Ian Update October 26, 2012

This week marked 4 weeks since Ian’s last round of chemo, the round that we hope will truly be his last!

Ian has weekly appointments down at Children’s for labs, as well as his weekly Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, & Speech Therapy appointments. Last week, his counts were down quite a bit, nothing too scary (he didn’t need any infusions), but low enough to account for his lack of energy and general “weak and shaky” feeling, and to put him at a moderate risk of infection. He laid low, and let his body rest & continue recovering, and his counts this week were much better!

This week, his hemoglobin is back up to normal. His white count is almost back to normal (it was pretty low last week). His platelets have completely recovered, and are back to normal, after being way down for two weeks (no more excessive bleeding risks!) There are a few minor things a bit high or a bit low (like a slightly elevated blood glucose level), but overall things are looking much more “normal” than they have been in, oh, over a year!

His appetite has not returned after that last round, and he is down a couple pounds from last week, which brings him pretty close to his all-time low since this whole trial started. With treatment ending, and winter setting in here in Minnesota, hopefully we’ll be able to “fatten him up” a bit in the coming weeks & months…

We meet with his oncologist next week, to discuss his AFTER TREATMENT road map!

The following week, Ian will be having some follow-up scans to see if anything has changed with the “new area of concern”.

We know he’ll be getting scans every 3 months for a while, then they’ll go to every 6 months, and then every 12 months until 10 years from the end of treatment. Yep, 10 yrs. Medulloblastoma recurrences usually happen in the first 2 years after treatment, but can happen many years out. A few months back, I read of a girl relapsing 11 years post-treatment. Crazy. (She died a few weeks later )

I imagine we’ll have some level of scanxiety for many years to come, but for now, we’re just so relieved that Ian is finished with the chemotherapy part of his journey!

The most exciting part of this week came on Tuesday morning, when Ian got to go buy the iPad that my dear friend, Shannon, raised the money for. I brought all of the kids down to Rosedale Mall (a rare treat, indeed!), and we were met there by a reporter & camera man from our local NBC affiliate, KARE 11.

Here’s the story they did-