Hooray for Friends!

The night before our last trip to Texas, I received an unexpected phone call from Washington from someone whom I'd never before met. It turned out that she was calling on behalf of her sister Mel, who lives down the street from us and also happens to be a good friend of mine. Mel's sister was calling to let me know that my friend's infant daughter Avery was back in the hospital and had just been diagnosed with leukemia.

Mel is a mom in our playgroup. She and I first met at my house a couple of years ago at our playgroup's 1st ever meetup. Her son Ian was just a few months old at the time. He's now nearly 3 and one of Pumpkin's favorite friends. Mel's daughter Avery was born last September. Recently, Avery came down with Bell's Palsy. A couple of weeks later, she was diagnosed with infections in both of her ears, and a week or so after that, she was rushed to the hospital with an uncontrollable fever resulting from a kidney infection (I think). This latest ER visit came about because her fever had returned and wasn't going down. More thorough tests were performed, and Avery was diagnosed with Acute Lyphoblastic Leukemia (ALL).

Our playgroup friends have really come together cooking, cleaning, babysitting, and shopping for Mel and her family while they deal with chemotherapy, infections, lengthy hospital stays, and separation. Most recently, another playgroup mom Kristi P and her hubby OMP organized a benefit pool tournament that raised over $4000 for Avery! The benefit took place this weekend, and it was a lot of fun. It was really great to see so many families from our playgroup in attendance. It was also wonderful to see Mel enjoying herself with her family and friends, however briefly the outing. :)



Throughout this ordeal, Avery's been a real little trooper. She's a wonder to behold, and even though I'm not a "baby" person (as many of you already know, hehe), I can't seem to keep my eyes off of her whenever I visit them at the hospital. You can read more about Avery by visiting this link: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/averyspicer. The password is averyspicer.