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Welcome to Tannerville!!!
Tanner Christine Lusk
November 12, 1998 - September 19, 2007
Tanner was here with us for such a little time. But it was spoke of in Tanner's funeral, that it does not matter the day you were born or the date of your death but how you lived your life between the two. Tanner lived her life and touched so many along the way. Tanner had an amazing fight for life and that will live on with us forever.
Such a fun bike ride in Santa Barbara with Tanner in 2007! Tanner's Journey: Tanner is an 8 year-old little girl that was diagnosed with Ewings Sarcoma of her skull on May 19, 2003. She had a full tumor resection and removal of the left front section of her skull. She had surgery and completed 14 rounds of chemotherapy and 4 weeks of daily radiation at UCLA, Mattel Childrens Hospital in California. In November 2004, after 7 months in remission, Tanner relapsed with 6 lesions to the brain. UCLA gave us very little hope and stated that the tumors were out of reach surgically. We were told Tanner had five months to live. Through the internet we had met another strong child fighting Ewings Sarcoma in his skull, Jake Beresh www.caringbridge.org/ne/jakieboy . With the help from his wonderful family and the determination to never give up we drove to Omaha, Nebraska to seek treatment for Tanner. November 26, 2004, Tanner met with the doctors at Children's Hospital in Nebraska. December 17, 2004 Tanner had a biopsy of one of the tumors and a cranioplasty (to reshape her skull from the previous surgery). She also had 3 rounds of multiple chemotherapy to reduce the tumors in size. April of 2005, Tanner had Gamma Knife Radiation to all 6 lesions. Then on June 1, 2005 Tanner had a stem cell rescue at Univ. Of Nebraska Medical Center. After the stem cell rescue it was recommended that she have full brain and spine radiation to wipe out any remaining cancer cells. So in August of 2005 we went to Loma Linda Hospital in California, for Proton Radiation where Tanner had full brain and spine radiation daily for 3 1/2 weeks. After being cancer free for almost a year we moved to North Carolina to be closer to our family. On a routine scan in August 2006 another tumor was found around the 7th and 8th nerves (hearing and facial nerves). We knew that we needed to go back to Omaha, Nebraska and have Dr. Puccoini perform the surgery. Tanner had both hearing and facial nerves removed and was to start radiation therapy to the tumor bed that was right next to the brain stem. With a lot of problems getting radiation scheduled 2 months later another tumor grew at the tumor site. Tanner underwent her fourth brain surgery to remove the tumor and was out of the hospital within three days. Radiation started within a week from her surgery at the Nebraska Medical Center, to the tumor bed. Due to the radiation Tanner has had in the past this was high risk, she also started oral chemo at home. Shortly into her radiation treatment Tanner started to have some problems with her left eye, after a MRI was ordered a very small tumor was found on her optic tract on the left side of her brain. Radiation was than started to that tumor site as well and both sites were radiated everyday for 6 weeks. Tanner has completed her radiation on January 8th 2007 and she had a brain MRI and chest CT on January 22, 2007 and ALL scans were CLEAR!! Tanner continues her oral chemo and she has started some alternative meds. Protocel and Paw Paw. Tanner had brain and spine MRI on March 5th 2007 and no sign of cancer in Tanner's body. Tanner continued to do well and had no pain, but on a routine scan in May 2007, new tumors were found in the brain and the spine. Tanner did spot radiation to the tumor sites and had a couple of weeks of chemo. The tumors were not responding to the chemo and at that point the doctors felt that there was nothing more we could do for Tanner. Tanner has continued to do spot radiation to minimize her pain and symtoms of cancer. Tanner's cancer responds very well to radiation and we wanted to give her the opportunity to be pain free as long as we could. Tanner is no longer fighting cancer, Tanner passed away on September 19th 2007. We are now trying to deal with the loss of our little girl who fought so hard and so long. Please read below for current updates! Thank you for your thoughts and prayers!
Click on this picture and any others in a blue frame to see more.
