The long road of maintenance

I realized it had been a long while since the last update here. It has now been just over a year since the intense portion of treatment has concluded and our family left Ronald Macdonald House. 

Since Maintenance began, Eli has had to go back in every four weeks. For much of the past year those appointment were two in Vancouver, one here in Prince George before switching to one in Vancouver and two in Prince George. This made for a fair number of trips to Vancouver and we were grateful those trips became less frequent once winter hit and even more grateful that it was possible to fly for January's appointment.

The reason for appointments in Vancouver is that, those involve a lumbar puncture, for which he is put under because who wants to be awake for that!

Things have gone fairly well over this past year. Throughout maintenance, he not only has the regular lab work and appointments but also daily pills. We also have to be continually vigilant with regards to secondary illnesses. Its really hard through cold/flu season but if he has a fever, we have to take him into our local hospital for lab work and consult with his care team at BC Children's. Fortunately, we've been blessed in that this has only happened once in the past year. 

At this point we only have two more trips to Vancouver for LPs and come Aug 9 of this year he'll be done the daily medications. After that he will be scheduled for another trip to Vancouver to have the port removal operation. He'll then have regular bloodwork just to watch for relapse, which a small but still present possibility. We'll still have to make trips down to BC Children's from time to time as his oncologist will still want to see him in person from time to time for follow up. 

We pray all continues to go well but there is the small but, ever present, chance of relapse so we just keep moving forward, thankful for each day. We have been carried through so much and we know we will be carried on, no matter the road ahead.