Today's the Day!

Mark gets to start treatment today!  He has been anxious to start doing something, anything, about this undesirable thing in his head and he's a bit relieved to get started finally.  It's been 5 weeks since the surgery, which is more than the 2-4 weeks we had been anticipating, so the wait has been even harder for him.  Also, I'm looking forward to life becoming slightly more routine.  Not normal, radiation and chemo should be on no one's definition of normal, but at least somewhat predictable.  We will be living at the hospital most mornings (or afternoons, I'm not sure what time that will be yet - still more questions...), and doctors appointments will still be a frequent occurrence (at least weekly with two different doctors), but we should be able to plan more than a day or two out without having things change on us in a few hours. :)  Yea!

We still don't know which trial he will be in.  He can for sure get into one of the trials (the one down here that's a pill - I should have a name for that, but somehow I don't), but he's more interested in the vaccine trial - that sounds super exciting to him from a scientific standpoint, and as long as this sucks, he might as well be excited - and we haven't heard those results yet.  I think they should have had the results by yesterday, so we should know today.  Mark has an appointment with the oncologist before his radiation appointment, and they should be able to tell us.  We might get to be the bearer of news to the radiation team, but at least we should know by today!


In other news, Shelly and Jason had a well check with the doctor yesterday.  I was more than a little bit late with Shelly (about 6 months) and only a month late with Jason...   Annie has an appointment on Monday and Emily was all caught up when I called a few weeks ago to schedule all my delinquent well child visits.  (Annie was already scheduled - she's still little enough they make appointments before you leave from the last one).

The doc was impressed with how well behaved, helpful and independent they were.  They are both doing well and growing as expected.  No real surprises there - they've gone through clothes and shoes fast enough I was not expecting them to have stopped growing...  Shelly got to get a shot.  She was so nervous about it, it was kinda funny.  We explained to her that the shot would only hurt for a minute (if that long) but if she got sick with this disease (chicken pox - I have mixed feelings about a chicken pox vaccine in general, but oh well) then she would be sick for week or so and itch everywhere, have to stay in bed and away from friends.  We let her choose if she wanted it then or to do it another time (or even not at all), and she was brave enough to choose to take it then.  The doc left to get the nurse to bring it in, and Shelly kept asking how much longer she had to wait.  Finally the nurse came in, and gave Shelly the shot.  Shelly described it afterwards as it 'only feeling like a pinch' and she was fine in just a few seconds.


Oh!  I got a new card reader for my camera! (probably my 4th or 5th...  It's tragic how many I keep needing to buy to replace ones that get either 'put in a safe place' or get found by a toddler, never to be seen again - I did have one that stopped working, but only one...)  When I get a chance I'll put up pictures.  I have several of Mark from the hospital, Mark at home, the kids in general, Jason's kindergarten end-of-year program, things like that.  I'm sure there are also several dozen that the kids took and I might make you suffer through at least a few of those... :)