Thursday Clinic Visit - Maintenance Round 19

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

This cycle marks the "6 MONTHS UNTIL THE END OF TREATMENT" mark!!!!!!!! We are SO looking forward to the end of treatment. I know 6 months sounds like a long time, but compared to where we have been, 6 months is a drop in the hat. She only has 8 clinic visits (treatment visits), ONE lumbar puncture and 1 bone marrow test left!!! I don't remember if I have mentioned this on the blog or not, but if Kaitlyn stays on schedule with her treatments, she will actually take her last pill while we are in Florida. What better place to celebrate that than in Disney??? Every time I think about her taking that last pill, I start to tear up. On the one hand, I am MORE THAN HAPPY that it will be over. But on the other hand, I am scared to let go of the security blanket (her meds) and trust that this disease is gone forever. I ask for your prayers as we approach this new phase. I know that I have no control in the outcome here, but I pray every day that it is all behind her forever.

Today was a pretty quick clinic visit, we were in and out in 2 hours. But, while we were there, Kaitlyn's new BFF (Jen, the intern at Sherry's house) kept her quite happy. Yesterday, she asked Kaitlyn what kind of doughnut she liked and today she delivered it to her at clinic :-) It's the little things like this that go A LONG way! Kaitlyn wouldn't let Jen play with any of the other kids, she wanted her all to herself and Jen, God love her, was more than willing to give Katie her attention. We love Jen :-)

We saw Dr. Usmani today because Dr. Keuker was not there AGAIN. We will see him at her next visit, but it will be like 3 months since the last time we saw him...gheezh...must be nice! lol
Nothing major to report...the doctor did take a look at the bump on Kaitlyn's neck and confirmed that it does look very much like a pimple (especially since today it started pussing....yuck). She said to put some Neosporin on it and it should go away. They did increase her dose of 6-mp because she has gotten a little bigger, but nothing drastic, her counts seem to be in a place where they can handle the increase without sending them too low, but we'll see at the next visit how they look.

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