17) Third time's a charm & the end of the beginning

At SickKids, on Friday October 6th, E had his third complete blood count (CBC) test in 10 days. This time his neutrophil counts were good, and we were able to proceed to the Interim Maintenance phase. Neutrophils are the mature white blood cells that do most of the work fighting infection, so the oncologists want them to be above a certain level before beginning a new phase of chemotherapy. The chemo will attack the leukemia cells, but it will also indiscriminately attack the neutrophils, which will bring his immune system down. A low immune system means a trip to and likely a brief hospital stay should E come down with a fever.

His counts were good, so we had to wait around for the pharmacy to make the vincristine and methotrexate. After a long 1.5 hour wait for blood results followed by a 3.5 hour wait for pharmacy to make E's chemo, we were finally called to the IV room. E was given his chemo through his port and was actually quite relaxed during. Normally he despises the IV room, since it is the room he is poked with a needle to access his port. Since we were downtown and didn't get finished up until around 4 PM, we were worried that we might not be able to make it home to pick up J from daycare before it closed due to rush hour traffic. Luckily, my mother-in-law was able to help us out and pick him up. All in all, a successful but exhausting day.

One other interesting thing we found out about on Friday was the end of maintenance. The oncologist we saw on Friday, a really nice doctor who originally hails from Tennessee, told us that E's last day of Maintenance will be 3 years from today, assuming his bloodwork was fine and that he started Interim Maintenance. The bloodwork was fine, and chemotherapy was started, so October 6th, 2020, a Tuesday, will be E's last day of Maintenance, and after that he will hopefully be cancer-free.

Three more trips around the sun. 2020 seems quite a long way off. There's undoubtedly going to be plenty of ups and downs along the way. Progress, setbacks. Laughs, tears. Stress. But it does sort of feel like a new chapter. Like the end of the beginning.