June 30th, 2005
What About Spencer?
This blog has been all Rob’s gonna be on TV and come to Tour Watch 2005 and donate to support cancer survivors lately. What about Spencer? Spencer is in for his third week of intensive chemotherapy tomorrow. So far, he’s taking it like a champ, both physically and mentally. The first week had two IV chemotherapy drugs (doxorubicin over a 2 hour infusion and Vincristine) and a procedure with bone marrow aspiration, lumbar puncture, and spinal chemotherapy (with methotrexate). Last week and this week are “just” the two IV chemotherapy drugs. We restart steroids tomorrow, so mood swings and incresed appetite are in our future. We expect to have a short spell of low white blood cell counts, specifically a low absolute neutrophil count, in the next week.
Until blood counts become a problem, Spencer is spending his days at summer camp swimming, hiking, riding horses, making art projects, and doing an activity called “activities”. They have a calendar at summer camp listing the activities for the day. One of the slots is called “Activities” so we asked “what is this activity called activities?” and he told us it changes from day to day and they never know what it is. Sometimes a hike in the woods, sometimes games, sometimes a project. It’s his second favorite activity. Swimming is first. I can’t wait to get him back into swim lessons this year now that chemotherapy won’t be knocking him down regularly and we can attend weekly.
There is a built-in pause in the chemotherapy for one week to let counts recover and then we move to the second half of Delayed Intensification round 2 with chemotherapy infusions at home two weeks in a row. That will be a piece of cake. Last time, we assumed we would be stuck at home most of those two weeks. Spencer corrected that expectation by insisting on attending martial arts class with a tube hanging from a needle stuck in his chest. I’m sure we’ll have more adventures, and probably misadventures, just as we did last time around in delayed intensification round 1. Check out the February and March blog postings for more on what we did last time.
