We Walked the Walk :)

What a great turn out!

50 + members joined our team and helped to raise money while having fun at the park.

We got up bright and early got on our purple sock monkey tees, socks, bandanas and whatever else purple we had. Purple umbrellas were also packed since the weather was a bit iffy. We got to the park and joined our team members, it was so great to see everyone! I wish I was able to talk to everyone more and thank them for coming to support The Purple Sock Monkeys. The miracle children were given giant red buttons so everyone could identify them as a miracle child and at the end of the walk they were given a medals of honor. Check you the Video Six Flags posted on their Facebook page, you can spot some of us!

This year as a team we raised $4,453.00, although that number will be higher since Mimi received donations from school that still need to be added to the total. All contributions will benefit our local Baystate Children's Hospital a part of the Children's Miracle Network and go to help save and improve the lives of as many children as possible!

A special Thanks to the following companies who contributed to The Purple Sock Monkeys

Callaway Employees
Frito Lay Northeast Region Employees Fundraiser
Phonon Corporation Employees
Balise Lexus Employees

Below are registered walkers, Thank You for getting up early in the morning and supporting a great cause. We hope you had fun!!!

Janet Beauvais

Adrianna Carabetta

Audrey Carabetta

Bill Carabetta

Jessie Carabetta

Andre Chapdelaine

Marcella Chapdelaine

Megan Chapdelaine

Hannah Fields

Jessica Fields

Steven Fields

Carol Fields-Scott

Katie Fike

Clover Fortier

Andrew Hanson

Nichole Hanson

Erica Iorillo

Shannon Jackson

Jozef Janczar

Meg Janczar

Victor Janczar

Zyta Janczar

Janina Jarmuzewski

Mario Jarmuzewski

Elena Langdon

David Lapierre

Emilia Lapierre

Eugene Lapierre

Izabella Lapierre

Linda Lapierre
Linda M Lapierre
FRITO LAY
Eryn Mathews
James Mathews
Pat Mathews
Jordan Nagy
Ela Osowiecki and family
Tracy Paulo
Isabel Puppolo
Julia Puppolo
Olivia Puppolo
Mary Romano
Kendal Sowa
Paul Sowa
Chris Streeter
Margaret Streeter
Owen Streeter
Megan Teser
Mina Valego

Respiratory Therapy.

May 1st, while inpatient, Mimi got her first Pentamidine isethionate, it is used to prevent and treat Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, a very serious type of pneumonia. This medication is inhaled through a special breathing unit called a nebulizer, which helps the drug travel deep into the lungs.This is something she will do monthly instead of Bactrim, Dapsone or Mepron since she seemed to have side effects/sensitivities to all of these antibiotics.

Today (6/10) Mimi stayed home in the morning and we met with a respiratory therapist RN . Mimi was a bit anxious and not looking forward to her treatment but all that anxiety pretty much dissapeared about five minutes after she met Respitory Rick, she was chatting up the storm asking a million questions. We went through all the necessary paperwork, her vitals were checked. He explained to her what he will do she listened to instructions and followed them like a pro! First she used the albuterol inhaler, it works by relaxing and opening the air passages to the lungs. Then an oxymeter was hooked up to her earlobe to check her oxygen level and pulse, Pentamidine can drop oxygen stats. She used the nebulizer to breathe in the Pentamidine for about 25 minutes. Since the medicine is a mist she is breathing in and it is also going into the air in the house we wore mask but Magi spent some time upstairs so she was not exposed to the medicine. Her treatment went smooth we said bye to our new friend until next month and back to school she went!

Here is Mimi with her glowing ear, the white mist is the medicine. She is sitting next to the window with the fan blowing out so most of the medicine goes outside instead of the house. She sat very patiently for almost a half hour, just listening to stories since she couldn't talk.

Clinic Day and Summer Concert.

The girls' school had a summer concert scheduled for this afternoon, a couple of days ago I overheard Mimi talking to Iza about giving her part away to someone else since she won't be around because it is clinic day. I explained to her we can always try to work around to make sure she can do fun things. We called clinic and they switched her appointment to the morning, Thank you!!! She was very happy that she could do her "snort" part with Iza during the concert.

Clinic went well, today was Vincristine day so Mimi got her port accessed blood drawn and chemo administered. We discussed her recent headache (Tuesday morning) She seems to have random headaches that do go away when she rests. All her counts came back good, she looks and feels fine. Today we start steroids, so I will be keeping Magi and Mimi away from each other...

Counts:
WBC - 2.4
Hgb - 11.0
Platelets - 203
Neutrophil - 1400

Doing their part in the concert.

6 1/2

Happy half birthday! In 6 months I will have a set of 7 year olds! Seems crazy, a good crazy. The girls celebrated by bringing muffins and cookies to school.

Crazy is also one of the words to describe yesterday's weather happenings. It was hot, humid and unbearable, with warnings and alerts of tornadoes, that I am sure a lot of people dismissed at first. Tornadoes is not something we worry about here, snow storms are more our thing. When I came home around 4:20 everyone was cranky due to the heat. We decided to go out for dinner to support “Allie’s 5 O’Clock Fund” Right before we were to leave My mom called to put the TV on, I could not believe what I was seeing, live coverage of a tornado going through the highway and crossing over to downtown Springfield which is just miles from our house. We made sure everyone we knew in that area was okay. It looked like the weather seemed to calm down, so we did go out to dinner, sounds silly now. The weather got bad again we waited it out while eating dinner, the kids were distracted enough in the loud restaurant that they did not seem too scared at the time. When we returned home and everyone had a hard time falling asleep, including me thinking of our friends who were effected by the tornado.