Wednesday, December 02, 2015

Treatment Roadmap

Things have been pretty quiet since Thanksgiving and it was nice to not have to update the blog since things were going good.  I guess no news is still good news.  We did get our roadmap (treatment plan for the month last week so I thought I'd share what I know about this plan with you all.

Basically, right now our Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays are a bit full since we have to take Abby to Denver on each of those days.  These extra trips are primarily for the shots that she has to get.  I think today is #6 in the 6-shot series of Erwinia.  She gets 2 simultaneous shots in her legs each time so she hasn't really been enjoying these days (to say the least!).  We are hoping and praying that she will find that place of strength that she has often shown in the past when she gets flu shots or other needle sticks.  Unfortunately right now she hasn't found that strength very often and the shots are producing a lot of anxiety for her prior to the appointments.

Today she will also get another chemo drug today in her port and then start the second round of Erwinia shots on Friday.  That round will finish out right near her Day-29 bone marrow test.

Here's the basic roadmap as we know so far:
  • Nov 19th- Officially started Block 1 (28 days of an intensive 6-drug rotating chemotherapy)
  • Dec 16th- Will be the Day 29 test of bone marrow to find the MRD (Minimal Residual Disease) 
  • Dec 17-23rd -Treatment break and MRD test results back.
  • Dec 24th or Dec 28th- Start Block 2 (28-day intensive chemotherapy)
  • End of Jan-  MRD bone marrow test and 1 week break for counts to recover. 
  • After that... we don't know yet. 
Based on results of both Day 29 bone marrow tests (but the first test is the most important) she will either: 
1) Continue chemo (still don't have a good roadmap of what this would look like)
 O
2) Start the process for a bone marrow transplant.

So, we are very hopeful (and praying hard) that the Day 29 test shows that the cancer cells are gone.  If that is the case, we have a lot more options on what our future looks like in terms of here treatment and where we might be able to get that treatment done.

Off to our appointment.  I'll try to most more often this week too.

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