Current updates: Tuesday, August 5th 2008 Hello everyone...this is Auntie Kelly from California! The Lusk family left today to go back to Omaha. It was so great to have them back home and so sad to see them leave again. I spoke to Marj a few hours ago and they were in Utah...so their ETA in Omaha will be tomorrow evening! We had a very busy week. We celebrated Hope's 5th birthday at Auntie April's and Uncle Jeff's house (It was a princess party! So COOL!) We did a lot of swimming and had a great time at the aquatic center. Hope and Brody are both doing great in the water...little fishies! We spent 2 days in Santa Barbara, which was definitely bitter sweet. Last year Marj and I took the kids to Santa Barbara and Tanner had so much fun. It was hard to be there again without her but she was there in our hearts and she is always on our minds. The kiddos loved the beach and we got to see Janet, Tatum and Simon! We also celebrated Chris's birthday...he got a new tattoo while he was here (check out the picture on the photo page.) Happy Birthday Chris! All in all we had a really great time and I think the Lusks had a nice vacation (and they even left with a tan!) Marjorie will update soon...I'm sure I left out a few things (sorry -I'm new at this!) For now - check out all the cool new pics! Bye! Love, Auntie Kelly Wednesday, July 16th 2008 Things have been ok around here. Hope has been going to summer camp and loves seeing all of her friends. Hope and Brody can't wait to start school in August. They are both more social than Tanner was. Tanner took time to warm up to people but Hope and Brody will go with anyone and love to be around people. Hope will be turning 5 years old soon, July 24th...HAPPY BIRTHDAY HOPIE!!!!! Auntie April, Uncle Jeff, and Auntie Kelly will be throwing a wonderful birthday party for Hope in California. Thank you guys! We will be going to California to see our family and friends. We will also enjoy some family fun at the beach. The beach was one of Tanner's favorite places, she was able to enjoy some time there in April 2007. We are looking forward to spending time together as a family. Thank you all for your prayers for the McCoy family and their beautiful daughter Meghan. They have started a caringbridge site: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/meghanmccoy Please visit their site and send your kind words as they begin to travel a very long and uncertain rode ahead of them. Tell them Tanner sent you!! I also wanted to share with you a wonderful story that Julie Cornell wrote. Julie is the news anchor for KETV news here in Omaha. She will be leaving as anchor to be home with her children. Julie wrote a story in her farewell and in that story she wrote about Tanner and how she touched her life and many others. Here is the link: http://www.ketv.com/news/16859406/detail.html Thank you Julie!!! We want to welcome Aiden Jacob Looney!!! He is healthy and very cute! Hope and Brody can't wait to see him. They have been kissing Susie's belly (baby) goodbye for awhile now. I know that Tanner would think he is so handsome and would love to rub his head. Congrats Looney Family!!! Every day continues to be a struggle but.....somehow you just learn to live with the constant ache in your heart. Some days it is much greater. There is ALWAYS someone missing. Motivation continues to be hard, but it really helps to be around friends to keep your mind busy. But sometimes even that requires too much effort. We miss your energy Tanner; we miss your strength and your amazing personality. I can still hear her say, "Don't worry mom, I am ok, I got it." I miss my sunshine!!! Thank you all for the wonderful emails with words of encouragement and love. Please continue to pray for all the kiddos fighting this horrible disease and for all of the families trying to live with a broken heart. The Lusk Family We are asking for lots of prayers for our friends the Mcoy's in California. Their daughter Meghan is in the hospital with a massive tumor surrounding her kidney and other organs. She also has a spot on her other kidney and her spine. Meghan has Wilms Tumor stage 5. This wonderful 3 year old girl needs all of our prayers. Her family is in shock and they are taking one moment at a time. Please send all your love and prayers their way!! I will keep you updated as we here new information. Thank you, the Lusk Family Thursday, July 3rd 2008 This week has been a better week. The last two weeks have been full of struggles, much more than usual. I am not sure how or why this week is going better, but it is. The amount that we miss Tanner and long to hold her has not diminished. The pain some how has not consumed our every moment......this week. I just finished reading this book about another mother who lost her child. I am not sure if I am looking for that one answer on how to live through the death of my child. To somehow find something that can take all this pain away. I know that there is no answer; there is no easy way out, no perfect way to grieve. Anyway, the author said "I have been there. At the brink of losing my mind. Unable to sleep for more than an hour or