Over the hump and ready to fight!

So we’re over the hump,

• 3 treatments of Chemo are done
• Stem cell harvest is done
• 3 infections down (not that we can plan for that)

and

• Lead in testing for round 4 is done!

We’ve had some really good success lately in raising awareness and funds to support families who are dealing with Cancer and other serious illnesses through the Little Heroes Foundation. The latest fundraising success is thanks to my amazing orange family at the Tea Tree Gully SES unit. A number of them completed the run Adelaide event to raise funds for the Little Heroes in Alex’s name, amassing an impressive $2989.20 (at the time I am writing this post). You can view their team page HERE.

From this team entry, the local paper caught wind of the team, their motivation and felt it was worthy of an article. The unit, my family in orange have rallied around us in such an amazing show of love that I couldn’t ask for more. I know that all it would take is a phone call to any of them asking for help and it would happen, it feels so insignificant to say but: Thank you to each and every one of you!

So where to next?

The next big bend in the road for us is the MRI that Alex is having on Friday this week. While there’s an infinite number of variables in it, there’s really only 3 likely outcomes.

1. The tumor has reduced or shrunk, we’re in a good spot!
2. The tumor has remained static, we’re ok… but work to do.
3. The tumor has regrown or gained size, only a discussion we will get into if we have to. Needless to say, a re-growing brain tumor is NOT good.

Once this is done Friday morning, round 4 of Chemo starts at lunch time so this time next week we’ll know where we stand and we’ll be 4 treatments done of 6 planned. We’re getting there, slowly but we’re getting there steadily! The next 3 rounds are slightly closer together and referred to as “Mega Therapy” for a reason, the drugs are nasty and are expected to knock Alex around physically pretty badly. On the bright side, I get the impression that the nausea will probably be less than the last few rounds.

Keep everything crossed for us and keep sending us love and support, it’s keeping us strong!

The keen eyed of you have already noticed the Paypal donation button on the right of the frontpage of this blog, some people have donated (Thanks) and it will help me pay for the server that this blog is hosted on so I can keep blogging and keeping everyone informed. If you’ve got a few bucks spare in your paypal, I’d certainly appreciate it if you want to flip a few over to me but don’t feel obliged to!

Thank you everyone for your love and support.
Phil