September 19, 2021








 Aurelia and I went down to Barcelona yesterday for a chemo treatment. This particular treatment requires an overnight stay and Rory is away for two weeks, so I spent Thursday organizing all logistics for Eston and Laia (our dog). Thank you to all the friends who have been helping me, especially when Rory is gone!

Aurelia and I left Girona at 6am on Friday hoping that her numbers would be high enough for treatment. Her bloods were done by 8am and by 11:30 they told us she was high enough to have treatment and spend the night. Aurelia was really relieved as she has been on a chemo hold for nearly two weeks and she was over it.

They began her chemo treatment once we were upstairs in our room for the night. Aurelia was bored so she walked laps around the room with the medicine pole thing. After treatment her favorite physio came in and they did a solid physio session. Aurelia was a bit tired after that so we watched a movie and just relaxed. Sleeping in the hospital is never super restful, but we did our best and she was feeling pretty good.

On Saturday morning the doctor arrived earlier than expected and we were discharged by 10am! Last time we sat around all day waiting for the doctor, so both of us were pleasantly surprised to be home by noon. Aurelia took a nap and relaxed and I was thrilled she was feeling so well…until about 7pm when she started feeling really lousy. She spent the next hours with awful nausea and vomited and just felt horrible. It is the first time she had experienced this thus far, so she was very frustrated. It was a long night, but we got through it and she is feeling absolutely fine this morning, thank goodness.

We return to the hospital on Wednesday to continue this journey.

Eston has been super responsible. He rides his bike to school, but on Friday he had to get himself up and ready and out the door without anyone being here. He went home with a friend and spent the weekend there having a great time swimming and relaxing with friends.

Kudos to our friend Nic in Australia who is about to complete his 100km run in Aurelia’s honor to raise money for Camp Quality in Australia. What an effort for an amazing cause!



Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 19, 2021 at 6:54 AM

    Aurelia is a rock star! And Eston is an amazing big brother; our love to all of you.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

July 13, 2021

Image
I arrived at the hospital a few hours ago (aurelia is having her snack and watching master chef) and we have great news from the oncology team. When Aurelia was first diagnosed her sample cells were 92% cancer and now that number is 1%. There is a long road of treatment ahead (approximately two years), but these numbers give everyone a huge boost and so much hope. Aurelia is not the least bit surprised as “she knew she was killing the cancer.” So there you have it. Aurelia is working really hard with the physio to start walking again. She does several sessions a day and we are trying to get her inflamed nerves back to where they need to be so she can start walking. Now that her blood is healing itself, we hope her bones and nerves will follow. A few people have asked me about sending cards or postcards. Aurelia loves getting postcards! The best place to send them is to Federal, our restaurant in Girona.  Aurelia Sutherland Federal Café Girona C/Forca, 9 Girona 17004 Spain 
Read more

November 4, 2022

Image
 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....
Read more

August 19, 2022

Image
 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...
Read more