06/22/2026
A lot of you have been asking us for an update, so thank you for your patience and constant support and prayers. We are happy to report that no news has meant good news for us! Judah is still chugging along in maintenance. As a reminder, roughly the first half of Judah’s 2.5 years of chemo was Frontline Treatment and is the brutal part that we barely endured by God‘s grace and your prayers. In March, he transitioned into Maintenance, which is what he will continue until he completes treatment next May (Lord willing!). After being sick in March they lowered the dose of daily chemo meds, but last month his counts looked good so they moved it back up to 100%. We can tell this dose affects him more because he doesn’t have his usual appetite and he has gotten sick again recently. He had clinic today and is continuing to do well despite a respiratory virus. Please pray that he gets over this virus quickly without any fevers or hospitalizations, and that he continues to make progress with his returning appetite, strength, and personality. We are SO grateful to have a little more stability and to see our old Judah, returning a little more each day.
Overall, we are so thankful for the normalcy that maintenance has allowed us all as a family. We all get to do more activities and camps this summer without (as much) fear of sickness. Our primary prayer is now for continued and LIFELONG remission.
BIG PRAYER REQUEST: The biggest thing in the Castle family lately has been the anticipation of a procedure for Elizabeth’s heart. To make a very long (and miraculous!) story short, we’ve anticipated needing a major surgery or intervention on her heart for over 5 years now. Since before she was even born! The Lord has been so kind to spare us of all the major heart surgeries so far and we are overjoyed! It has given her time to grow, for her and her heart to be larger and thus easier/safer to operate on. We believe her VSD’s (holes in her heart) have gotten smaller and for that we are thankful, too. So many things to be thankful for! However, the pulmonary valve stenosis (closing/constriction of her pulmonary artery) that has thus far helped to prevent surgery is now causing issues with the pressures in her heart and intervention is needed. Tomorrow morning, Elizabeth will have a heart cath procedure to evaluate the different pressures in her heart and they will balloon the pulmonary artery/valve to correct the stenosis/tightening. Lord willing this will correct the pressure and our MAJOR prayer is that the VSD’s will be small enough to not cause any further issues. We believe and are praying and hoping for this outcome!
There are a myriad of possible ways this could go, the worst-case being that they open up the pulmonary valve and the VSD’s are larger than we know, causing too much blood flow to the lungs and the need for open heart surgery. Obviously, we are praying this would NOT be the case. There are other not-great options but there’s no sense is going into all the “what-ifs” at this point. Since her heart is so atomically atypical and there are so many contributing factors to her condition, they really don’t know what to expect, though we are all hopeful. It’s hard to sit on the edge of the unknown with such extreme potential outcomes, one meaning her heart will likely not require any foreseeable intervention over her lifetime, and the other one meaning a dangerous open-heart surgery.
Since we first learned that Elizabeth’s heart was abnormal, the Lord has continued to intervene and preserve our girl. We feel confident that He will continue to do that through the medical intervention of the UAB/Children’s team. Please pray with us that the procedure goes perfectly without any complications and that her heart reaches a healthy equilibrium through this heart cath procedure. Thank you so much for all of your love and support. We go in at 6 AM tomorrow, so we will keep you updated!
