Support for the Balser Family

Dear Friends,

We have been overwhelmed with love at your incredible support during this challenging time in our journey as a family. We thank you for your prayers, care, compassion, wisdom, and generosity of spirit to help us manage this time with more ease and grace. It is truly giving proof of our connective link that we all share, and we are very much humbled by how many have supported us, reached out, and let us know we have meant something in your lives. It truly takes a village.

For an update: Eli bravely went through strong chemotherapy treatments every 12 hours (4PM and 4AM daily) while staying in the hospital at MD Anderson. After a week of this they assessed, through a multitude of tests, the results. At that time unfortunately those treatments did not work. However, during the next week, while undergoing more testing each day, they also began to harvest his stem cells. This was a daily task of at least a 4-hour stay in the hospital, every day, where they collected 6.5 million stem cells in total for a stem cell transplant. They decided to go directly into a transplant. He is back in the hospital at MD Anderson and will be there for about a month. The transplant entails approximately 7 days of the most aggressive chemo where they are trying to not only kill the cancer cells, but also his bone marrow. It also wipes out the immune system. As I am writing this, he has just finished that process, and although extremely challenging, he has made it today to what they call Day 0. He received 3.5 million new stem cells today. He had 4 bags of stem cells injected into him over a period of about three hours. The process is a long and careful one, but the prayer and hope is that he will go into remission.

Ruth, Abraham, and I are holding the fort down in Austin and I will be able to visit Eli once the rebuilding of his immune system is happening. We FaceTime daily and it gives us so much hope to see Eli with his incredible stamina and optimistic strength of Spirit. There truly is no one like him. Once again, we thank you. We feel so privileged to know you all, to hear such words of support, and to feel that you are all rooting for Eli. It has truly been the most heart-opening experience hearing from you all.

In deepest gratitude,

Allison