Day 300 - Spring Break 2017

     It's been about 11 days since my last update.  Let's get right into the medical details.  For the past 11 days Evan has been incident free.  He completed Interim Maintenance and other than some pinkish-red skin nothing is blatantly wrong.  He has blood work scheduled for Thursday, sedation and a full body MRI planned for Friday and the beginning of long-term maintenance chemo scheduled for Monday.  The MRI is intended to find any lingering infections that might not show up on an x-ray.  

Without a PICC we can do showers again.

       Maintenance is set to include IVIG, Pentamidine (antibiotic), Vincristine and a spinal tap.  Following that Evan will receive daily oral Mercaptapurine and weekly oral Methotrexate.  Both drugs are supposed to induce some level of suppression to the bone marrow without completely eliminating his immune system.

More brotherly love.

     Papa Bear went to Las Vegas last week/weekend and missed out on some of the trips that Cristy was able to take the boys to while out of school on spring break.  It's great that Evan is in a spot now that allows him to leave the house more frequently.  In many of the pictures you'll see in the blog today the kids were able to go to the Georgia Aquarium, Tellus Museum, my parent's house, bowling and attempted to go to a strawberry patch (unfortunately they were closed).

Nolan's 2nd trip.

Sitting still long enough for a picture.

     This weekend we're looking forward to Easter and getting to spend time with family and friends.  My parents are having us down for lunch and an Easter egg hunt that my sister has spared no expense trying to make special.  One of us is going to have to dress up head-to-toe as the Easter Bunny in fairly warm temperatures.

The dog on Evan's shoulder is his pet from school for the week.

     Also of note this week we received a letter from Make-A-Wish with more details about our trip to Orlando.  The letter was addressed to Evan and we were able to fill him in on it.  Needless to say he is very excited, as are myself and Cristy.  During a March 10th chemo treatment Evan and Cristy took part in a photo session with a group known as Flashes of Hope.  They take pictures of children fighting cancer and many of these photos can be found lining the halls of the cancer ward at CHoA.  We were lucky enough to receive the digital proofs today and are expecting physical copies in the next week or so.  

Reading his Make-A-Wish letter.

     I'll provide another update sometime Friday, assuming we get the results from his full body MRI.  If we can make it through this without any major infections it will be a huge step in the right direction.

One of our Flashes of Hope photos.