Força Aurelia

 Aurelia continues to fight and win! This long phase is called maintenance and her medical team tries to keep her counts within a certain range and the chemotherapy is adjusted according to her blood counts. Too low is too much chemotherapy and too high is not enough, so they look for a certain range in every visit. The last month Aurelia’s bloods have been incredibly good…but this also means they give her more chemotherapy to bring the counts back into the range. I know it sounds odd, but this is the protocol that has proved successful for decades so we continue our fight. I know it’s hard for Aurelia to hear that we have to increase chemotherapy because her counts are so good, but I present it in a way so she knows she is stronger than the disease and a step ahead of it. Sometimes it works and other times she rolls her eyes at me. 😊 We continue to notice gains with her stability and strength. She gets frustrated, but she keeps going with her physiotherapy and running and riding....

 Aurelia was so glad to be done with her last lumbar puncture last month. We’ve been to the hospital twice this month for her blood tests and so far everything is holding up well. She takes her heavier dose of chemotherapy every Wednesday and now we do it in the late afternoon because…school is back in session! Monday was the first day of school and both kids were excited to go back. Aurelia was thrilled to start the first day with all of the other kids. Last weekend Aurelia and I ran the “Cursa Muntanya de la Dona Contra Cancer.” Basically a 7km trail run/walk to raise money for the oncology group here in girona, but this race was only for women. We walked the first couple of kilometers to warm up and then Aurelia ran the rest.  We spent the week before that in Andorra. Aurelia was really trying to push her body with some challenging hikes and we had good days and frustrating days. Her body isn’t doing what she would like it to do and I can only imagine how difficult that mus...

 Today is a big day: Aurelia’s final lumbar puncture! For the past year Aurelia has had monthly intrathecal chemotherapy. This is when she is out under general anesthesia and chemotherapy is injected into the fluid around her spinal column. As you can imagine, it’s not her favorite treatment, so she is thrilled that today is the last spinal! We were able to go on our road trip to France, which was amazing since we haven’t traveled much between COVID and cancer. It was a lot of energy, but Aurelia did her best. We ended our trip a day early as she wasn’t feeling that well and we didn’t want to push things too much. It was easier to leave the race and just drive home so she could rest, so that’s what we did. Aurelia was thrilled to wear all of the special jerseys given to her the past year. She had a different jersey for each day we were there. ❤️ We have been trying to have as normal of a summer as possible between hospital appointments and chemotherapy. Beach days, bike rides, shor...

 Yes, it’s the monthly Aurelia update.  Aurelia has an implanted access port (easier to receive all chemo and other meds) and this limits a few summer activities. She is allowed to swim in the ocean (yay!!) and clean private pools are okay as well (thank goodness, as we have a pool). Public pools, lakes, streams, creeks, etc are off limits due to the higher probability of bacteria leading to an infection.  Aurelia had her first swim in the Mediterranean in a year and she was pretty thrilled to swim and snorkel: Annie and Sloane came to visit from Boulder! We are so thrilled they were able to visit and Aurelia really loved having them around.  It feels like our life was on hiatus for a year, so it’s so nice to see our friends on a regular basis again. We still have to stick fairly close to home due to Aurelia’s treatment schedule in Barcelona, but we are able to spend time at our place in the mountains as well. The challenging terrain was always something Aurelia love...