Welcome Friends!
Emily H.
Virginia
Biography
It all started on Saturday, December 18, 2011. My husband and I
could tell that Emily wasn't feeling well. She was playing all day and then all
of the sudden she had no energy and was complaining of stomach pain, and had a
mild temperature. We gave her Tylenol and ran around the house doing things and
about hour and a half later Emily still had a very high temperature and
complaining her stomach hurt. It was late so we called my mom and she headed to
the house to stay with the other two girls while we went to the ER. The hospital
wanted to do a CT scan because they thought she had appendicitis and wanted to
check for that. We were very worried about the radiation from the CT scan
affecting her, and wanted them to try any other route to see if she had the flu,
strep throat or anything else. So they exhausted all matters, and nothing showed
the cause of the temperature and the belly pain. They did the CT scan and
thankfully Emily slept through the whole thing. When the doctor came into the room at 4:30am in the morning, and pulled a chair by
the bed to sit with a grim look at her face, we knew something was wrong. This
is when our nightmare began. They found a mass and was not sure what that mass
was. Emily was then sent by ambulance to VCU Health Systems and our lives
forever changed. We had to get someone to watch the girls, because my parents
wanted to be there with us as the hospital. Doctors upon doctors came into the
ER room. It was 6am and we were no longer exhausted. Our exhaustion turned into
complete worry about Emily and what it was. After sitting in the ER for what
seemed liked forever, Emily was moved to the Floor 7 East at the hospital for
pediatrics. This floor was strict where anyone entering the floor must show
their ID, and parents must allow them to come in. This was very stressful on us
all. I still had to work as much as I could, but also worry about Emily. Emily
underwent MIBG scans, whole body bone scan, MRI and she also underwent surgery to see if they could remove the tumor and to get a
biopsy of it. The surgery was done on December 23, 2010 and I will never forget
this day for as long as I live. It will be added into our days of things we
remember. We were beyond scared out of our minds, worried of the “what ifs.”
Worried about how her body would handle it. Before going in she was happy and
fine and could eat. I remember sitting in the room with Emily and she was
scared. I was holding her and she wanted me to sing to her. I was singing, “You
are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray, you’ll
never know dear how much I love you, so please don’t take my sunshine away.” She
didn’t want me to stop and she just stared at me as I was singing it to her.
They gave her the anesthesia and Emily fell asleep. We fell apart in the room,
crying. It was so horrible to let her go, and I almost didn’t. I remember
telling them, “please take care of my little girl and bring her back to us.” The four hours of surgery was pure agony for us, it was a
long wait. Dr. Bagwell came out and gave us the news that it looked like
ganglioneuroblastoma, and that she was doing great. Doug and I couldn’t wait
until she came out. On this day (two days before Christmas) Emily was diagnosed
with ganglioneuroblastoma, with staging still to be determined based on other
scans. The next five days were long, because Emily couldn’t eat or drink
anything, and this was really hard because she just wanted water and a donut.
How can you tell a child that they can’t eat or drink? The doctors were a little
stumped with Emily’s information. They only have three cells in her bone marrow
aspiration, and the MIBG found four spots on her legs that were asymmetrical,
which confused them very much. They were pretty sure it was stage IV
neuroblastoma and talked about the treatments she would need to endure. But off
of their confusion, we wanted a second opinion. We made a trip
to Sloan Ketterling on January 10, 2011 where Dr. Modak confirmed Emily was
stage IV neuroblastoma, and we would need to start treatments as soon as
possible. Emily started her first round of many rounds of chemo treatment on
January 18, 2011.
Emily has undergone six rounds of chemo so far, with many other hospital stays
for fever and RSV, 2 surgeries. And she is currently in the hospital undergoing
Stem Cell Transplant and will have another one 2 to 3 weeks after this one is
completed. This has been really hard on us watching Emily undergo treatment,
that as she goes further it continues to be harder and harder on her body.
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We encourage you to join the LoveQuiltsUSA Yahoo group to check the pattern listing for duplications yourself before you sign up.
The lists of patterns already being stitched are posted on the database. LoveQuiltsUSA is an open group so you can sign up easily and view the patterns right away. Please follow this link to sign into the Love Quilts Yahoo Group...
Once there click on the link "database" on the right to view the children and their patterns. Once you find a pattern that you want to stitch and have confirmed it is not already being stitched you may return to the sign up form, fill it in and submit it. If you have any questions about the yahoo group please email Cyberfogie@aol.com, Vicki, for further instructions (yahoo groups email only!) Thanks!
Birth Date - May 30, 2007
Main Diagnosis - Neuroblastoma
THEME: Flowers
Squares were donated by "Lets Do It For The KIds"
