Home of the Holmgrens

I have been keeping a physical journal about Maxwell's cancer experience, but it is slow writing by hand, and I can't go back and make changes or look up things easily like on a computer, so I am now changing to an online format to hopefully help with those things.

Today may have been the last time we spend time at Grandma and Grandpa Baugh's house for awhile. The coronavirus has made its way to Utah. It is a scary sickness that is very contagious and spreads quickly. It isn't super scary for healthy people, but it is dangerous for older people and people with suppressed immune systems like Max. They invited us over for sacrament and lunch. I felt hesitant to go because the coronavirus is spreading so fast, but I figured we were all healthy so we could venture over there and not have a risk of getting sick. We had a wonderful time at their house. My dad blessed the sacrament and took it to all of us even though it was hard for him to kneel and get back up and take it to us. Such a special spirit entered my parent's home as my dad started blessing the sacrament. That is the first time that any of us have taken the sacrament at home.  June and I then shared a lesson on faith and listening to the spirit.  We watched President Nelson's message to help bring hope and peace at this difficult time. We also watched a very good video on hearing Him that just came out. I need to do better in this area of quieting the noise and listening. We played an Old Maid game that our friends made for us for a Come Follow Me packet for the week. It was fun to have a little lesson with my parents, June, and Felix. We then enjoyed a wonderful lunch of shrimp curry, salmon, rice, rolls, and veggies. It was such a good meal. My parents always cook the best food. I then rested while Felix napped and June played with Legos. After that we went on a walk around Bear River and visited the park where June showed us her clogging dance. We spent a little more time together chatting and playing with Felix on the ground. As I got home that night I started worrying more about the coronavirus because my parents were supposed to tend June and Felix tomorrow, but they have been carrying on with their normal life grocery shopping, going to the library, visiting other people's homes etc, and I am worried they may more easily bring home the virus. So Cannon and I made the difficult decision tonight to just stay isolated as a family. Cannon will be with Max at the hospital. I will stay home with the kids. If we trade who is at the hospital, we will just bring the kids in the car and switch while Max is with a nurse. It is such a tough call to make, but I think doing this will limit our exposure and hopefully keep the virus away from our family. It could be very dangerous if Max got it, so we are taking more extreme measures.

Max has been at the hospital since Friday night to help treat his mouth sore pain. He got home from the hospital from round two of chemo Tuesday the 10th. He had a few days where he was healthy and happy at home. He then started to get worse Friday and the Oxycodone wasn't helping as much. Friday night he woke up crying, his temp was 100.3, and his nose was bleeding. All those things combined scared me, so I asked Cannon to take him to the hospital. I had been in contact with our nurse coordinator, Becky Chapeck, throughout the day on Friday and she set up an admit for whenever we needed to bring him down. Cannon took him to Primary Childrens. Because of the coronavirus they had the front entrance shut and he had to go through the ER. In the ER they asked questions if they had any symptoms of coronavirus. Then once they passed the check in point they got admitted to the fourth floor where they accessed Maxwell's port and started treating him with morphine. This morning, Sunday, Cannon said the pain had gotten worse for Maxwell. He won't swallow his spit and they have to suction it out or he spits it out into a cloth. The doctors came and did their rounds this morning and decided that the morphine pump would be best instead of just giving it to him every 4 hours, alternating it with Oxycodone. They have been feeding him through his feeding tube so that is nice that he is getting nutrition instead of just going without for a couple days like last time. Tonight, Cannon said that things have improved a lot. His heart rate has come down since being really high this morning in the 170s.  His morphine seems to be helping the pain, and he has been smiling at Cannon today and trying a few sips of things. He doesn't talk a lot when he has these mouth sores. Mostly he points and only talks if he really needs to.  So that is promising that he is acting better this evening. His ANC is currently at zero. On Thursday when the nurse came and did his labs his ANC was 17.1 so they asked that we not do the shot on Friday that helps his white blood cells come back.  They restarted his shots on Saturday. So we are just waiting for his ANC to come back up so his mouth sores can heal.  He had a little bit of a temp today as well so they are treating that with Tylenol and did some swabs to test him for anything.

