A New Update On Brooke Mulford

Joe,

Today is a big day for Brooke. She will be getting some tests done today to determine whether or not the chemo is working. The Dr’s harvested stem cells yesterday and were very successful. 20,000,000 cells in one shot. It really is tremendous. I was hoping to keep her prayer chain going on your site today. I have included an update from her father for you and your readers. Click here http://www.brookemulford.com/journal.cfm and take a few moments to catch up on Brooke’s status and reflect on the many blessings we all hold.

Thanks again Joe for all of the exposure you have lended to team Brooke and our fight against Neuroblastoma.

Kindest regards,

Eric Morris
Team Brooke

“Hey everybody, I am a little tired and a little woozy, but guess what? High Fives to everyone. They got over 20,000,000 stem cells today on the first Stem Cell Rescue! They got the target number and I do not have to do it again. It was a long procedure. We were up early this morning at Grammy’s house.Everybody running around and we were in the car and off to CHOP. I slept ok last night thanks to Mommy sleeping with me. We arrived at CHOP about 8:30AM and made our way to the Seashore house where the Apheresis Lab is located to do my Stem Cell Rescue. We quickly got to it. Had blood work done and started getting prepared for the procedures once we got the ok. I told Mommy my counts were up and guess what, I was right the results came back and it was time. They brought in a lot of packages and I got very scared, it looked like a lot of ouchies headed my way! This machine next to bed I was staying in was big and had a lot of knobs and tubes hanging from it. We got everything hooked up and it was not too bad, only a few tears. This was going to take awhile, so I ordered some breakfast and a couple of movies. This would have been torture if I would have had to do this tomorrow again. All those prayers must have worked today, because Mommy and Daddy were fully expecting to have to do it again tomorrow that is kind of the norm we understand. They had to give me a lot of blood to keep everything going smoothly. There were a lot of bags of fluid hanging everywhere. Finally around 2:30PM we were finished. I got to see and touch this special bag of a lightly colored red liquid that Mommy and Daddy both closed there eyes and prayed!This was a lot different than Jesus Juice. For those of you who might of missed that, Jesus Juice is when I have a transfusion. These were the separated Stem Cells that they collected, to later down the road do my bone marrow transplant. All was looking good, until something arrived on the table that caught my eye, it was an ouchie waiting to happen. I had to get an ouchie and a bunch of flushing in my tubies. I tasted a lot of bad tastes in my mouth. I was tired and drained, but my day was not over yet. I was carted down to Radiation to get a shot of dye for my MIBG scan tomorrow. It was late in the day, but if all goes well tomorrow we could leave to go home, that would be 2 days early. I think I might get to go see a movie Friday and Daddy would come too! Tomorrow afternoon I have a CT scan to see if the tumor is shrinking and then the MIBG scan to see if there is less cancer in my bones. This is the scan where I have to lay still for 45 minutes and can not move. If I do they will have to sedate me and that will mean not coming home and feeling lousy when I wake up.

Well I have been waiting to see the Ronald McDonald house and boy is it cool!Daddy was right, it has a cool play room. We got all settled into our room and downstairs we went. Just see my pictures and it had everything I like. After playing we had a nice dinner that was prepared by volunteers. Tonight’s was done by The University of Penn’s Law Team. It was awesome! We then got to see some doggies that were brought over from the University of Penn’s Vet program. I sure do miss Bailey, but I got to pet her on my Daddy’s computer screen today. It was time for bed and I fought that. I hope tomorrow goes well so I can come home early and see my house for a few days before coming back on Monday! Good Night and thank you to everyone for all those prayers, they sure worked today!

I want to say a prayer for Trace who went to AI dupont late Tuesday night with pneumonia in his chest and an infection in his left ear. Please God heal Trace fast so those counts do not go to low!

Can you believe they harvested over 20,000,000 Stem Cells today? They got their target goal on day one, How happy were Amy and I? It was a long procedure and Brooke was a trooper! She then went and had another procedure to boot. She has a clinic visit tomorrow, just to do some blood work and make sure all counts are ok before returning home. Then she will get the CT scan and MIBG Scan too see how the first two rounds of Chemo have done.Next week begins her third round. Monday is a bone marrow scan. She will have to be sedated for this, and it will make for a long week. That is the procedure Brooke likes to call when she wakes up and has two band aides on her hinny! Mommy they take my bone marrow, and leave two band aides. She is sore after this! We also understand that the drugs they use in the third round are strong and it could be a tuff week on Brooke. We will cross that bridge next week! For now I need to go to bed, but wanted to keep you all up to date!

PS. It’s Brookie! Daddy forgot to thank the 4th grade classes of SCS from our last visit. Daddy’s cousin Sheryl and husband Mr Dave put everything together from Mrs. Black and Mrs. Wackett’s classes and I had 7 days of presents. I opened one everyday on my last Chemo round. I got to open the package and card every morning after I ate my breakfast. Thank You everyone!”