LAST CHEMO AT HOME

I am happy to report that tonight we begin our LAST CHEMO CYCLE!!! The next couple weeks will be rough as usual, but I am just ready to finally get this last round going. He will take the chemo for the next 7 days, and then we will wait for his counts to recover before traveling back to St. Jude for his first set of post treatment scans!

This previous cycle felt like it lasted forever. The bad news about that is our overall treatment schedule got pushed out way further than expected. It’s been impossible to plan anything because we keep thinking “Caleb will be on chemo that week”, but then it didn’t happen. It’s also been impossible to schedule our next round of St. Jude appointments because we don’t know when his counts will be recovered enough to travel up there. But now with the start of this round we can finally start making plans. As annoying as all of that has been there have also been some positive aspects of being delayed. Caleb got to attend school for almost 3 solid weeks. He’s been able to go out to eat, go to the movies, play outside, go the park, the bowling alley game room, and even have a sleep over with Grandma and Bruce! I’m glad we were able to live a little life in between these last 2 cycles!

Tyler was off of school on Monday for Martin Luther King day, so he was a brave Big Brother and came to the hospital with us for Caleb’s count check. The hospital staff loved meeting him and spoiled him just as much as they do Caleb. He got a pancake breakfast, and coins to pick a prize from the prize tower just like Caleb gets to do at every appointment. He also got super lucky, because from time to time Caleb will get toys or a special bag of goodies. Well this particular day was one of those times. Caleb received a Blessing Bag from The Children’s Cancer Center and there were more than enough toys for the 2 of them to share! It was like Christmas all over again and they had toys to keep them entertained through the rest of our appointment! I am pretty sure Tyler thinks that hospitals aren’t so bad, because he had a great time going with Caleb.

So, here we go… in a few minutes we will go in his room and wake him up for night 1 of 7. We are hoping this round won’t be as hard on his body, as his doctor has chosen to give him a slightly smaller dosage this time around given how hard it was for his body to recover last cycle. Hopefully this will help him recover a little faster and also not feel quite so worn down in the next couple weeks. Fingers crossed, but for now, here we go with our LAST ROUND OF CHEMO!!!