The kids and I traveled down to Cooks today for a regularly scheduled appointment in oncology. Briley's port was accessed and blood drawn for a cbc. Briley did great once again getting a needle stick! Bryson watched and was rooting Briley on, "you can do it Briley"! After the blood draw, Briley wanted to show off her dance moves to child-life Kate, so she danced to Rudolf, the red-nose rain deer. A couple of nurses stopped in and watched the show!
We waited a little bit for the doctor to come in with her counts. It's always with a little anxiety waiting for counts. Things race through my mind.
What's taking so long?
Are her counts ok?
What if her platelets dropped again?
What if she relapsed?
But soon all of my worries ended. The doc came in with great news! All of her counts have stabilized and were very very good! Then, we finally got a end-of-treatment date. March 30th!!!!! Her very last dose of chemo will be on March 30th! I can only imagine the feeling we will have when she takes that last dose of chemo! God willing, she will stay on track and get through the last couple of months without any issues. We are praying hard for this and for no relapse. I think a party will be in store for March 30th to celebrate end of treatment and to give grace to God!
Doc said that after treatment, she will still have to go to Cooks once/month for a year for count checks. The port will be taken 3-4 months after end-of-treatment. The following year, she will have to go down there once/every other month. The year after that will be once/every 3 months, and so on. It will still be another 10 years of checkups at Cooks. I'll sure take the next 10 years of driving down there just for checkups as long as she stays cancer free!
Homebound school is going great! We tried out the Skype/robot thing today (I need to get the official name of it). The robot will allow Briley to sit through her classes at home! It didn't work out very good today. Something I didn't think of, our internet is super slow. One step above dial-up. So I put a call into the internet company and got a higher speed. Hopefully that will fix the problem and she'll "virtually" be in school!
I ask you for prayers that both kids will continue to stay healthy and please pray that all of the leukemia cells have been destroyed in Briley's body. Now that she's getting close, I can't help but think of Tatum. They found out that she relapsed at her very last LP. As exciting of a time that this is for us, it's also a time of great anxiety. All we can do is pray and give it up to the Lord.
John, God has gotten you all this far and He is not going to stop now. You all just have to believe that this will be the end and don't look back. My prayers are with you all. Things will work out.
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