February 4, 2023

February 4th is World Cancer Day. It also happens to be the date Joy was finally able to start the next round of treatment called Interim Maintenance #1. This is a 56-day cycle and includes the drugs vincristine and escalating doses of methotrexate. It involves one lumbar puncture on day 31.

We also now have an end-of-treatment-date. It’s two years from the start of Interim Maintenance #1 so for us, we are counting down the days until February 4, 2023. Come on, Joy! We believe you can beat this!

As I type this, we are currently on day 21 of Interim Maintenance. The first few days of this cycle were hard. Joy developed painful mouth sores that bled which affected her desire to eat or drink. There was a 24-hour period where I'm pretty sure she survived on sips of water and a popsicle. We've been treating the sores with Benadryl that acts as a numbing agent inside her mouth. She also has a mouth wash that she can swallow to prevent sores from becoming infected. 

We took her to the ER one Sunday afternoon for a fever that developed overnight. She was also dehydrated so they gave her lots of IV fluids. The fever quickly went away and thankfully, she was discharged and sent home about seven hours later. That Sunday was pretty crazy because Jordan developed a flat tire on his way to pick us up. Our friend Geno drove up to save the day and bring us home safely. Joy threw up in his van. We were so grateful when we finally pulled into our driveway. Thank God for wonderful friends who are helping us through this time.

This last week was a bit calmer which is interesting because she had more methotrexate in her IV than when she first started this cycle. She continues to surprise us and fight this thing head on. What a gift from God she is!

I'll keep this post rather short. It's not too soon to start planning for her end-of-treatment-celebration, right? Make sure to save the date.