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 must be for someone like Aurelia. She did some amazing hikes and we hope she can get some of her strength back.
The e-bike has been retired. It was such an amazing tool for her to have this past year, but she needs to try to build her strength up a bit, so we fixed up the Canyon bike for her and she is loving it. Long climbs are difficult, but she managed a 20km ride really well last week and she loves wearing all of her “special edition” jerseys.
Now that we only go to the hospital twice a month for blood control…we can take the train!! The train station is a 15-20 minute walk from our house. We hop on the high speed train and we are in Barcelona in 35 minutes. We then walk through a beautiful city garden to the hospital. I can’t even begin to explain how much nicer this is for stress levels. Once the government got rid of the tolls on the autopista, the traffic became horrendous and it was taking us 1.5-2 hours each way to get to the hospital. The train is so much more relaxing. Aurelia reads or brings her sewing project and I’m not stressed sitting in traffic.
The big news…Aurelia took part in her first running race since March 2021. She has been adamantly refusing to race, but last Saturday she told me she wanted to be signed up to race a local 3km trail race for kids. The route was technical and challenging, but she did it and she was completely unconcerned with where she finished. She was proud of herself and is training for the next race. Of course, she showed up in full kit with my old fancy running watch. 😊
Rory is in Australia for a few weeks for the World Championships, so I am on “medical” duty. At this point it isn’t too much—taking her temperature in the morning (she often does it by herself anyway), doing her morning medications, keeping inventory of all meds/pharmacy runs, afternoon and evening medications and making sure we have enough of her chemotherapy meds which we can only get at the hospital, not our local pharmacy. Her next blood control is Thursday, so hopefully her numbers are strong and starting school hasn’t worn her down too much.
At this point it’s just a waiting and watching game. Her prognosis is good and we are really hopeful. Each blood control makes me a bit nervous, but we have to try to live as normally as possible as we continue this journey. Aurelia will be done with treatment sometime in the summer of 2023 and this is when the real waiting begins. If she does not relapse in the five years after treatment ends, she will be considered “cured.”
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