Day 29: The End of Steroids

Believe it or not, it has been over a month since we started our journey as a family (which includes all of you reading this and supporting Cristian)! Our lives changed drastically the moment we received this diagnosis and we couldn’t have made it this far without the support from you all. Thank you does not describe the amount gratitude we have in our hearts to everyone!

Today does mark one large milestone for Cristian in his treatment plan, the end of twice daily steroids. These have been necessary to help his body cope with the affects of the chemo, but have also introduced their own side affects. Cristian has had random issues walking where his legs give out causing him to fall down. This has resulted in him not wanting to walk, and us holding him by under his arms whenever he does walk. But luckily we are past this now so hopefully his strength will return (and those cheeks go down) over the coming weeks.

Today also marked the planned end of the “remission” phase of Cristian’s treatment. Today he went in for a couple operations including a spinal tap as well as a bone biopsy. Next week we will get results on how many leukemia cells remain in his body. We are hopeful that the tests come back clear, meaning there are no detectable cells and the bone marrow is healthy as well (please pray!).

Based on the results we will be able to map out the remaining treatments for Cristian. The next phase is called “consolidation” and includes its own medicines. The goal of this phase is to get the cells which may be hiding throughout the body in places that were not tested. We will know this information next week when we meet with his oncologist.

Over the past week Cristian has been doing wonderful. We give this credit to God for granting Cristian strength and for working to remove the illness from his body. With the prayers from all of you, God is giving Cristian a lot of love. We pray that this continues and ask everyone here to keep up your prayers as well.

Look for more updates next week once we hear back from the doctors with the test results. Cristian won’t go back for more treatments until 3/30, so he will have a good stretch to regain more strength and keep playing with his toys.