No More Chemo!
Today Ollie took his last oral meds on his protocol for his leukemia treatment! To say we are proud of him is an understatement! So many emotions are rushing through this house today and we can’t believe this day has finally come! 🎉
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We celebrated in style this afternoon with an end of treatment party on Zoom with our families! And of course cupcakes! 🧁
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Ollie endured so much during his treatment and we can’t thank our Oncology/Hemotology team at UMASS enough as they held our hand every step of the way and will continue to check his blood counts for years to come. 💝
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We want to thank the countless organizations and especially Why Me & Sherry’s House, Pedi Pals, and Leukemia & Lymphoma Society for their unwavering and continued support. In addition to the other countless foundations, nonprofits and organizations that helped us through this journey and made our days brighter. ⭐️
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We want to thank everyone in our Tribe for the outpouring of love, well wishes, gifts and prayers. Your kind words and outreach always seemed to make their way to us when we needed them most and you shared our highs and lows and poured nothing but love into our son and our family over the past two years and two months.
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Thank you to all those who were my lifeline when I reached out during those really really hard times in his treatment, I hope you know who you are! I am forever grateful and want to thank you for listening to my concerns, talking me down off the cliff and reminding me to take it one day at a time.
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We want to thank our families for giving us grace when we needed it most. Thank you for understanding and being so respectful when we had (and still have to) make hard decisions to keep Ollie safe and our anxiety low. Your love and support then, now and in the future as Ollie’s immune system starts to recover over the next year is superb.
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Ollie’s Beads of Bravery represent all the oral meds, procedures, X-rays, trips to the ER, clinic visits, port access, injections, and hospitalizations.
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In total he went through:
-796 days in treatment
-3 hospital admissions
-1 port placement surgery
-3 blood transfusions
-3 platelet transfusion
-4 IVIG infusions so far
-2 fevers
-Too many to count clinic visits
-3 X-rays
-3 Ultrasound
-17 interthecal spinal treatments
-Too many to count port access
-Too many to count chemo infusions
-Too many to count doses of oral chemo/ meds
-3 trips to the ER
-8 intermuscular injections
-72 days on steroids and then a week each pulse to come down from them
-hair loss/ extreme sensitivity/ sensitive skin/ limited palette
-countless nights/ morning of being sick
-lost the ability to walk for 3 weeks
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All the while over the past two years and two months Ollie has never ceased to amazes us! He relearned how to walk, increased his vocabulary, successfully potty trained (can be very challenging while on treatment), found a love of painting, massage, learned how to swim, kick a soccer ball, a love of baking and cooking, and embraced his new role of being a proud big brother!
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Even though treatment is over his body and immune is still in “recovery mode” and can take up to a year. Needless to say we are going to remain diligent and take the necessary precautions.
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We’re so proud of him as he’s found a new love of working out with Ryan (to heavy metal music) and already has a new sense of energy, curious about new foods, and excited for preschool in the Fall.
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Mid May he will go to clinic again for blood counts and we will set the date for his port removal surgery and a date so he can go ring the bell making the final end of his treatment!
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We are planning a Covid friendly drive by parade in the summer so stay tuned for more details!
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I will continue to post Ollie updates on here too!! I want to thank you for your continued support in helping to raise awareness for Childhood Cancer and thank you to those that are able to donate blood/platelets by doing so you are saving lives! It saved Ollie’s life.
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#hedidit#childhoodcancerawareness
#gogoldforchildhoodcancer#pediatricleukemia
