What do you call a:

strong and grow’n, pill swallow’n, leg break’n, fever catch’n, tooth looz’n, “Oh yeahh BayBay” yell’n 5-year-old kindergartner? A little boy beating leukemia named Maverick.

What do you call his parents? Good question – Thrilled, exhausted, rejuvenated, nervous, a bit relieved, but most of all -- blessed.

Blessed because we are exactly ONE YEAR away from our “no more chemo” party! Hard to believe, I know.  But we are 21 months into our journey with 12 more months of weekly treatments left. For some it may seem a long time to go, for us – it means we are in the home stretch.

A stretch of time has passed since the last caring bridge update.  July was one for the books and a month we are glad is behind us. July 1st, the day before Maverick’s 5th birthday, he decided to break his leg jumping (not sliding) down a 3-foot Fisher Price slide with his brother Patton. The steroids he takes as part of his protocol cause brittle bones. His broken tibia put him in a full leg cast for a month, followed by a below the knee cast for 3 weeks and now sporting a current boot.  Only positive that has come out of this is a wheelchair to get around better because crutches are to dangerous at his age. Swim party for his birthday ended up turning into a movie theater outing with cousins and neighborhood friends. 

A quick trip was made to Memphis for a routine check up days after breaking his leg. Visit went great and Doctors were happy with the progress that we made. However, our weekly blood labs showed Maverick was needing antibiotics due to certain criteria with his blood makeup. While not what we wanted to hear, it was this that triggered Maverick to learn how to take medicine in pill form instead of nasty liquids. This was another major hurtle as from time to time liquid medicine gave us challenges especially when Maverick was not feeling well or just flat out tired. Now he can pop pills like eating M&Ms.

Three days after returning from Memphis we found ourselves in the hospital for a week fighting off our first fever since moving back home from Memphis. If you may recall, fever is a big deal when being treated for Leukemia and the patient must be admitted to hospital for minimum of 24 hours as test are run and fever resides.  As protocol, heavy antibiotics are administered in case of infection. Luckily for us, a virus of some sort was the believed culprit that took 4 nights to finally break. Nursing staff at Our Lady of the Lake and our Oncologist team were awesome throughout those long days. Not to mention history was made as he lost his first tooth while at the hospital.  Pretty sure this was a bigger ordeal to him than the fever.  Luckily it was the day he was discharged so the tooth fairy didn’t have to visit in the hospital between the rotating three-hour vital checks from the nurses.

Yes, a July to remember, and one that is in the past.  Jumping into August has been fantastic!  Tinley and Patton began daycare where they are learning and socializing with other children their age.  And coming home with all kinds of things, like artwork, leftover goldfish in their pockets and snotty noses.  Maverick has officially survived his first full week of Kindergarten.  Cathedral Carmel school is absolutely amazing. They have welcomed him and his situation into their family and we couldn’t be more relieved. Removed from school and social settings alike for the past 21 months had Mom and Dad anxious in how he would respond to the teachers and other students.  Well, we must say, he LOVES school and is making friends and memories and seems to be embracing the change with ease. He was even Tiger of the Week in his class recently. I must admit, the very first thing he did within 15 minutes on the first day of school was attend Mass for a Holy day of Obligation -- he needs all the Holy Spirit he can get, and I’m just saying – Holy Spirit can do some pretty cool things – like make you love kindergarten! J/K he has awesome teachers. Every Tuesday he stills receive chemo at the affiliate clinic and misses the day of school. Maverick’s Tuesday school lessons are done by Mom at the affiliate clinic while Maverick receives chemo.

Our story is a testament of numerous journeys that several kids take fighting cancer daily.  This upcoming September is Pediatric Cancer awareness month.  As many of you know, St. Jude does an unbelievable job in campaigning for awareness and the need to continue their fight with revolutionary research advancements.  We are healthy this year to participate in their annual 5K run/walks here in Louisiana.  We have two opportunities we would like to extend as an invite:

September 21st in Youngsville, La at Sugar Mill Pond:

Registration link: 🎗Lafayette: September 21 - Sign Up Here:https://fundraising.stjude.org/site/TR/Walk/Walk…
*you can register one than one person under an account - just click “register another” below the confirm button before you complete your registration.

September 28th in Baton Rouge Downtown

Registration link: 🎗Baton Rouge: September 28 - Sign Up here: https://fundraising.stjude.org/site/TR/Walk/Walk…
*you can register one than one person under an account - just click “register another” below the confirm button before you complete your registration.

Both Saturday mornings we will rally Maverick’s Wingmen and walk amongst family, friends and strangers for a great cause.  Hope you can join us and hope for some nice fall weather to accompany!

We have also ordered another large supply of Team Maverick shirts if you are interested. Adult Small – 3XL; kids Small - XL and 2t,3t an 4t for the little ones.  Simply message us and we will be happy to mail these to you. $15 for adults and $10 for kids. 

Lot of blessings for our family as we stroll into our first school year.  We may have a year left of treatment, but we are in a much better place than the unknown a year ago.  We truly are blessed and appreciate the prayers and support along the way.  We find much comfort when driving to school to drop the kids off and Maverick is yelling “oh yeah Baybay! It’s going to be a fun day!”