This website has been designed to keep our friends and family updated about Micah Grace...
For those of you who know Micah Grace, you know a little girl so full of love and life that you'd never know the trauma her little body has been through.
Micah was born wonderfully healthy, happy, and full of energy! She was not only growing and progressing as normal infants do, but was even advanced and started sitting up, crawling, and pulling up early! Then the unthinkable happened...Micah stopped crawling and pulling up. In fact she stopped doing a lot of things...our beautiful baby girl had become paralyzed from the waist down, a condition the doctors said was permanent.
At just 11 months old, we were told that a malignant tumor had begun behind Micah's kidney's and had spread throughout her little torso wrapping itself around her spinal cord, severing parts of the spinal cord and crushing pieces of her delicate vertebrae. Micah was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma, Stage IV cancer--a cancer of the nervous system that only affects children and most of those children are infants. Neuroblastoma has a 57% cure rate which is decreased by the Stage, age, and aggressiveness of the tumor. In Micah's case, the tumor had spread also to the bone marrow in her left leg and was also inoperable everywhere else so she was put in Stage IV, the worst kind. After being admitted to the worlds most phenomenal place we've ever been, we fell in love with StJude Children's Research Hospital where, not only are children accepted from all over the world regardless of their family's inability to pay, but the research that is done there is shared freely with other hospitals and research facilities internationally. Basically, they don't care who finds the cure for cancer, just as long as someone does! St.Jude treated Micah's cancer with high doses of very intense chemotherapy as part of a new protocol they were trying. They also performed several surgeries including two operations cutting Micah's back from her neck bone to her tail bone, and two from underneath Micah's breastplate around her body to underneath her shoulder blade. She was given a Hickman's Line IV in her chest for treatment, meds, and blood work. After months of these surgeries, chemos, rehab, tests, scans, and back braces, Micah's final surgery miraculously removed 98% of her tumor and put the rest into remission. Micah now lives with this piece of tumor imbedded in her spinal cord and we live with the reality that Micah's cancer, Nueroblastoma, has the highest rate of relapse of all the childhood cancers. Will it ever come back? We don't know, but we are not only thankful for the hospital and prayers that saved our daughter's life, but we are also thankful for the healing power of an Almighty and Merciful God who has given life and movement back to Micah's little legs! ...We are so thankful for this miracle who has touched and changed the lives of so many! We will forever proclaim God's Name over Micah's healing, we will forever tell the story of how a wonderful hospital did everything they could to save our daughter's legs and her life, and we will forever cherish this little miracle that has blessed the life of everyone she has met!
September 16th, we celebrated Micah's 7th year in remission!
Micah has had hours of physical therapy to correct some physical problems with her posture, and has scoliosis in two places and kyphosis in 1 place (both forms of curvature of the spine) as a result of the prosthetic vertebrate the doctors had to put in Micah's spine to replace one that was damaged by her tumor. Micah has worn a back brace ever since treatment and continues to see her orthopedist every few months. We continue to go to St.Jude for follow up visits, tests, scans, etc. to monitor the growth of Micah's spine and the lack thereof of her tumor.
We thank the doctors and nurses at St.Jude for their awesome devotion to our children! We thank God for His awesome Healing Powers!!! We thank St.Jude's many financial donors and supporters for everything they've done to make sure our St.Jude kids have the best treatment possible!
Thanks For Your Support ! See you next year Sept 2009
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Journal
Wednesday, February 29, 2012 5:01 PM CST
We await anxiously for this Friday, March 2nd, 2012 to arrive so we can go back to St.Jude for a set of nonscheduled scans for Micah. Her orthopedist viewed her X-rays Monday and Micah's scoliosis has developed from 25 and 27% to approx 50% in just a few months. Her rapid growth as she heads into puberty could possibly be the cause of such significant change so that's what we're hoping for. Please join us in lifting Micah up to our God, who is sovereign above all else.
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