Thursday Clinic Visit - Maintenance Round 7

Today's clinic visit was pretty routine...Check in, weight & height, port access, blood draw...
wait..play with "fun" Chris...
wait...talk to nurses...
wait...talk to Fran, the social worker...
wait...talk to Dr. Keuker....
CBC results, administer Vincristine (chemo), de-access port, go home, Katie takes a nap.

Her white blood count was a little too high today, as it was the last time. But, the last time, they figured that it was high because of her being sick and trying to fight something off. This time, Dr. Keuker started talking about increasing her dose of the Methotrexate in order to bring her counts down a bit lower. He has explained to us in the past that the goal of the Maintenance phase is to keep her white count down, but not bring it too low and the protocol speaks to the exact range that her counts should be in. The past two times, her white counts have been reading in the "normal" range and they should be much lower than that. So, he said we will see what they look like at her next clinic visit and make a decision then.

Today's clinic visit consisted of the following:
1) Port access
2) a blood draw
3) Vincristine (Chemo)

This cycle will consist of the following:
Vincristine - Day 1 (same dose as previous cycles)
Methotrexate (oral at home chemo) - Days 1, 8 & 15 (same dose as the last cycle)
6-mercapturine (oral at home chemo) - Days 1-14 (same dose as the last cycle)
Dexamethasone (oral at home steroid)- Days 1-5 (same dose as the last cycle)

Next planned clinic visit will be in three weeks, August 27th.