So far, so good

Maintenance chemotherapy started this week, and so far Kol seems to be weathering it quite well. We spent pretty much all day Wednesday and Thursday at the cancer clinic in Saskatoon, staying at my parents' place overnight to avoid extra driving. The only adverse side effect so far has been some nausea, which seems to be well controlled by ondansetron (the same anti-nausea medication he received during radiation treatment) - he felt sick late Wednesday afternoon, but once we got him a dose of ondansetron he was fine again. There will probably be a bit of a learning curve again, figuring out what medications need to be administered at what time, but it shouldn't be too steep.

We're still going to have to keep a close eye on his blood counts, especially his white blood cells. As Kristen mentioned in the last post, this chemo drug is going to have a significant impact on his bone marrow, so he'll probably be house-bound for the next few days until we know that his immune system is healthy enough to be out and about. It looks like he'll be getting blood samples taken three or four times over the next three weeks, so we should be able to stay on top of things there. Hopefully we won't have to deal with too much "cabin fever"!

We get to stay home now until next Wednesday, when he goes back to the cancer center for a dose of vincristine (the "milder" chemo drug). There are some other things he needs before then (daily doses of a drug to help rebuild his bone marrow, blood tests), but those are all things that we can either do ourselves, or else get done at the health center here in Outlook.

Thanks again for all your prayers and encouragement!