It is crazy how Maxwell is going through cancer right now and through the midst of it the world also is going into chaos with the coronavirus. It's just unreal. The grocery stores are running out of food, toilet paper, hand sanitizer, basically any necessitates. The schools have closed here in Utah for two weeks and then there is spring break after that so June will not be going to school for at least three more weeks. She already missed this past week because I was worried about the coronavirus. She has been home doing MobyMax.com to help her continue learning. I found a good schedule online that we started on Saturday to help us stay sane and happy. The schedule worked really well on Saturday so we will have to try that out some more this week.

Felix is still being the sweetest baby alive. He is so happy and cheerful all the time. He is a very easy, sweet baby. He loves to eat real food, and is not super interested in nursing, but we are still doing it. He has two teeth growing in on the bottom. He is also getting very close to crawling. It is so cute. Today I was watching President Nelson's message on my phone. Felix was very interested in the phone and started army crawling towards it. I got him to army crawl across the carpet to get to the phone. He was so good at following the prophet :). I am sure grateful for June and Felix. They are being extra sweet through this difficult time. June has stepped up in learning how to do more things and be more independent. She has also been a very good helper with Felix. She helps get him out of bed, carry him around the house, feed him, move him when he has rolled to bad places in the house, and is just been the best big sister.  She has also been super sweet with her prayers asking for things like Jesus to be there with Max while he is getting his tonsils out, praying for Grant to not get the coronavirus, and just sweet things. Her prayers are very thoughtful and sweet. She also has been in a better mood. She used to throw really horrible, awful tantrums quite frequently, but recently she has been quite pleasant and a joy to be around. I am very grateful for her. It's not an easy time to be going through right now. Her parents are away a lot, she gets tended a lot, she is now out of school for a long time, she is missing things like clogging, and is spending lots of time at home, but she is handling it well.

Another update is we were going to be one of the families that a basketball tournament for Box Elder High basketball alumnus do to help fundraise for families in need. Trek Lyons contacted us and asked us to be one of the families. After deliberating for awhile we decided to do it. The basketball tournament is now cancelled because of the virus. They are still doing the fundraiser part so that is very kind. We weren't going to do it because we didn't think we needed the money and there are other families that could use it, but I am so glad we agreed to it now because we did not see this coronavirus getting thrown into things. So now Cannon may be able to afford taking more time off of work to help take care of our kids.

I just need to keep reminding myself to have faith and not fear. It is so easy to spiral downwards and get so afraid and scared, but we just have to trust and have faith in the Lord. We are going to do our part to keep Max as safe as we possibly can and then pray for the best and have faith in the Lord. This situation we are in is such a trial to go through right now. This is definitely something I cannot do on my own. I have prayed so hard for the Lord to strengthen me and give me the faith and the courage to keep going in this fight. I do feel like there are times Maxwell and I have been strengthened beyond our own strength.  I get down though sometimes and feel overwhelmed by it all. I guess that is Satan creeping in to try to get me to falter and fear. I just need to continue to pray, exercise faith, study the scriptures, and silence the distractions to help me get through this. We have had so many blessing along the way, so I also need to remember those as well. Meals have been brought this week, prayers all over the world are being said for Max (my students from my BYU-I class said they are praying for him), friend have reached out to check on us, loving family have supported us through watching kid, making meals, shopping for us, lending a listening ear, and just being there for us. I know there is not only people supporting us on this side of the veil, but also on the other side. I need to remember these things when I find myself floundering in the dark. We can do this! We can make it through! One day I will look back on this and it will all be in the past. I look forward to that day, but for now I must be strong, gird up my loins, and fight this fight with Max. There are many lessons I am learning along the way. I have noticed changes I am making because of this that are for the better, so hopefully by the end of this I will have learned what the Lord wants me to learn and have grown into a better disciple of Christ. I can do this!