Day 40: New Treatments and Roadmap To End

Today marked the beginning of our next phase in treatments to make sure Cristian never has leukemia again, Consolidation. Now that there are no detectable levels of leukemia in tests, the treatments will shift to rooting out any remaining cancer cells throughout his body. This is done by introducing new types of chemo and continued testing.

The consolidation phase is planned to last 8 weeks and will be made up of repeating 2-week cycles where different chemos are given. The first cycle will include home administered chemo given orally and also via injection. Each are once daily with the oral being for the full 2 weeks but the injection will only be 6 times. As part of the hospital training was to administer these shots at home, I got to do a practice injection on one of the nurses with celine. I did fine, but Maria who was watching from the back did “gasp” when the needle went in. It gave us all a good laugh because she wasn’t involved in the training at all, just a spectator.

When it gets to “showtime” and we have to do this at home, it will require both Maria and myself. We don’t expect this to be a fun experience for anyone involved. This also means that we are back to giving Cristian medicine every day, most days multiple doses. Luckily Cristian has been pretty easy to bribe with chocolates and Hot Wheels, both of which we are well stocked with.

On a positive note Cristian has continued to get closer to acting like his old self. His attitude is brightening, laughing and smiling is a normal occurrence, and his walking is getting more independent. These are all wonderful things and we thank God for answering our prayers in helping our son on this journey to recovery.

Cristian did have another spinal tap today along with some new chemo. There will be more spinal taps over the coming weeks, just to ensure that the levels of leukemia remain undetectable.

Today we also received information from the doctors around what the treatment plans are to the end. We will cover these in more details as we get to them, but below is a high level:

• Consolidation (April – May)
  • 2 week cycles
  • 4x spinal taps
  • High risk of infection
• Interim Maintenance (June – July)
  • 4 required admissions for high dose chemo (2-3 days each)
• Delayed Intensification (August – September)
  • 2 week cycles
  • High risk of infection
• Interim Maintenance II (October – November)
  • Chemo every 10 days
• Maintenance (December to End)
  • Chemo once monthly

This is obviously way more than anything we would like to see Cristian go through and we are praying daily for a miracle which will bring this all to a quick resolution for Cristian. We know this is all part of Gods plan, and we sincerely thank everyone for all the prayers and support we have received so far. We ask that all efforts continue to help Cristian get past this ASAP!