Siona did well on the flight. We were upgraded to first class by Delta Airlines which made the flight much easier to handle. As we arrived in Memphis it was 98 degrees and humid. Man it felt like India with the humidity and hot air blowing all around you.

St Judes picked us up at the airport and drove us to our housing which is provided by St Judes Hospital The meals are somewhat covered and they really do a good job of making the whole experience as pleasant and easy as it can be. The hospital is very organized and quite modern which is quite odd since Memphis isn’t exactly a booming town. Most of the staff says at night don’t go out and stay close to your housing as crime is quite high here in Memphis. We went to Kroger on Sunday and driving through Memphis was an eye-opening event. Even though Memphis would never appeal to us in a hundred years the people are extremely nice and very helpful. Thank you Sir, How do you Sir, Ya all, can be heard everywhere throughout the facility. On the flight we met a commander in the military and she told us to give her a call if we ever needed anything. At the airport a woman approached Reshma handed her a business card and said, 'Honey if you ever need anything...anything at all... you call me y'hear? I'm not just saying it. I mean it.' and then Resh go the biggest bear hug ever.

On Sunday, we did a bunch of blood work and today we had over 6 hours worth of visits from a bunch of folks. St Judes will confirm the diagnosis also with bone marrow tests tomorrow, which we are hoping will find that Siona has a different diagnosis. I have always felt like for least 2 years that Siona might not have cancer and maybe it was something else. Siona always seems to do very well off Chemo and the doctors were always commenting how great Siona looks and acts even though she has gone through 2 years of chemo. We will get confirmation which is reassuring to us which will bring us peace of mind. We will start chemo most likely if everything is confirmed on Wednesday and the clinical trial should last 4-6 weeks. Our goal is to get Siona into remission and then back to Seattle for a transplant.

The name of the 3 drugs are called Sorafenib, clofarabine, and cytabarine. We have never had the first 2 drugs, so that is the hope is producing a positive result in treating the cancer. All 3 of these drugs have been approved for other cancers which is reassuring. The doctor seems quite confident as this study has been open for at least an year and so he knows what to look for. The doctor has never tried this protocol on a T-Cell ALL patient, like Siona which is scary, but this whole process has had so much risk associated with chemo so that fact didn’t phase us too much. We will get a ton of information in the next few days so until than C Y'ALL LATER! :)