One LONG month behind us ...

Good evening,

It has been exactly one month since we received Dane's leukemia diagnosis and some days it feels like time is passing very quickly and other days it feels like it is standing still. Thank goodness we have my slowly expanding belly to remind us that we are indeed moving forward.

In my Wednesday blog entry I indicated we were waiting for a very important test result and we expected to hear from the oncology team today. Well, that call came at 4:30 and it was more great news. Dane's Minimal Residual Disease (MRD) result was negative and less than 0.1%. In this case, being "negative" is a "positive" result. Although MRD screening is still a relatively new prognostic tool for ALL, the information available on the internet indicates children with negative MRDs are less likely to relapse than children with positive MRDs. Given Dane's day 15 bone marrow was 0% and he is MRD negative, he is defined as a "standard risk average" case of ALL. As the oncology team puts it, he has the "garden variety" ALL and this is what they are used to treating, thus the likelihood of success is likely greater. The only other factor that would have bumped Dane into the "standard risk low" category is the genetics behind his cell mutation. Dane doesn't have the most favorable genetics (which somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% of kids have), however he has the most common genetic mutation. The doctors have told us (mainly me because I'm neurotic) that we should not panic at all that he isn't "standard risk low" so I'm trying very hard to follow their advice.

A significant upside of him being "standard risk average" versus "standard risk high" is his chemotherapy treatment regime should be less intense. This is great news, because as his family, it's very evident to us that the various drugs are highly affecting his system and personality. We not only need to win this battle, we also want to do it with the least amount of drugs possible. As I said in my Wednesday entry, now that his MRD result is known, the details of his treatment will be presented to us at our meeting with the oncology team on Monday morning.

As we head to bed this Friday evening, we have our fingers crossed he feels well enough tomorrow to travel to Grand Forks for Ashley's mini-ringette tournament. The change in scenery and some time away from "life with leukemia" will do us all a ton of good. We will only be gone until Sunday evening, but right now it feels like a trip to an exotic location.

Although I don't have many details yet, the Children's Wish Foundation called yesterday and they have selected Dane to be the "Children's Wish Child" for a RCMP hockey tournament in early March. As I receive more information I will pass it along. Apparently they picked him because they realized he was an avid hockey fan.

We are very relieved this first and critical month is behind us. Although we still have many years of treatment in front of us, I in particular was very fearful something terrible was going to happen to Dane this first month. In Cole's case the diagnosis went from bad to worse to horrific at subsequent appointments and I was so afraid we would be faced with that same situation again. However, this time the news has been progressively more positive with each test result and we are so relieved Dane is fighting this dreaded cancer and winning the battle.

Thank you to everyone for all their love, support and kind gestures as we travel Dane's journey.

Janie and Dirk