32 more...

Owen started his maintenance phase of chemotherapy on Monday. Everything went fine except for some unexpected news. Joe and I believed that the maintenance phase would be ten treatments given over 10 months. How exactly we came to that conclusion we are not completely sure. But this is what we both believed would be the next step for Owen. Totally manageable...life would return to somewhat normal only having to make the trip to CHOP once a month. Were we wrong! Most likely when we began this "adventure" we read the maintenance "road map" incorrectly. As it turns out, Owen will have 8 more cycles of treatment which consists of 4 weeks "on" (once a week treatment for 4 weeks) and 3 weeks "off" (no treatment for 3 weeks) and repeat this cycle 8 times. Total of 32 more treatments over a span of 56 more weeks...we were blown away by the news to say the least. So now after a few days the news is beginning to settle in. Just a change in mind frame...juggling of schedules...decisions about Owen for child care when I go back to teaching in the fall...all manageable, just a little sad that Owen has to go through so much still. He'll have a number of MRIs during the cycles to assess his progress and hopefully after all of this he will be done.

So it was a long, mentally exhausting day. We dropped Joe off at work after we were finished, stopped at Wegmans for dinner stuff and to appease two cranky little boys I broke open the marshmallows on the way home. I had to get a picture, although it barely picks up the extent of the sticky, gooey mess. Totally worth it for the two smiley faces...but does anyone have any great tips for removing marshmallow from fabric???