6 months today

Hard to imagine, but things have gotten pretty routine. I revisited some of the earlier posts in this blog - memories of heart-breaking moments and hard-won victories. There's no doubt that Hayden is much more mature and grounded - I think we all are (my grey hair is a testament). Now we're now nearing the end of the interim maintenance phase, which was the easiest one so far. Hayden was neutropenic through most of it, but he felt well, had good energy, and his spirits were high...can't ask for too much more than that.

So we're back at the clinic on June 2 to see if his counts are high enough to start the Delayed Intensification (DI) phase. If so, things get underway on June 3. If not, we wait until June 9 to do another blood test. As always, we're anxious to keep things moving along so we can hit maintenance (aka cruise control) sooner, rather than later. The next phase is scheduled to go 2 months. So cruising in August? Who knows...

This next DI phase likely won't be good times. Remember the roid rage that turned my sweet pea into a mean-spirited, puke-pan-flinging monster? Well the steroids make a reappearance for 2 separate 7-day stretches in this next phase. The doctor assures me that DI won't be as bad as that induction phase, but I'm phsyching myself for an onslaught. The difference is that this time, we know what to expect. It was a very different story when H was first diagnosed - he felt horrible, the chemo side-effects were new to us, he was in the hospital, and we were all shell-shocked...thinking that we had 3 years of that ahead of us! Oh well...if nothing else, the steroids will make for some interesting posts.

If you're a Survivor fan, you might know that Hayden's guy JT won the whole she-bang...and put a cool $75 in his pocket. Woo-hoo! Now if we could just go to a damn store to spend it.

And, a Hayden story to end with....He's decided what he wants to be when he grows up. When he announced this to me and warned that I may not like it because it's dangerous, I suspected that he was going to say a firefighter like Uncle Ray. But nooooo....he says he wants to be a vet. I know what you're thinking because I thought it too. Being a vet isn't dangerous...what a relief! Then he says, "No mommy, a vet like Rambo." That would be vetERAN....oiyyyy. But no hurry, he's going to be a kickboxer first. And that, my friends, is the real danger of neutropenia - TOO MANY MOVIES!