Phoebe is doing great. She had a rough patch last week, 3 days of crying, frustration and an inability to communicate what was wrong. I cried, th eboys cried, Phoebe cried..we were a mess. Fortunately, her Grammy saved the day and took her home to her house for a couple of nights so Nathan and I could get some rest and recoup.

I’m not exactly sure what she was going through, but I feel like she has every reason to have a 3 day freak-out if she needs to. I forget sometimes that she is probably just emotional because life is tough and chemo is hard and she has a lot of feelings that she is not yet mature enough to process or verbalize.

In any case, she calmed down after some time at her grandparents, and Nathan and I actually got to sleep in the same bed all night long for two nights! That makes 3 nights since we moved in.

Tonight we took Phoebe to church for the first time here in Lindale. So many people already know Phoebe and our family through the blog and the prayer list at our church, so it was nice for everyone to finally get to meet her. We have really enjoyed being able to be with our YWAM family and church family here. Just having that support system has so enriched our lives already.

Phoebe will go for her next round of chemo on the 27th. She will have intrathecal (spinal) chemotherapy this round and that is never fun. She is also still complaining of pain consistent with the UTI infection and I am wondering if she still has it despite the heavy-duty antibiotics. We will have her tested again to see what the problem is. Otherwise, she is feeling good, playing with her brothers, laughing…

On a sad note, we did not get approved for at-home nurse help. We were hoping for some help with Phoebe from 8 am to 1 pm each week day as we were told we qualified for 60 hours of at-home nurse care a week. Having a nurse 25 hours a week would have helped me with home-schooling and allowed Nathan to start work on some of his agriculture projects for the ministry, so we were disappointed to hear that the insurance rejected the request for help. We are now looking into another similar program for at-home help that is not with a nurse and we’ll see how that goes.

The boys are all doing well. Deacon will turn 5 on December 7th and he very excited about that even though I told him getting older was not allowed. He takes these conversations very seriously as he doesn’t want to be disobedient and it’s the seeetest thing ever! I tell him it’s fine, just this once, I’ll let him turn five, but that’s it, no more, and he agrees. I love this boy. He seems to be doing better in regards to Phoebe and I have made a concerted effort to single him out and make him feel special in the past couple of weeks.

Cancer is tough on the entire family and Deacon tends to be a sensitive soul, so my heart aches for him at times.

Thank you for praying for him, and for Phoebe and our whole family. We are hanging in there and enjoying the precious moments we get to share together as a family in our new home.

-Amey

Phoebe enjoying the cool weather