Beginning Round Phour

Hi Phin phans! Dustin here. I'm a little bit all over the place with my thoughts right now, and my feelings-—those are like what happens when you put a bunch of charging cords and cables in a box and they turn into a huge, jumbled wad, with everything all twisted up and knotted together. 

But I wanted to give a quick update at the start of Phin's fourth chemo admission so here goes. 

Medical Updates Phin got the all-clear to return on Tuesday, meaning that his counts were high enough that he could check back into the Children's Hospital and immediately start another round of chemotherapy. This round involves four days split into pairs—Days 1 & 2, and Days 8 & 9. He'll get chemo every 12 hours for each of those days, and in-between and afterward, he'll rest here at the hospital and recover his counts. The target for the length of this round is 29 days.

Also starting up again—steroid eye drops every six hours. Just on chemo days, though.

Phin On the Daily It really seems to be slowing Phin down this time.

Someone on his healthcare team described it in running terms. "It's like when you're training for a race," she said. "You run a mile, you're feeling good. You run two miles, still strong. Then you decide you're going to do four miles, and you can still do it, but you're not feeling as fast or as strong as you were on mile one."

He's sleeping more. Lying around more. Throwing up more. I asked if the main chemo drug (Cytarabine, or Ara-C) is in a stronger dose this time, but apparently it's not. He's just been running this chemo race for a long time now, and his body's tired.

Anyway, he's about to get a little reprieve for a few days. Hopefully he'll feel better going into Days 8 & 9.

Finally, here's our "how it started vs. how it's going" attempt to recreate a family picture from four years ago moments before we packed everyone up and drove Phin back to the Children's Hospital. Thanks to Heather at Heather Cahoon Photography for taking the gorgeous shot of the kids when they were younger.