Hi everyone!  Sorry it’s been so long since our last update.  Taylor is doing fantastic!  Over the summer he learned to ride a two wheeler, swim, and cross the monkey bars at the playground! Taylor lost his other front tooth last week!  He looks so cute with a big space in the front of his mouth. When he finally wiggled it free, Matt and I gave each other a hug and said how blessed we are to witness these special moments with him.  Every milesone is a wonderful blessing!  My Dad celebrated his 60^th birthday a few months ago by jumping out of a perfectly good airplane!  The whole family went to watch.  All the kids were thrilled to see their grandpa skydive and land safely on the ground right in front of their eyes!  The boys also met their Grandpa Marmet for the first time in September! We took him to see the Statue of Liberty and for a tour of New York City while he visited us. We enjoyed our yearly summer vacation in Long Beach Island with my whole family.  He is loving school and he is reading and writing very well.  I’m working with him at home in addition to school and he’s doing first grade level math now!  We decided to keep him in Pre-K one more year at the advice of his teacher last year.  He had some maturity issues, which have since improved a great deal. We felt that after all he had been through and spending a year in the hospital missing milestones that it was a good decision.  He is in school four afternoons a week.  He also just received all G’s (meaning Good) on his report card!  His teacher said that that he is a good student, dilligent and focused when doing his table work.  Also very polite! Cameron is two and a half now and not much smaller than Taylor!  He talks from dawn until dusk and he loves his brother!  Taylor doesn’t seem to mind his little shadow following him around all day long.     

Taylor had scans in June and December.  They were all clean and everything looks great!  Praise our wonderful God!  He is now three years cancer free! We also brought him to MSK in October for some x-rays of his legs and a visit with the orthopedic specialist. This was to see if the radiation to his leg and hip had caused any problems.  His growth plates look fine and his left leg is only 3/8 of an inch shorter than his right leg (which could have happened naturally)!  The doctor said that she doesn’t believe he will have any concernable long term damage at this point!  The x-ray was kind of cool.  You can actually see about 100 surgical staples in his leg and pelvis!  These were used to clamp off the blood vessels so he wouldn’t bleed out during his surgery!  They are titanium and he will have them for life.  Fortunatly, he doesn’t set off metal detectors at airports.

Taylor, thankfully, does not need to go back to MSK for one whole year!  His next set of scans are next December.  After that, he will have scans the following December in 2008, then that is the end of scans as we know them!  Praise God for that!   We are already planning the biggest party ever after those last scans are done!   We will definetly update later this spring and put up more pictures!  Be well everyone. 

We love you all!

Jen, Matt, Taylor, and Cameron

Two year old Taylor was treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, which is only a one hour drive from our home. Dr. Leonard Wexler is his oncologist. He is said to be one of the five top cancer doctors worldwide and the best sarcoma doctor. He is also the authority on Rhabdo and he's spent years researching this cancer and treating over one hundred new cases a year. Dr. Wexler is confident that Taylor has responded well to treatment and is expected to live a long and healthy life. It was a long and difficult road to get there, but the end result was nothing short of a miracle. Taylor is now a healthy and happy five year old! Taylor finished his nine months of treatment in February 2004. He goes in for a check up every other month at which time he has an exam by his doctor, a chest x-ray, and a complete blood count. He received scans (MRI, PET scan and CT scan) every three months for his first 18 months post treatment.  He now has scans every six months until July 2007, then once yearly until 2009. Each time his results reveal no evidence of recurrent disease!  Praise God!

In addition to Taylor’s successful treatment of cancer, we received an extra added blessing. Cameron Richard was born on May 27, 2004…on the one year anniversary of Taylor’s diagnosis! What you will find on our web site is a daily diary during Taylor's treatment, his post-treatment progress, as well as our life afterwards...all from a mother's point of view. As the parent of a child with cancer, this web site is the chronicle of my son's incredible road to recovery and pure evidence of God's mercy and grace!