A Message From Jo Ann!

One week... Dang - one heck of a week.

Jeff has been asking me to write something all week and I have just been having such a hard time. I do not have that gift - writing... I've got the gift of gab... always have, even before I kissed the Blarney Stone. But, I do have the mommy's perspective on this past week––and I want to share that.

On Saturday May 17, Jeff and I did what we call the "divide and conquer." Jeff went on his big 75 mile Saturday morning ride and I hung out with the kids.... We hooked up in Pasadena, where Jeff and our friend Tony Hoffer grabbed Pablo; Grady and I headed to Sierra Madre to WORK. That's right... Saturday was Grady's big music video shoot for his 8th grade project (he finished the edit two nights ago–we'll be premiering the vid in a few days here on the Pablog).

Grady chose The History of Music Videos and MTV for his written report and chose to direct a music video for his artistic element. Early in the school year, he asked our good friend, Scott Henriksen (cinematographer extraordinaire), to be his mentor...and Saturday was the day for Grady to head out with his A-List DP to shoot his friends' band, The Conscripts (temporary name). I can't even get into how much fun we had shooting. It was awesome... Grady and Scott were a great team!

After the shoot, we came home for a quick change before heading out to Jeff's birthday dinner at Malo. As soon as we walked in, Jeff asked me to look at Pablo's tummy. My reaction was instant. I know Dr. Fleiss' number by heart, so I grabbed the phone and paged him. Then, I called our dear friend Brie Grousbeck – she is the wife of Jeff's business partner, Peter Walker, and is also a DOCTOR! She had just given birth days earlier to their gorgeous son, Lennon. I started describing what I was seeing on Pablo's belly. She spoke to me in her usual amazing, calm way. Whatever she said, there was something in her voice that told me to get in front of a doctor right away... Fleiss' office beeps in. It's Miriam, Fleiss' nurse-practitioner. Within five seconds she's telling me to hang up and stay by the phone for Dr. Fleiss. Seconds pass and Dr. Fleiss calls. It's quick and I'm told to meet him at his back door in 15 minutes....

Jeff takes Pablo to the doctor's office. I took Grady to Malo, where 35 people are meeting us for dinner. The rest of the evening is a blurry-eyed, nauseous haze. I can't eat. I can't think. I can't talk. I leave with Pablo and get to Childrens ER. Now, if any of you have ever been to the ER at Childrens on the weekend, you know–it's overflowing with kids and their families needing medical care and you can expect to be WAITING all night. Fleiss had called us in and we were whisked through all of the steps - and in an ER room in 15 minutes.

This was making me crazy - because I knew that it could only mean one thing - something SERIOUS was going on in my baby's body. Jeff got there within minutes and remained calm, cool, collected. Pablo was cuddling and sleeping when he wasn't being poked and prodded and I was a mess. No one would give a diagnosis without a scan, but the word tumor was put out there and the word cancer was put out there. Once we had the CT scan and the Wilms' Tumor diagnosis was given, Jeff had his breakdown and I became Mama Bear. "This is my baby and he will be OK. We just need to get information and get a game plan!"

The rest of the hospital stay is outlined in Jeff's posts and the only thing that I can add is how completely blown away we have been by the outpouring of love, thoughts, prayers, wishes, physical HELP, etc....

xo,
Jo Ann