Léo had a busy day at the hospital today and received a lot of chemotherapy, but everything (including his LP) went very well. On top of this he received his flu shot: what a cocktail! 😉

We also got a chance to speak about the upcoming months a bit more with the docs this morning, and it looks like maintenance should be easier to go through. It depends on the kids though and it’s apparently hard to predict how Léo will be, even if he did “extraordinary well” over his whole course of treatment. We are very optimistic, and the docs told us we should be! Apparently the worse risk of relapse is over (thanks for letting us know about this now, i.e. at the end of this intensive part of treatment…!!!) and if he doesn’t relapse during his 33 months of maintenance, he will be considered fully cured. We so look forward to hearing all about this! 🙂

Home schooling was also strongly recommended. Leo might end up going to school only in Kindergarten! (3ème année de maternelle). Oh well, this is what they do in Switzerland and other countries and the kids do just fine! We are still looking into our options, but in any case we won’t keep our little one isolated and he will have plenty of occasions to make friends with his little pals during play dates and various park activities. Anyway, we still have time to see it coming and this is the least of our worries!

We were warned that during this very last phase most kids end up being hospitalized for fevers, so we will have to see… fingers crossed! By this weekend he will be severely neutropenic again, so in the meantime we will enjoy the outdoors as much as we can! 🙂

Léo était ravi de sortir sur son vélo… il allait à fond (les pieds encore au sol, pas encore sur les pédales!) mais s’arrêtait souvent pour regarder des petits détails attentivement sur sa route, jusqu’aux petites mouches! 😉

Il est resté longtemps à observer, toucher, cueillir les olives dans l’olivier du quartier. “Pourquoi les olives poussent dans l’arbre? pourquoi elles sont vertes et pourquoi y’en a des noires?”. Il en a mis plein dans sa poche, puis les a lâchées dans l’herbe (“elles me gênent!”) en les comptant une à une.

Il se souvenait aussi qu’il avait vu une grande toile d’araignée tissée haut dans l’arbre juste au-dessus du chemin la dernière fois qu’il était sorti dehors (il y a 2 bonnes semaines!); elle avait (ce que j’avais oublié!) une feuille prise au piège… la toile était encore là, mais la feuille s’était envolée! “Pourquoi elle est pas là, la feuille?” On a aussi vu une toile débutante, juste un fil reliant un arbre à une voiture… fascinant pour ce petit garçon curieux! Du coup à la maison on est allé chercher une vidéo sur Youtube d’une araignée tissant sa toile: Léo, fasciné, a demandé à la regarder plein de fois! (notamment celle avec le piano en musique de fond). Puis on a enchaîné sur les requins et les koalas! 🙂

Léo est en grande forme; quel bonheur de le retrouver comme ça! Il a passé sa journée à jouer, à s’occuper dans sa chambre, à “lire” des livres… et demain on recommence! On ira peut-être même se promener à Temescal Canyon pendant que Charlotte est à l’école.

So, Leo’s ANC was a little too low yesterday to start treatment today. It’s actually good, as he will have a break and we will be able to enjoy the outdoors this week and next week, after spending 2 full weeks in the house. He is doing so well, he is just a happy camper! He did a lot of art and play dough projects over the last few weeks and played a lot with Charlotte. We also made him run in the house. He had fun and kept himself busy!
🙂

We are scheduled to go back to clinic next Monday to start treatment on Tuesday. Then it’ll be 3 weeks of intensive chemo again… but by Charlotte’s birthday we will be all done: a nice way to celebrate! 🙂 Maintenance should start early November once he recovers from this very last phase, and it will be much easier.

We started to look for schools for him, as he may be able to start in the Spring. Most of them enroll in September but, if there is room, some of them told us that they will make an exception and welcome him to their classroom. The directors were all just so friendly. We are looking for a school with a good program obviously but also where all children are immunized to protect our little one, as he probably lost all of his immunizations over his course of treatment. We won’t be able to know where he is at before the end of treatment, i.e. June 2015! But since he was neutropenic most of the time, he probably doesn’t have much left…

Anyway, the light out of the tunnel is coming right up… and it feels GREAT!!! :):)

Léo is much better today: it’s a relief! His face is still pretty swollen from the steroids but he is in good spirits… and so are we!

Thank you all for your support: it surely helps us out to go through all this! 🙂

We all had a very rough week, and especially our little one of course; we are glad that this part of treatment is over. Léo’s bottom still hurts a lot and we are doing our best to manage it. Hopefully it’ll get better over the next few days… Today he was still occasionally in pain but was much more active than the past few days and he had a really good time with Charlotte tonight: it makes us think that he should be much better tomorrow and we sure hope so! As he is still neutropenic we are keeping him safely home and he hasn’t broken a fever yet. Let’s keep our fingers crossed! 🙂

Léo lost his hair again today, but we know that he will get them back slowly during the second stage of this last phase. And he is cute like this too! 😉

We will go back to clinic on Tuesday to see where he is at and then on the 17th to find out if he is ready to keep going on the 18th. Then there will be only 3 more weeks to go, so…… YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!! 🙂

We are slowly getting back to a more normal life in which we can actually start planning things again… we kind of forgot about that over the past few months, as we had to shoot for one phase (sometimes even one day or one week!) at a time. Our habits will come back quickly and we already have fun things in mind that we all look forward to! Geez, what a marathon but our hopes are really high! 🙂