Drip... drip... drip... round 12!

Well, this is it... the final round! Gidget's platelets were at 75,000 on Thursday, so all systems are go. We dropped Acey off at his friend Anthony's house at 7:30  a.m. (more on that later), caught the 8:45 ferry, and checked in for port placement with Kelsey at 9:30.

We have gotten pretty close to Kelsey over the past eight months, so the odds of seeing some tears when she and Gidget said their good-byes were pretty high. Luckily, we realized that we'll see Kelsey (with Acey) on Sunday when we come back to get Gidget's pump disconnected, so it wasn't too traumatic.

We met with Dr. Whiting at 11 o'clock to go over the final treatment, test results, and what to expect going forward. Since Gidget's platelets are right at the cut-off point (and because of her continued peripheral neuropathy), Dr. Whiting decided to skip the Oxaliplatin again for this round. This was expected, and Dr. Whiting is pleased with Gidget's overall regimen. He said this is a day to celebrate like a birthday - especially since some patients don't make it through all 12 rounds (due to intense side effects). So, celebrate we will!

The post-chemo plan looks like this:

• CT Scan on August 27, followed by a visit with Dr. Whiting to review results the following week.
• Colonoscopy sometime within the next month (they haven't scheduled that one yet, so I don't have a firm date) followed by another review with Dr. Whiting.
• Assuming the first two exams look good (and we're planning on good news!), we'll come back for blood-work every three months, and a CT Scan every six months. 

We spent an hour in the waiting room before being assigned an infusion bay. Just like round eleven... since they aren't doing the Oxaliplatin or the 5FU push today, they only needed to infuse a dose of leucovorin and hook Gidget up to her weekend pump... YAY, CHEMO!

Acey's amazing teacher is spending the day with her class at the beach today, so Acey had to choose between bringing Mom to chemo... or going to the beach party he has been looking forward to all summer. Seems like a no-brainer to me, but he was really torn. He's a sensitive little thing and he really wanted to be there for Gidget's final round. We convinced him that the most important thing is the pump disconnect on Sunday - that actually signals the end of round 12 - so he was in good spirits when we dropped him off at Anthony's house early this morning.

I'm sure Gidget will write more about this later, but I just wanted to thank everyone for their support over the past 8-10 months. Obviously, we're not out of the woods yet, but completing round 12 is a really important step. It's hard to believe that Gidget's first round of chemo was in January. On the one hand that seems like such a long time ago. On the other hand this has been such a whirlwind journey that it often felt like our lives were flashing by us at dizzying speed. Anyway, we wouldn't have made it this far without all of your support, encouragement, cards, prayers and positive vibes. Thank you!

P.S. My wife rocks! I love her so much, and I couldn't be any more proud of her for the way she has handled all of this...

-Jay