We're enjoying our break

We’ve almost been lost not having to go back and forth to Duke every day, but Cameron is enjoying having time off to just relax and play. A few weeks ago, Dr. Grant mentioned the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation was part of an event called Ride for Kids where motorcyclist from the Raleigh area all come together from a year of raising funds and share time riding and aggravating each other about their motorcycle preferences. Children who have gone through or are going through what Cam is going through have the opportunity to ride along and while we weren’t sure how Cam would react, we wanted to give him the opportunity to at least try it.

At first he was a bit apprehensive about the crowd, but as soon as he saw “his” bike, a Harley Davidson with sidecar, he wouldn’t leave it. The sidecar had a cover on it, but as soon as the owner removed it, Cam was climbing inside…even though the ride wasn’t supposed to start for another 20-30 minutes. He was absolutely thrilled about the thoughts of riding in such a cool motorcycle and didn’t want to take a chance on someone else getting his ride. I was originally going to ride sitting behind the driver, but luckily, the next rider back had a sidecar which was empty, so I could ride along with him and watch Cam through the entire ride. I can’t tell you how many times my eyes filled with tears watching him taking the beautiful day in and talking to the guy during the ride. He was constantly looking from side to side trying to see everything as it whizzed by and I watched him numerous times leaning over the edge of the sidecar watching the road zip by. It was a bit overwhelming to think about what all he had been through and how we were so blessed to be a part, yet again, of a group of people who wanted nothing more than to help a child forget about things for a few hours and possibly grow to love motorcycles as much as they all do. It’s been 20’ish years since I’ve had a motorcycle and I had forgotten how much I loved to ride motorcycles, so LeAnn is probably going to be telling me “NO!” quite a few times in the upcoming months as both boys have told me they would love to get a motorcycle with a sidecar and go for rides….say a prayer for her. ;-)

The day took a toll on Cam however, as he had a couple episodes of vomiting and a bad headache on the top of his head, so back to Duke we went for a CT scan this afternoon. We’re still waiting on the results, but Dr. Grant somewhat seemed to feel it would turn out to be more a matter of Cam being tired than fluid build up in the ventricles. We’re obviously hoping those feelings are accurate.

Other than that and dreading the upcoming Chemo, things are going well. Cam’s hair is growing like crazy and is BLONDE, BLONDE, BLONDE. His spirits are good overall, but he knows Chemo is coming, so pray for peace in his mind and strength for him to endure it like the champion he is.

5/6/08: Just as an update, Cam's CT came back negative, so all is well. They stuck him, unnecessarily as it turns out, to run a second CT series with contrast and it came back showing no illumination on the site of the original tumor, so while he didn't have to get it done, we at least got great news as a result of it...silver lining kinda thoughts. LeAnn said something to Cam this morning along the lines of "Maybe you just had a little bug and that's why you weren't feeling well", to which he replied..."I had a lot of bugs on me from the motorcycle ride!!"....typical Cam. ;-)