Last chemo pill! Port gone. Life is good. CureSearch.

LAST CHEMO PILL!!!!!  Ty got to take his last pill (July 19) at a family reunion so there were lots of cousins to cheer for him.   

The rest of the summer has been so fun.  It has been awesome to no longer be worried about pills and fevers and germs.  Once in a while the fear of relapse (he has a 10% chance of relapsing) creeps up on us, but for the most part we are putting all of the cancer stuff in the past and moving forward. 

Now he gets his blood checked once a month for the next year.  He will get an echo to check for heart damage from the chemo in October and then every 5 years after that if everything is good.  He got his port removed at his first after treatment checkup...

  Throwing his coins into the new fountain

3 years ago (June 2011) vs now...he's all grown up!

 Right before his last port access, the red and white is from the numbing cream...and the bandaids that were holding it on.

 We finally got a pic of him with his fantastic oncologist Dr. Wright.  I caught her mid laugh...I think we were laughing about how funny Ty has been with her.  When he was first diagnosed he wouldn't even respond to her or acknowledge her presence.  His 3 year old way of dealing with it all was to shut out all medical people.  We have slowly gotten him to respond a little bit when she asks him questions but she usually has to stand in front of his video game to get him to respond. 

Once his port was accessed it wouldn't draw back, which wasn't a huge deal since he was getting it out that day anyway.  The IV team had a hard time getting a vein because he was fasting for his surgery...the hand one didn't work so they had to try again in his arm. Ty just laughed and said 'now I get two pokie prizes!' 

Getting ready for surgery...he was not thrilled that he had to wear hospital clothes...he has never been a fan and I'm not sure there has been too many times in the last 3 years that anybody has convinced him to put some on.  He hid under the chair when I first tried to take a picture but I finally convinced him.  You can see his port sticking out of his chest for the last time. 

And there he goes!  Off to surgery for the last time! (hopefully) 

It didn't take long and he woke up pretty good, ate some oreos and a popsicle and we were on our way.  It's amazing how simple it all was, and how different this port removal was from the other one...I wasn't crying hysterically in the waiting room this time. :)

Bye Bye port! 

Hello first day of 1st grade! (August 26)

He had to leave his first day a little bit early so he could do his 2nd after treatment visit.  This time he gets to do it locally.  The lady at the lab was awesome.  She was trying to prep him for getting a poke as if he never had one before, it was kind of funny.  After she was done she said he puts grown men to shame and gave him a present.  Ty made sure I was aware that the things she gave him did not count as his pokie prize. ha ha CHIPS...cancer has it's privileges and pokie prizes are an essential part of it...much better than holding down a screaming, writhing, terrified child.  Man are we happy to be on this end of the journey!!

I don't have CBC results yet, and I don't know what I did with the counts from last month...and I'm not sure that I care. How fun to not care what his counts are!

Whew! What a long blog post!  Thanks for sticking around!