back to work
Wow! You guys are awesome. We sold out. I mean COMPLETELY sold out pretty much over night. We are so honored that you like our dresses. It feels good to be doing something for Cora.
Thanks again. Really, you guys are great!
Wow! You guys are awesome. We sold out. I mean COMPLETELY sold out pretty much over night. We are so honored that you like our dresses. It feels good to be doing something for Cora.
We are OPEN!
(after just a slight delay...)
Come check out our new shop: www.coras.etsy.com
My brother Matt made these awesome blocks. Aren't they fantastic? They will be listed sometime tomorrow morning in our shop.
It's up! You can watch the video of Cora's celebration service by going to the Grace website. It is under the "Grace Updates" section. Thank you Adam for working so hard to get this up and running!
Can you believe it? Cora is famous. Joel was reading through our comments and noticed a comment that said there was an article about Cora on Etsy. We headed over to Etsy and there it was. Our picture and everything. Crazy! Thank you Beki for writing such a kind article about our family. Thank you Julie for thinking of this great way to support Cora's Playground through Etsy. Thank you to the MANY people who are giving of their time and talents towards this project. You guys are awesome! Words cannot express how humbled we are to see so many people rally around us in this way. Thank you!
After many people suggesting that we get away after Cora's celebration service, we decided to follow their advice. We headed to Colorado to have some time alone and try to process how our lives have changed so quickly.
Wow! We are so overwhelmed by the love that is being shown to us. Friends, family and even strangers are supporting us in ways we would have never imagined. It is incredible how our little Cora, whom we miss SO much, is leaving such a legacy.
Click here to listen to the celebration of Cora's life.
For more information about contributing to the Cora Playground, visit www.corapaige.com.
We are SO THANKFUL for an uneventful day. No surgeries, no set backs, but no real progress either. Joel and I are struggling with the waiting and the unknown today. This is not in our timing and that is hard for us. PICU cleared out tonight except for one other little girl and Cora. We want it to be our turn to go home. We want to see visible signs of our little girl getting better. But for some reason we just have to wait for now.
Cora just came out of surgery, and the doctors told us that she did fine. It was a LONG wait for all of us, especially Joel and Jess, before the doctors came in to give us the news that she was ok. They said that they were able to drain the fluid from around her heart, and were also able to put a drain in her abdomen to help with the seeping fluid from her previous incision. The nurses are getting her settled in again from her surgery before we can go in and check on her.
Things change around here fast. After another meeting with the doctors again this morning, we are finding out that the fluid around Cora's heart has increased. She is now scheduled for surgery this afternoon to create a little window in the pericardial sac that will release the excess fluid. Another boy here in PICU is having the same procedure this morning, and then Cora's will follow after, so we're not sure about the exact time today, but just please pray.
Another hard day, but still lots of things to be thankful for. As you heard from James' post, Cora's surgery was cancelled. They did an echocardiogram this morning and found that the fluid around Cora's heart was the same or maybe even less. This was a praise! Joel and I prayed last night that the surgery wouldn't be necessary. Cora has been on an oscillator since this morning. The doctor decided that she needed to be on this machine to help recruit the collapsed lung space. She transitioned well to this machine and has been pretty stable the rest of the day. There have been many answers to prayer today. We are trying to focus on the little praises (baby steps), but sometimes it is so hard when your baby is still lying on a bed hooked up to all these big machines. We are longing to hold our baby and giggle with her again. Pray that this will be possible soon! We know that God is good. He is holding our precious little baby in His hands. That is the best place she could be. We are praying for a miracle. Lord, please restore our little girl's body and get rid of the cancer!
After doing another echocardiogram this morning, the doctors have decided that it is best not to have Cora's surgery today. They think that perhaps the fluid around her heart is a bit less than yesterday (which would be a good thing), but also the risk of nicking her liver during the surgery is very high. So, for now that procedure is on hold.
Today was probably the hardest day that we have had since we began this journey almost two weeks ago. We were awoken with a phone call this morning from my mother telling us that the nurses said that we needed to get up to the PICU immediately. With a pit in our stomachs, we hurried over to find out that Cora had had a rough night, and that they needed to put her on a more aggresive type of ventilator. Her lungs were collapsed enough that the ventilator that she was on was not getting enough oxygen to her body. As a result her blood oxygen levels had dipped down into the 20's several times over night. For those of you who do not know, (as I did not a few days ago) that is really low. Normally it should be 95-100. Something had to be done to help her, and the doctors felt that this was the first thing that she needed.
This is Uncle James again. Joel and Jess just finished meeting with the doctor this morning, which leads me to ask you to pray for several specific things. Cora was put on the ventilator last evening, but she still had some difficulty in breathing in the night. Her oxygen levels dropped pretty low about 5 different times. Today the doctor has decided to put her on a different sort of ventilator which will help to inflate her lungs a bit more. Parts of her lungs are deflated and even collapsed, so this new machine will hopefully help to restore some of her lung capacity.
This rollercoaster we are on is SO hard. The past few days have been good and we felt like Cora was making some progress. Like we were on our way to getting our little girl back. We even felt comfortable enough to both leave the hospital to go out to eat. Joel's mom stayed with Cora while we were gone. When we were on our way home from dinner we got a call from Joel's mom saying not to panic but we needed to come back to the hospital. Both of our hearts sank. Cora had been fighting her C-PAP all day and pulling her feeding tube out. She was a tired little girl and just wasn't breathing like she needed to. The doctor decided to put her on a ventilator. He said Cora needed to rest and she was working too hard to breathe. It is so sad to see Cora hooked up to all those machines again. It feels like we are moving backwards instead of forwards. Cora will probably be on the ventilator for several days. The doctor is hoping that as Cora rests her body will be able to recover more quickly from the surguries and chemo. So, this is how we left our little girl tonight. Joel's mom is staying in her room tonight so that we can try to sleep.
Today is only day 11, however, it seems like a year ago since we rushed Cora here from her doctors appointment. The day was long and we still have not received any news on the type of neuroblastoma that she has. This along with the emotion of the whole experience has seemed to weigh heavily on all of us. Jess is still not feeling very good, but she did get a lot of good rest in today.
Hey everyone, we are happy and relieved to say that Cora has finished her first round of chemo. She got done around 5:30 this morning. We hope and pray now that it is doing its job and killing the cancer. The doctors seem to be pleased with how her body tolerated it, and that her blood levels did not get too out of line. This being said, it did really wipe her out. She has slept most of the day, and is not really interested in much else. They say we will be in ICU until Cora can breathe on her own, and everything else is stabilized. As far as a time frame goes they say it is different for everyone. So once again we are being taught patience. This has been one of the hardest parts for me (dad) as it seems that we have to sit around and wait on results, tests and doctors all of the time.