Holiday highlights

Happy New Year. Dale is still fighting his fight and hanging in there. Christmas was great. On Christmas Eve. Dale sang solo at church during the Christmas Eve. service. He did great and we were all so proud of him. He also sang back up with Derek for Danny's church band at the same service. That was great too. On Christmas day , Dale required a platelet transfusion. His dear friend and nurse from Long Beach came in on Christmas day to transfuse Dale with platelets that were sent in by the Red Cross at Long Beach Memorial Hospital. We were so grateful. The next day the five of us took off to Hawaii for 8 days. We started out on Kauai for 5 days then spent the next 3 days on Oahu. Highlights on Kauai were eating saimin at Hamura's saimin, meeting pro surfer Bruce Irons at Kalihi Wai beach, eating Ono Char Burgers at Anahola beach,golfing at Pua'kea golf course and skate boarding down Uncle Eric's street. Highlights on Oahu were going to Uncle Doug's house (Auntie Millie's brother) and lighting fire crackers until 1am on New Years Eve, going to Bellows with the Takao's and seeing a rainbow from end to end in the water. The best part was spending time with Uncle Eric, Auntie Millie , Nicole and Tobie. Seeing our long time friends from college days and visiting Popo and Gung Gung on Oahu was special too. This was a much needed vacation for Dale and our family. On Tuesday 1/8, Dale went to UCLA for a repeat bone marrow biopsy. His marrow showed an increase of blast cells to 38%. His last biopsy showed 7% blasts after his last chemotherapy regimen. Needless to say, we are starting back up again. On Monday Dale will be at UCLA for 6 days receiving chemotherapy. We have decided to try a different approach. Dale will undergo a donor leukocyte infusion with white cells taken once again from Derek. This time the cells will be taken peripherally from his blood through pheresis (the same way plateletes are donated) and then infused into Dale. This will hopefully boost the marrow and help combat the leukemia. The down side is that Dale will have more graft vs. host effects. Derek will have to go through a series of injection for 4 days prior to the harvest. The transfusion is scheduled to take place on Jan. 28 if everything goes as planned. We hope and pray that all goes well. Hope you all had a wonderful holiday too......