WOW! Hot pink, lime green and polka dots are now Micah's new favorite things Sitting in front of the bathroom mirror will bring on an original song to sing
She dances and she prances around with such a rare love of life in her heart You'd never know she's had it so rough struggling almost right from the very start
She has proven she is a true fighter kicking cancers butt for over 5 years We all pray she stays in remission and ask God to calm all our fears
Micah, she is our true miracle child she teaches lessons of courage and love Much wiser beyond her tender young age her Faith comes from the Good Lord above
Look at Micah's most beautiful smile see all the love in those baby blue eyes She is a vision of true beauty and strength and in her happiness our happiness lies
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. This much pressure on such a tiny intricate part of a baby's body would have only taken 24 hours to completely paralyze an adult body but Micah proved to be a fighter early on when the tumor took at least a week to drop her to her knees. When we got the diagnosis it dropped us to our knees as well 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 somone 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 5th year in remission! Since the end of treatment, Micah not only walks, but has taken dance classes and is a cheerleader for the 5-6 Raiders for the 2nd year- Go Raiders!
Not bad for a little girl the physical therapists and nuerosurgeons predicted would be wheel chair stricken and possibly would walk with arm and leg braces! 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 used to wear a back brace, but doesn't have to now and will hopefully not have to in the future. 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
Monday, September 29, 2008 5:00 PM CDT
Wow! Tomorrow is such a big day! Its Micah's very first visit to the ACT Clinic (After Completion of Therapy Clinic) at St.Jude. This is so bittersweet as Micah will be entering a new area of the hospital and kind of heading into the "after treatment" care and no longer seeing her oncologist, Dr.Santana. But I know it's a good thing! Today is Chili's Profits for St.Jude Day which is so fun and we've already eaten there once today and we're headed back shortly. Yum! Micah got a new back brace 2 weeks ago and it's.....HOT PINK! I thought the doctors were going to fall over from laughing and told Micah I doubted they could do that but a few weeks later we went to her fitting and sure enough: pink! And we wonder why she's so spoiled? She still wears the brace all night every night and her orthopedist, Dr. Warner through the Campbell Clinic says that he thinks she'll be in it for several more years. Once she hits puberty, we'll start looking at other options such as surgery. :( I know, small price to pay for such a healthy little survivor but it's still not easy to think that it will never be over. Micah makes a great big sister, and helps me every day with Haven. How do people have 2 in diapers???? I can barely handle one healthy little girl and don't know what I'd do with out my Micah! We are headed back to Chili's--hope everyone is going to a local Chili's right now too! :) In His Grip, Sarah Barker
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