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Nick's Hope NICK IS DONE WITH TREATMENT!!!
CONGRATULATIONS NICK! WE ARE SOOOO PROUD OF YOU AND LOVE YOU SOOOO MUCH!
Nick was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia in May of 2000 at age 2.5...He was following protocol CCG 1991. After over 3 years of chemotherapy and many many procedures he ended treatment in June of 2003. He continues to do well and we thank God each day that he is a smiling, happy, and HEALTHY 6-year-old!
Journal
Thursday, June 3, 2004 1:28 PM CDT I just had to post this, even though Nick has successfully completed chemotherapy treatments, the worry for relapse, secondary cancers, and late effects of treatment are still there and it is never truely over.
Welcome to Holland
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability (cancer) to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this... When you are going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous trip to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, Michelangelo's David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland." "Holland?!?" you say, "What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy." But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would have never met. It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and catch your breath, you look around and notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned." The pain of that will never, ever, ever go away, because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.
****Author Unknown****
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Hospital Information: Children's - Minneapolis Hospital and Clinic 2525 Chicago Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55404 (612) 813-6111
Links: http://www.geocities.com/nickshope Nick's Wish Pictures..slow loading..lots of pics http://www.gktw.org This is where we stayed in Florida on Nick's MAW trip http://199.199.247.194 Scrapbook...see family photos |
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