two. Unable to think of anything except what happened. I CANNOT say how I got from there to here. I cannot even say where "here" is. There are still nights when I wake up crying and I cannot get rid of the images. Yet I am here, somewhere else. But do not be fooled. Even though I am here, I know that the smallest thing...a song, a sound, a smell...can send me back there. I do not live here. I only visit. I stand always perched at the edge. I live in fear of the times when, without warning, I go there, again." It is so true!!! I am no where near being "here" yet, but I feel like some weeks I am doing well and then I am knocked on my butt and it takes me much longer to get back on my feet. As long as I keep getting back up or even helped to get back up, then one day I will get to "here" and someday live with the grief and not let it consume me. Tanner's softball team from last year, Chris is still coaching, won as league champs. WAY TO GO MAGIC!!! Chris loves being out there with the girls. He said that this is a way for him to stay connected with girls that are Tanner's age. He likes being able to see them grow and excel at softball, as if Tanner was there doing the same. Chris brings Tanner's jersey to every game and has it hanging in the dugout. The girls on the team are so great, they brought the jersey out to the field when they were getting their medals so that a medal could be placed around Tanner's jersey as well. Thank you girls for being so great for your coach and such a wonderful friend to Tanner. We love being part of the team!! Thank you for all the wonderful words of encouragement on the guestbook. Please continue to pray for all the great kids fighting this horrible disease. Have a GREAT 4th of July!!! Friday, June 27th 2008 My heart is aching constantly, it never stops. I long to hear her call to me, to hold her in my arms. When will this constant pain of losing my daughter go away? I can't even begin to fathom that I've lived almost a year without her. How does this happen? How can I have lived that long without her? It's not possible. Life should have stopped. But it didn't. It kept moving forward. I can't believe that it's been almost a year. I can't believe that it still hurts so badly. I can't believe I haven't died from the pain. Time keeps moving forward. Do I want the pain to go away? I can't imagine not missing her this much. I want to share a portion of an email that was sent out to many other grieving parents. This is from Mitch Carmody. He is holding a presentation at The Compassionate Friends conference. His son passed away over 20 years ago from childhood cancer. Everything he says we feel over and over again. As most of you well know losing a child is a life altering event. An experience that rocks your world, brings you to your knees, and brings you to a grief so profound, so pervasive, and so intense it seems surreal. It is impossible to be real, impossible to be happening. It tests your limits of emotions and challenges your spirit to even want to survive; how can I live with this daily pain? How can I ever smile or laugh again when I know that my child is dead? I am truly living a nightmare because the truth is unreal, too painful to accept; how can this be happening? Every morning when I open my eyes I revisit denial and my day begins like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhogs Day; the same day all over again. The fresh pain of reality stabs my heart once again and as I force myself out of bed when my eyes first open; again unwilling to accept the horror of the truth I am a bereaved dad. Moms and dads, siblings all over the world are forced by circumstance to deal with the reality of the death of a child in the family. We are vulnerable from the moment our first cell splits and divides in the comfort of our mother's womb, until that time our heart can no longer pump its own blood; the limits of it beats per minute per year were reached and it stopped. The human heart can pump non-stop for almost a hundred years but our earth is a harsh environment and there are so many things out to get us; even our own genes can try to kill us; death can strike at any time. Our children can even end their own life; no one is immune to the possibility of losing someone you love. In the struggle to survive the enormity of the death of a child we look for anything we can find to assuage the pain. Weeks, months, years go by and we still find ourselves looking for some end to this madness. We look for something to fill this huge void that is so pervasive in our daily life; to seek and find a sign-post that points in some direction besides destination unknown. The intense missing them so much seems to almost cripple our attempts to survive. In healing, in moving forward, we feel we are abandoning them or letting them go. It's impossible for us to say "it's okay I know that you are dead" it is not okay, it will never be okay, but we have to survive. We have to follow our path given to us and fulfill our personal destiny. We did not die; it's up to us to live. I wanted to die when Kelly died, but I chose to live, who else would keep his memory