Cancer and heartache – We need to help support
Today I feel helpless as I received a letter from a friend who has lost 3 son’s and now his very young baby grandchild has leukemia. This is what they go through in the journey. They had to leave their lives and jobs and move the family to Brisbane not knowing what is install. They have been throught it over 10 years ago with thier own son and now they are the support for the amazing Son and daughter in law they have left. I pray that God blesses them and M grows into a healthy active adult after she gets through the treatment.
M finally got out of hospital a week before Christmas and we had a great family Christmas together. Then she had two weeks of the second block of treatment, called Consolidation. Weekly chemo appointments at the hospital, which are ten hours in the day unit, plus chemo tablets and injections at ‘home’, blood tests in between and lots of other meds twice a day.
The family are still staying at the Leukaemia Foundation Village and feel very lucky that they are accommodated for as long as they need it, which will be longer than first thought.
M started off in the high risk group due to her blood counts at the time of diagnosis and that meant a minimum of seven months treatment in Brisbane. As her bone marrow results after the initial four weeks of treatment were a bit higher than what they hoped she is now treated in a high risk area of relapse after treatment. The CCIA have developed (MRD Minimal Residue Disease Testing) which is a ground breaking innovation where tests can predict which children suffering from ALL are at the highest risk of relapse on standard therapy. So that individualised treatment can be introduced which means another two months here.
There will have to be breaks between the treatment blocks if the blood counts are too low to continue treatment. Basically the chemo makes them so sick that they have time off to recover. Already we’ve had to have two weeks’ time for M’s blood counts to come back up, before we started this second block. And now only two weeks into it, she has had to have transfusions again and her immunity is very low, too. Basically we wait to go back into hospital because of some kind of infection which is the reality of the situation. She had stopped eating but was still drinking her rice milk and a bit of porridge mixed into it. Her lips are covered in sores that break open and bleed, which increases the risk of infection and she is grinding her teeth which sounds really awful. It breaks our hearts to see her look so miserable, to hear her scream in pain. She is so brave, though, a real little fighter, she wants to play and walk (yes, she’s also finally walking again. slowly, but very determined) and loves outings, which is tricky as we need to keep her out of the sun, however, enclosed spaces with lots of people aren’t so good either..
As at 17th M hadn’t eaten for a week, they inserted a nasal gastric tube. She is just having some milk through her mouth.. 🙂 Bonus! Poor thing is back on IV antibiotics as she’s got a fever. Waiting for blood cultures to see what it might be.. Silver lining: Going into a single room as she also has diarrhoea and might be contagious.
As at 18th she had another dose of Vincristine but seems to be recovering from the fever.
Mum & Dad are doing it hard with the shifts at the hospital and the kid in pain.
We hope she will be discharged over the weekend.
If M picks up Mum & Dad believe things will settle down next week and G & I might head back Home. Her Sister will start school at Robertson close by on the 29th around the corner from the village. Grandma has been down since 15th Nov. We will be back soon.
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