halfway! & light the night

September.

For us, there's a lot that this September means. For one, we are reaching a huge milestone in Ethan's treatment, because this month he is HALFWAY THROUGH HIS TREATMENT! Ethan has completed 20 months of chemotherapy and has 20 months to go, with his last month scheduled to be May 2017. He has come so far and there's a long road ahead, but this month feels like a big deal. Halfway. Thank you Jesus.

We are also getting ready this month to have TEAM ETHAN represent and celebrate with Ethan at the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Light the Night Walk on September 26th. You guys, last year was our first year taking part in this event and it was an absolute joy and huge blessing to have a team of over 40 friends and family come to Forest Park to celebrate and walk with Ethan at this event.

For those of you who don't know - Light the Night is one of the biggest fundraiser's that the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society puts on each year. Last year we were able to raise almost $7000 for LLS from all of your generous donations to our Light the Night team and to our efforts for the half marathon that we ran. Our Minnesota Light the Night Team raised over $10,000. It was incredible!

We would love it if you would consider supporting our Team Ethan again this year - every $1 truly makes a difference. You can make a tax-deductible donation on our Team Ethan website by clicking on this link here:

http://pages.lightthenight.org/gat/StLouis15/TeamEthan

If you live in St. Louis and would like to walk with us at Light the Night all you need to do is send me an email at melissa.weseloh@gmail.com to let me know you'll be there. We would sincerely love for you to join us - we'll have food to eat before the walk begins. I can't even tell you how excited Ethan was to have so many friends join us last year. So if you can be there - email me and I'll add you to our team list! :)

As for Ethan's treatment - he starts Cycle 5 on Wednesday September 16th, so that will include a sedation for intrathecal chemo along with his monthly IV chemo and the start of his 5 day steroid dose. We had some extra labs done last week because he's been experiencing some extra belly pain over the last couple of weeks and his liver enzymes were elevated, but not high enough to make any changes or do anything but wait and see what they are on September 16th. As always, we are grateful for your prayers and ask that you keep our boy covered in them.

Thank you for all that you've done to continue to support Ethan and our family. The fact that September is also Pediatric Cancer Awareness month sort of makes things feel more heightened - all that Ethan's endured. What he's got ahead of him. The fact that he's not alone, and that there are thousands of other kids who have also experienced cancer. Thank you for wanting to take time to read about Ethan's experience and enter in to his story. We're so grateful for your support.