Remission Day Celebration

Thanksgiving Day will be a very difficult day for me.  I have been thinking of this day for about two months now.  November 24th is the one year anniversary of Madelyn's diagnosis.  It's the day six doctor's filed into our hospital room, sat down in front of us and the walls crashed in.  All I remember is their faces, lips moving, but not the sounds coming out.  After I heard those words - Madelyn has Leukemia, cancer of the blood - all the sound disappeared as I watched their mouths move and felt the river streaming down my face.


Peter and I have been thinking about how best to worship, how best to be thankful and solemn this upcoming Thanksgiving.  We have thought about involving all you - our loved ones, our dear ones.  But we have decided this Thanksgiving will be for us.  Silently, respectively and with our family.  Peter and I believe great strength and goodness comes from fun and celebration.  November 24th will not be a day of celebration for us but truly a day for thankfulness for our many, many blessings.


We do, however, want to celebrate this journey we've been on this year.  So mark your calendars people.  December 23rd.  That's right two days before Christmas - we received the best Christmas present anyone could every dream of.  We were told that our newborn baby girl - who somehow turned 4 1/2 years old overnight - who had cancer and had been through hell for 28 strait days - was in REMISSION.  We are going to celebrate this day.  Remission Day.  This amazing moment in time where all four of us made balloons from hospital gloves and danced around the Oncology Department.  The day I burst into tears and sobbed uncontrollably of pure relief and joy.  The day Madelyn has been fighting to maintain ever since...


At 11:00am we will meet at the bath house at Washington Park in Anacortes.  We will all walk together to Green Point where we will have some soup and hot coco together.  At noon we will launch gold balloons in the air.  12noon on December 23rd was the day the results of the Bone Marrow Biopsy came back indicating she was in remission.  Gold is the color representing pediatric cancer.  We will be collecting donations of three kinds.  Choose your donating, good tiding poison:  


    1.  Money for the N Ave Beach Restoration Project


    2.  Money for Seattle Children's Hospital


    3.  For any of you knitters out there, instead of money think of donating your time making warm        hats.  They are always needed for the gorgeously bald and fabulous kids (little and teenagers) frequenting the Oncology Clinic and Inpatient unit.  We will personally deliver them just a few days later.


This will be a moment in time you can celebrate with us or at your own home wherever you may be...  If you can't join us in Anacortes, celebrate Madelyn's Remission Day at home with a gold balloon launch of your own.  Remember the balloon is bio-degradable, but in most cases ribbons are not. Think of using an organic string or no string at all... and most important... SEND ME A PICTURE :)


RSVP to lisa@kuhnlein.com.