Another Beginning….one step closer to the end.

I dropped off Geli and Jon at BC Children’s Hospital this morning for her final dose of High Dose Methotrexate.

Here she is decorating her room for her 3/4 day stay…..

The way this whole 3-4 day thing works is that she shows up around 10am-ish on day 1 (today – Friday) and then gets hooked up to an IV and starts pre-hydrating. She has to hydrate for 6 hours and then the Chemo will start (at approx 4pm) and 5 liters of the medicine will flow into her over the next 24 hours. At 4 pm (approx) on Day 2 (Saturday) they will finish the Methotrexate and then take a blood test to determine the level of the drug in her body and they’ll start to administer the antidote. Based on how she’s done the last 3 times, she should clear the Methotrexate from her system by Day 3 (Sunday night) just before midnight and I’ll head into to pick her and Jon up on Day 4 (Monday) around noon-ish.

So, the kids and I are headed into our last “planned” weekend apart for the duration of her treatment. I’m hoping it passes by very quickly.

We had a GREAT talk with Tim, Geli’s Oncologist, today. He answered a bunch of questions and while we are not yet even at the half way point in this first intense stage of the treatment – we can definitely see that there is an end to this whole journey.

We have 3 stages left before Maintenance. Each stage is 8 weeks long. The first of these stages is basically a mini version of Induction (the very first Chemo treatment) and Consolidation (the second set of Chemo). The second stage is another set of Methotrexate, but instead of getting a dose of 5,000mg of Methotrexate – she gets 50mgs the first week, 100mgs the third week, 150mgs the 5th week and 200mgs the 7th week……that seems so insignificant compared to 5,000 milligrams – doesn’t it? The third stage is another mini repeat of Induction and Consolidation, with the added bonus of Cranial Radiation thrown in.

That should take us up to May-ish 2011 and at that point we start Maintenance…….which we continue on with until September 30th, 2012 or there abouts.

So we are still quite a long ways off, but as horrible as it is, there is a familiarity to these treatments (minus the radiation) and we are expecting Geli to respond quite well. Her counts are expected to be quite low still and there are still a number of appointments that will take us in and out – so we are not quite into the party stage of things just yet.

Despite, the length of time and treatment yet to go, its just so nice to walk away from a meeting feeling positive & hopeful and not stressed & discouraged.

Geli is doing well, and her spirits are up. Her Homebound teacher has mentioned that Geli is doing extremely well and is handling the whole “school & home learning” really well. She is staying on top of her schoolwork and really enjoying participating in class, as she feels up to it.

Her toes, that had caused her so much trouble, have been doing SO. MUCH. BETTER! The ingrown nails had pretty much grown out and the infection was pretty much gone and then two weeks ago she stubbed her big toe and chipped a GIANT chunk out of her big toe nail and now we have been attempting damage control to hopefully prevent any ingrown toenail and subsequent infection.

It’s quite possible that her hair might fall out again in this next round. One of the drugs that she took in the first round is the main culprit for the hair falling out last time and she’s up against it again and so we shall see what this next stage brings. We’re expecting her to have a better time around this second run through this treatment because instead of her bone marrow being full of leukemia cells she had (at last count a few weeks ago) just over 25% of normal cells.

So basically, her marrow was full of leukemia cells….they killed all of those off and now the good healthy strong cells are taking back ground. This is a very good thing.

It looks like we’ll have the week between Christmas and New Years off of treatment and we’re looking forward to that.

Thanks for all your prayers, love and support. Once again, we are so grateful and thankful for you all.

Author: Patricia Culley

I'm the ringmaster of my own circus. Just trying to stay one step ahead of the monkeys. View all posts by Patricia Culley