We’re so excited! Keturah just had her very LAST lumber puncture last week and also her very last chemo through her port (she still has some oral chemo pills to finish up, but no more IV chemo).
At her last appointment her doctor also gave us her OFFICIAL END DATE for care — August 10th!
Originally they had said mid-September, so this new end date actually means that she is finishing a whole month ahead of schedule!
Right now she is currently taking a 5 day treatment of steroids but is completely off of her chemo this week (which has been really nice). On Thursday (June 15) she will get some labs drawn to determine whether or not she should start taking her final round of oral chemo or if her body needs another week of rest. The good news is that, regardless of whether we start up the chemo next week or the week after, it doesn’t have any effect on her end date, so this break just means she gets less chemo over all, which she’s happy about.
On July 6 she has a simple clinic visit, which should just be a standard check-up and drawing labs. They might try to access her port to draw labs, but since her port hasn’t really been working recently it’s also possible they would just do a finger poke for the labs instead.
July 29 is the last day that she has to take her oral chemo, and since her oral chemo is the only medication she’s got left, that means she’ll be completely done with all her medicine! So that’s pretty exciting!
Then on August 10 we go in to have them remove her port (an out-patient procedure). She’ll also have some labs drawn and have her final doctor’s visit. After that, she is declared OFFICIALLY DONE, and they even have a bell that she gets to ring at a little celebration there at the clinic that day, so she’s really excited about that.
So, after a very long 2-1/2 years the end is finally in sight and we’re pretty excited about being done with her treatments soon. The next step after that is going to be working towards getting our family ready to head back to Cameroon!
Exciting days ahead!
African Pioneer 