Out with IM, in with DI
It’s been a bit since I’ve posted an update about Wes. Two weeks ago we were grateful – and a little surprised – to all be together for Ruth’s birth. A few days later...
Author: Roger Howard
Last round of IM set to begin
It’s been a weekend of change so I don’t want to let this go unremarked. Wes and I will be heading to the hospital tomorrow morning for his last round of Interim Maintenance chemo;...
Welcome, Ruth
Ruth Marjorie Howard came thundering into this world yesterday at 1:43pm like the force she will one day become. The sun was shining, birds were chirping, the cops showed up… But we’ll get into...
Packing List for CHOP
One of the first things we did when we came home from that initial week in the hospital was put together a “go bag” of essentials we’d need if we had to scramble and...
Mucositis (no fun)
We’ve been here a few days now, and Wes has improved consistently. He’s got oral mucositis, a common side-effect of chemo, particularly the high dose methotrexate that he’s receiving every couple of weeks. Mucositis...
The laws of physics conspire
We can’t be in two places at once – so says the universe, and it seems to be true because there’s no law I’d rather violate than this one. My extremely pregnant wife is...
A fair trade
I’ve tried to find an opening, some way to approach this topic, a dozen times already but the words just aren’t arriving tonight, so I’ll cut the preamble short and just say what’s been...
Toxic toddler
Chemotherapy is the process of delivering just enough poison to cancer cells without killing everything else; the therapeutic drugs Wesley receives are highly toxic, and the rest of his medications are almost entirely devoted...
The fever protocol
As I write, we’ve been on fever watch for the past day or so and are hoping for everyone’s sake that his temperature stays below 100.3 for the next five hours. When we’re not...
Remission isn’t what you might think
Along with relapse, remission is one of the few technical terms that most people are familiar with regarding cancer, but it’s also the most commonly misunderstood at least as far as acute lymphocytic leukemia...