One Waddle at a Time- Wesley's Fight

05/28/2026

Labwork was fine this week, but presumably we will be back for labs along with transfusion next week😉 hopefully we can ride out the effects of his last chemo here at home!

They wanted to go ahead and do the CT scan today.
This is more so a preliminary result, but this scan did not show any new or occurring disease or any lesions/masses.
We scheduled the MIBG which is a 2 day stay.
We scheduled his bone marrow pull as well!
We also scheduled his audiology to check his hearing.

His echo results did come back and it came back fine, they did still see the anterior pericardial effusion (a small fluid sack by or on his heart).
We will just tentatively monitor it with his echos from his chemotherapy for the next little while.
This is good news and not something we need to worry about right now.

05/28/2026

Here for labs and scheduling of scans and bone marrow procedure!

Pray for good labs today and no need for transfusions!

05/21/2026

Haha this is how our day started off…

Evelyn tagged along to bubbas appt today…and….

YALL WE MADE COUNTS!

Chemo 8, our final round of chemo, is starting in just a few!

We are so happy, and huge thank you to Ms.Katie for making decorating his room STILL happen, cause this mamas heart was so very sad.
But it is a blessing to get to his last chemo and I will never forget this journey.

We did his echo for his heart today and waiting for those results.

We still have to do scans and wait for those and bone marrow to confirm he is in fact, DONE with treatments and cancer free, but we remain hopeful that we did everything we needed to do. The last thing will be surgery to remove his port, as long as everything is clear.

Still got the cutest kids on the block🤭

05/17/2026

I didn’t want to post this to make people confused or worried, but Wesley still hasn’t made counts for his LAST CHEMO and needed some transfusions.
We’ve tried now 2x, scheduled 3x. We’re holding out waiting for his body to tell us when he is ready!
We can’t do scans or bone marrow until chemo is done, so waiting is so hard because we’re hopeful we are nearing the end of our treatment.

He’s just having a hard time recovering and unfortunately picked up a little cough which hasn’t turned into anything worrisome yet.. just keeping an eye on it.

Just keep us in thoughts this week as we try to see what his body needs and what it’s deciding to do🦆🤎

05/14/2026

I want to just say a quick personal thank you to MCFR Lt. Victoria N Barreras for helping coordinate most of this, and with Chief Blackburn.

A special thank you to Alachua County Fire Rescue, Gainesville PD, and K9 Officer Casey Walsh for organizing their end of es**rt.

For Deborah Tucker with OPD, who showed up and out!

OFR for joining in as well!

For all of our special MCFR family who supported our family throughout this journey AND today. If I could tag everyone, I WOULD.

We love you all🤎

05/14/2026

05/14/2026

Huge thank you to all the departments involved, for making this something we will always remember and something that’s a huge achievement to our family.

We love you all, stay safe out there🤎

05/08/2026

Busy day yesterday!

We went for labs confident number would be up, however, they were not.

His team and us decided to go ahead with a platelet transfusion and see if we those counts will be up enough for our last chemo on the 12-13th of next week. No blood transfusion, waiting to see if he can recover these counts on his own.
Good news is that was all outpatient, so we are HOME for now!

Bubba was still cute though😉🤎

Always told he’s the cutest and best dressed!

05/01/2026

Ok we know I haven’t been great at updates…

But here’s the update:

We had to come in Wednesday night due to bubba just acting very lethargic almost, and writhing with belly pain (knees to chest), and a barely there fever(crossed the threshold).
My mama gut told me as bad as I didn’t want to come here, that we needed to and make sure his intestines were ok after his major surgery a few months ago.

The peds ED put us in a trauma room, and began a work up, and it was very scary, however, the X-ray and ultrasound of belly showed nothing of concern except for 💩.
His chest X-ray did show some residual lung depression, but this was most likely remaining from the cough he’s had the last couple weeks from the rhino and adeno stay.

However, his hemoglobin was low at 6 (not surprising since we’re hitting our neutropenic phase a week out from last chemo), so they admitted us and did a blood transfusion.
Originally, we thought we may get to go home today after a platelet transfusion, but because all his counts are too low, we are here until hopefully tomorrow.
They do suspect he will need another blood transfusion tomorrow before discharge.

After the first blood transfusion, he really became a different person and it’s crazy to see the difference.

I will keep everyone updated when we leave but here you go for now😉

Thank you for the kind words and support🤎

Alyssa and Josh pope

04/21/2026

Chemo 7 is happening…

Platelets were still a bit low but because it’s not the doxy chemo; it’s the carboplatin and etoposide, our oncologist feels more comfortable with going ahead.

With this chemo being pushed back, and platelets having taken sooo long to recover this time, this will push the last round back significantly.

This has been so hard but we are so close to the finish line!