknamed Cole during his previous battle "MiraCole" and have a Caring Bridge page (colec) set up and also a Team MiraCole page set up on Facebook. Cole's doctors are impressed with how well he's doing right now and their plan is to keep him comfortable, pain free, and enjoy time with family and friends.