Dear Family and Friends,

Good news! Just a little over a week after her stem cell transplant, Amelia's bone marrow is producing blood cells, telling us that the transplant worked. That's an important step along the treatment path and we're all very happy with her progress.

Sometime in the next week we expect Amelia to be released from the hospital, but she will be followed closely for a month or so while her resistance to infection builds up. Then it will be time for the next phase, radiation therapy.

We'll keep you posted. As always, thanks for your prayers and support.

Dear Family and Friends,

Amelia is much better today and we expect her to be out of intensive care in the next day or so.

Her recent experience is an interesting example of what complicated chemistry sets our bodies are. She was not responding to the medicine they gave her for congestive heart failure on Thursday. It occurred to one of her doctors that a chemical that is added to the stem cells prior to freezing to prevent them from being damaged is toxic to the heart. It is normally eliminated from the body after the transplant before it can cause a problem, but because of Amelia's impaired kidney function, maybe it was the source of her difficulty. The fix for this was an exchange transfusion, replacing Amelia's blood with fresh stuff, untainted with the toxic chemical. Bingo! Amelia's heart started working as it should, her cold feet warmed up, and by Noon yesterday she was off of the ventilator and breathing on her own.

Aren't doctors wonderful! We'll never know for sure just how that key diagnostic thought came to mind, but I think your prayers played a part. Thanks so much.

The next good news should come in about ten days, when we expect to see signs that the transplant was successful and blood cell production has resumed. We'll let you know.

Dear Family and Friends,

It has been awhile since our last update, and there has been a lot going on.

Starting with the latest developments, as I write this, Amelia is in Pediatric Intensive Care at Johns Hopkins being treated for congestive heart failure. She is a very sick little girl and your prayers are most welcome.

The seventh and final round of Amelia's chemotherapy regimen commenced on 23 September. This last dose was of such strength that, along with hopefully killing any remaining cancer cells, it completely destroyed her bone marrow's ability to produce blood cells (and thus her immune system). In conjunction with the chemo Amelia was given a lot of fluid, which she had difficulty eliminating. Administration of diuretics and insertion of a catheter in her bladder helped the process, and on 1 October she received an autologous stem cell transplant to reverse the bone marrow destruction and allow production of new blood cells (the stem cells were previously harvested from her blood and frozen in anticipation of the transplant). Fluid retention continued to cause problems, and last night her breathing became labored. She was moved to intensive care this morning and around noon time a breathing tube joined the host of other tubes plugged into her. Diagnostic testing identified the cause of her problem and she is now on medicine that should allow the heart to work better and clear up the problem. We're hoping for signs of improvement by morning. We'll let you know when this crisis has passed.

The support from everyone has been great, and is continuing.

Thanks so much