Its a new year

We spent the holidays in Seattle with Earl's family. We had good visits with his siblings and mother and especially his older children. We stayed at his mom's home where his brother Charlie and his family lives. We were treated like royalty. Earl's sister, Dorothy made it possible for us to make the trip. Charlie and his wife, Michelle would not let us cook for ourselves or clean-up. We were on vacation.

Seattle was snowed in. We didn't go anywhere for the first few days. We arrived in a huge snow storm 5 hours later than we should have. Mary enjoyed playing in the snow with her cousin Jackie who is 3 years old. We were finally able to get some Christmas shopping done on the 23rd.

On Christmas we drove over to pick up Earl's oldes son, Isaac. We made a wrong turn and got stuck in a dead end street trying to turn around. While Earl and I were evaluating our situation, Mary said a prayer for help. It came in the form of 4 nameless strangers with shovels. We were so thankful for their help. We arrived at Dorothy's just in time for a terrific eggs benedict breakfast.

On Saturday, the 27th we went out to dinner with Earl's children. We were able to take a couple of family pictures that included everyone but Jacob who is in Iraq with the Navy.

On Sunday, the 28th we had the Gillmore family Christmas party. What a fun time. The Gillmore's love to have a good time. We had a couple of talent acts, good food and the traditional white elephant game. We were able to take pictures of Earl with many of his siblings.

I will post the pictures on a later post. Today I am consentrating on updating.

We were supposed to come home on the 29th but Earl's mom asked if we could stay longer. We didn't really feel like we had anything that we needed to get back for, so we stayed until the 2nd. Mary and I went to the Seattle Science Center with Jackie and Michelle, Rachel, Jacqui and Aaron.

Mary, Earl and I went to Puyallup to see the monument that Earl's sister, Diane put up. We got lost twice and took quite a drive before we finally got there. Luckily it was still light and the weather held for us. I had never been to Tacoma before and now I have.

We arrived home to snow in Salt Lake City and it has snowed nearly every day since we have been home.

Monday we started finding out Earl's status. Currently his bilirubin is higher than it has ever been. So the Therasphere's treatment has been put on hold. We are not sure if it is definite. We will be starting on a low dose of chemotherapy and see how it goes.

I wanted to end this update on a good note so here is the good news. The first Therasphere treatment has put Earl's Alpha Fetal Protein down into the normal range so the tumors are shrinking. We are going to be looking into seeing if Earl's medications are too high and maybe that will change his numbers. We have another doctor appointment on Thursday. We can only pray that things get better.