Olivia Strong

Olivia is officially cured!!! CURED!!!!!!!! Today she is 5 years cancer FREE. I’m in tears just writing that. We are finally here.

She now moves to annual bloodwork and will continue her annual ECHO/EKGs. Her next one is on July 11th. It will never fully go away but OMG do my heart and shoulders feel so much relief!!! AML, I loathe you and what you did to our little family. You took so much away from us. But man we gained so much in the end!!!!

This girl right here is just 4 months away from being officially CURED!!! The day we have been waiting for is almost here and I just cannot believe it. I remember wanting time to literally speed up so I didn’t have to live the anxiety of five years and now I want time to just slow down!! You’re almost there baby girl!!! I couldn’t be more proud of the amazing lady you are turning into and everything you have overcome!!!

The #1 question I am often asked is “how did you know something was wrong with Olivia?” I like how this post was done and wanted to share but the first thing I always say before I answer is “trust your mama gut!” That will never steer you wrong.

Well, this child of mine BLEW my mind away today!!! She told me earlier in the week that she wanted to cut her hair. I about fainted because if you know Olivia, this kid won’t let you near her hair with scissors. I then got the idea that she could probably cut enough to donate it and still have long hair. So I showed her how much she would have to cut to donate to the organization called Children With Hair Loss and she said yes I want to do that! I almost fainted again!!! Then when she actually went through with it today I literally could not believe it! She chopped about 9 inches off and I couldn’t be prouder of this girl of mine!

She is officially one year away from being considered CURED!!!

It has been a long day of appointments - this was her first appointment with the “survivor clinic”. We are now waiting on her echo/ekg to be done and then we get to go home! Oh how I DON’T miss the days of living here!

After a couple of years of hearing about the billboards, one of Olivia’s biggest fans was able to capture this picture to share with us!

I know I haven’t posted in a while. No news is good news right?! Olivia is doing amazing. She just finished 2nd grade, received the Principal’s Award and at the end of this month she will go for her annual echo/ekg and biannual blood work. As always I will update as soon as we hear she is FOUR years cancer free!

3 and half years! Just like that! Her blood work looked amazing! The clinic moved to the main part of the hospital a couple of months ago so this was our first time seeing it. We found this incredible memorial for the man responsible for keeping our Olivia safe. So of course we needed a picture! Still missing you sweet Dr. Arceci but I know you’re never far away...

Our last donations put us at 530 games/toys!!! 530!!! Our last thank you goes to the Draves family and a family who wanted to remain anonymous. When we started this in 2014, I never imagined it to get this big. Each year we blow the previous year’s number out of the water and each year I am beyond amazed at what my little community does. It is not only touching to me how many donations come in and how many smiles I know we are creating for these kiddos going through extremely hard things, but it is also touching to see how everyone works together! Some of you put drives together through your own community, some of you pick up donations from your own community to drop off at my house, some of you put together a drive and ship it all to my house. It is truly incredible to be the one to watch how this transforms and unfolds.

I want to tell you all about a conversation I had with Kim in child life the other day. She called me to plan out how to bring this incredibly huge pile of games and toys to her. On this same phone call, she said I want to tell you a story. She explained that this past year she had a kiddo in the hospital battling a brain tumor. He didn’t understand what was happening to him and he was shutting down. He stopped talking and stopped playing. Kim started going to his room pretty regularly to build up some trust. One of her visits she decided to go to the closet where all of our games were from last year’s drive, she got Connect 4 and brought it to his room. She got his teen sister to join in and the three of them started playing. He began laughing and joining in on the fun. She then explained to the little boy that he was going to be able to bring that game home with him. The next time she went to his room, she brought the Let's Go Fishing game. This time was able to get his mommy involved. She said while they all played this game, it created so much laughter. She said his mommy was laughing so hard she was in tears. She wanted all of us to know what these donations mean to these kiddos. That a simple game can bring a smile to the most scared mommy, daddy, kiddo and sibling’s faces. I remember being that same scared mommy in the hospital. Bret remembers being that same scared daddy in the hospital, Olivia remembers being that same scared kiddo in the hospital and I know that even though he was only 2 years old, Evan remembers being that same sibling. Whenever Olivia, Bret, Evan and I were able to play a new game and bring laughter to the cold hospital room, it was extremely touching beyond anything I could ever explain.

Everyone thanks us for doing this drive and everyone says what amazing people we are but seriously, I need each and every one of you who donates to this to know that we cannot do this without YOU!!! YOU are the ones that make this happen!!! I cannot tell you how much we appreciate it and how incredibly happy it makes us to be able to give back to the hospital that saved Olivia’s life.

Over the last few days we’ve had a couple of shipments and drop offs bringing our total to 512!!!! The items around Olivia are the latest donations. The corner behind her filled with boxes and bags are the rest of the donations! A huge thank you goes out to my cousin Danny and his wife Allison and Allison’s co-workers! Another huge thank you to Pete, the Knudsen family, the Davis family, and the Evans family - who is another very generous co-worker of Olivia’s daddy.

Olivia’s oncology appointment is on Wednesday at 2! There’s still time to bring me your donations! You all are some amazing people! ❤️

So...I had this amazing plan to organize this and take a really cool picture of all of the toys and games going up our stairs and have the kids sit in the middle...yeah that’s really hard to do when you have 455 items to work with!!!!!!! That’s right everyone!!! I said 455!!!!! Thank you to the Chandler and Winslow Elk’s Lodges who collected 221 items, the Hafner family, the Ramirez family and to a very generous man at Olivia’s Daddy’s work, Bill Grigsby who just so happened to see that someone he worked with was donating and jumped on board!

A HUGE thank you to Rhonda, the Miller family, the Casciola family, Ms. Marissa and Ms. Becky! Your donations put us at 220 items!!!!

Olivia - “Mommy where’s Katie?” (The girl who’s friends started the Phoenix Children’s Hospital Ignite Hope event)

Me - “Baby, her cancer made her die.”

Olivia - “How did it do that?”

Me - “You know the medicine they gave you that made your hair fall out? Sometimes it is able to take cancer away and sometimes it’s not. We were really fortunate that it took yours away.”

Olivia - “I’m glad that it did.”

Me - “Me too baby! Me too!”

Me - “That’s why we were so scared when you got sick. We didn’t know what would happen.”

Olivia - “I wasn’t scared because I didn’t know!”