alive? If we do not choose life, than ultimately two lives are wasted. Grieve hard, scream loud, feel every facet of your loss as long as you need to, grieve openly, express your lamentations and frustrations; you love hard, you grieve hard, it is supposed to hurt. Know that your grief will lessen as time moves on but you will always be a bereaved parent and like living with arthritis you will live with flare ups of pain the rest of your life. Thank you for letting me share, Marjorie Thursday, June 19th 2008 We have been very busy around here. it is a good thing, because it gives your mind less time to think of how much we are missing our amazing little girl. The Milestones Cure Search walk was bitter sweet. It was very hard to be there without Tanner, without the person that we have been fighting so hard for. Last year at the walk Tanner was in so much pain and could not walk. She had a hard time not having the ability to do the things that came so easy to her before. Last year we won first place with over $10,000.00 and this year we doubled our earnings! First place this year went to Team Sadie Bug with over $28,000.00 raised. The walk itself raised $218,000.00 this year. That is INCREDIBLE!!!! Thank you to Tanner's Termites for all of your support and donations to our team, YOU ROCK! We also got to finally meet Vicki from N.Y. We felt like we knew each other because she has been such a wonderful support for our family and for Tanner. Tanner made a connection with Vicki, and I know that Vicki holds a special place in her heart for Tanner. Thank you Vicki! There will be another Milestones Cure Search walk in Peoria, Illinois this year in September. It is the first year of their walk and they need lots of support. So PLEASE contact Jessie (my sister-in-law) at jbgrant03@hotmail.com or I at cmthb@hotmail.com if you are a family that has a child with cancer near that area or know one PLEASE email her your information. They are having a hard time with a contact for families with childhood cancer. Anything that anyone can do would be great! After the walk we went down to Papa and Mar's house in Illinois. We went down there to spread some of Tanner's ashes in the lake behind Papa's house. Gus hand carved the sign in the picture above and put it in front of the lake. It is BEAUTIFUL!!! Thank you Gus, Tanner would love it and would be so proud that she has a lake named after her. It was very difficult for everyone. We had eight red roses that each family placed into the lake and all of us released royal blue balloons. Chris said a few words, but it was very hard for any of us to say too much. We love and miss you Tan more than anything. You are forever in our hearts. Auntie Kelly made a slideshow from the pictures that she took from the lake. She posted it on YOU TUBE...the link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xGjZOuEzOo. She also posted on YOU TUBE a portion of the slideshow that was played at Tanner's funeral service. The link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmFxPOOmF7c Thank you Auntie Kelly for putting all of the pictures together and making our memories last forever. You are the SMARTEST woman in the world! I am not sure if I ever posted on her site that Tanner was cremated. Since we never knew where we would end up, we knew Tanner should be with us always. Her memory chest sits next to my bed on my night stand. Tanner loved so many things, but 3 things really stuck with us. One, she loved sleeping and hanging out between Chris and I. Two, she loved the beach in California. Three, she loved fishing on the lake. Tanner never shied away from touching fish or worms. So we knew that we wanted her to stay with us, but some with Papa at the lake and some at the beach in California. These were 3 of her favorite places. My mom and my sister's family moved back to California. My mom moved a couple of weeks ago and my sister and her family moved back last Thursday. It will be hard here without them. They have all been so close over the last year, it will be a difficult adjustment. We miss them all very much!! We enjoyed the fireworks from the Opening Day of the College World Series. Yet another first when we all remembered Tanner being with us there last year watching the fireworks. We also went to the zoo (during the World Series) again, Auntie Kelly has never been. Everyone thought we were pretty crazy but that kind of traffic is pretty normal in California. Auntie Kelly went back to California on Monday and we will miss her very much too. We did have a wonderful two weeks with her. We can't wait to visit all of our family and friends in California this summer. Sorry for such a long update, I will try to update more often so they don't have to be so lengthy. Please continue to pray for all those kiddos still fighting this horrible disease and for all of the families trying to live without their children. The pain is overwhelming and it does not go away. But some how our child's fight lives in us and we get through the day. Thank you for checking on us and thank you for all of your amazing support and love for our family. Love, the Lusk Family