Força Aurelia

 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...

 We are a couple days away from the one-year anniversary of Aurelia’s diagnosis. Today is the last day of school and the kids begrudgingly stood still for three seconds so I could take a photo: In my parent support group there is a lot of talk about the maintenance phase of treatment. It seems that medical teams all over the world make this phase of treatment out to be a breeze, but the parents recognize this is because they want to get through frontline treatment in a successful and positive way. We are pretty lucky in that Aurelia has been in school and doing fairly well, but I think the realities of cancer hit like a bag of bricks in this phase. We honestly didn’t have much time to sit and ponder things in frontline. It’s constant hospital stays, chemo, tests, etc. We can’t even remember half of it, nor do we want to. Now things have slowed and the questions of the future loom larger. Chemotherapy has side effects. A lot of them. While many made their appearance during frontline...

 Hello to all- just a monthly update. Time has been going by quickly and uneventfully, so that is great news. Aurelia has returned to school full-time (9am-5pm) and is doing very well. She does experience the occasional day when she calls me feeling a bit fatigued and wants to go home, but for the most part she feels pretty good.  During the first months of the maintenance phase of treatment the doctors often change the amount of chemotherapy she has each week, so we have had a few ups and downs with joint pain and headaches. We find that fresh air seems to help, so we take slow walks or get out on her e-bike and it helps her pain. It’s also warm enough to swim now, so she has been swimming in our pool each day after school.  This has all become our new normal and we are doing our very best to live a regular and full life…while dragging around a cooler of medication and chemotherapy. Our weekends are as they always were—busy with sport and time with friends. The importanc...

 It’s been a minute, but we are still rolling along this treatment road. We’ve been home since the beginning of February and we go down to Barcelona twice a month for treatment. Aurelia also has two different types of chemotherapy at home each day/week, but it all feels normal now. Aurelia celebrated her 9th birthday with a very small family party. We are just thrilled we’ve made it to this point. A dear family friend took Aurelia to the mall (I despise malls) to shop for her birthday, so here is Aurelia showing me her new outfit: Aurelia ran the last 500m of my 80km race. This girl is the best race crew. She can solve any problem! Most days Aurelia feels like herself and we can be out and about: We walked the Cursa contra Cancer here in Girona. It was a 5km walk on a really cold day. I’m wearing a down jacket under my green shirt and Mariona is pregnant, so we were not super fast walkers 😂 Yep, we still have our treatment days in Barcelona. Twice a month isn’t too bad and this wi...

 We are about a month in to the maintenance phase of Aurelia’s treatment. My parent ALL support group told a lot of horror stories about this phase (which is 1.5 years long). To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect because it seems like a huge celebration to be finished with frontline treatment, but Aurelia still has to have chemo and other treatments so it’s not like we are done. The big news: Aurelia returned to school this week! School hours are from 9:15-5:15 (yes, long school day in this country) but Aurelia is attending until 1:15 (lunch) for the time being. She hadn’t seen her friends in person since June 22, 2021…. Aurelia loves her “Team Aurelia” shirt my sister sent: I’ll admit, homeschooling my child was often a struggle because we were dealing with so much on a daily basis and I had to try to keep her going with school stuff. Not the most fun teaching I’ve done, but we survived. We did a lot of baking with fractions and some things turned out better than others: Aure...

 It’s been awhile since I updated, but we are home! The return home was a bit dramatic as Eston had COVID, but he was fine and we are so grateful to our friends who helped during this time. Aurelia is thrilled to be home. We have to go to Barcelona every week or two for treatment and blood tests, but it’s a huge sigh of relief to have come this far in the treatment process. Last weekend we participated in a walk that raised money for the oncology ward at Hospital Sant Joan de Deu. Aurelia was pretty excited to pin on a number, though she was less pleased with her fitness level. The run/walk was 6.5km and she did run some of it, but she told me she is coming back next year to win it all. 😂 Yes, her TDF lion has bows in its hair.  These two went about 3 weeks without seeing each other due to Aurelia’s treatment and Eston’s COVID quarantine, so they were quite thrilled to be together again. ❤️ Aurelia is psyched to be back on the trails of Girona. Last weekend we did a family bi...

 We have reached the end of frontline treatment! We made it! Aurelia’s blood tests and scans are all good, so we will be allowed to return home to Girona on Friday. Aurelia so so excited to go home after two months away. She handled the last two weeks of treatment really well and has been feeling pretty good. Her doctors think she will be able to return to school and sports sometime in March. From here we move to the “long term maintenance” phase of treatment. Aurelia will take chemo pills each day at home and go in to the hospital for treatment every 3-4 weeks. This will continue until summer 2023 (more or less). We still have a long way to go, but getting through frontline was a huge feat and we are so proud of her determination and strength. We will continue to take things day by day. Some kids do really well in maintenance and don’t experience any challenges while others struggle and are in the hospital a lot, so we don’t know what to expect. We have found that focusing on her ...