Warrior Style

I was really hoping that I'd never have to write another blog entry on this site. For those of you here for the first time, you might want to check out the FAQ to get some background on all of this, as I'm just going to jump into the latest info with this post.
 
In mid-December, Anna started to have some excessive headaches and sinus pressure. After visiting a couple different doctors, this was diagnosed to be a severe case of sinusitis which is treatable with antibiotics. On Christmas day, she started seeing double which further contributed to the headaches. After consulting with her Oncologist, he recommended we go to the ER to be evaluated by an ENT specialist and have a few tests run. We spent most of the day in the ER, and were discharged later that evening with instructions to follow up with a few different doctors.
 
After a trip to the Neurologist, a visit with her Oncologist, an MRI, a Lumbar Puncture (Spinal Tap), and a bone marrow biopsy we received a diagnosis. The testing revealed that she had a recurrence of Leukemia, with the Leukemic cells appearing in her Central Nervous System (CNS).
 
From a treatment perspective, this means a couple things:
 
Short-term: Yesterday (Thursday), she went in for her first treatment that was designed specifically to fight the Leukemia in the CNS. This is initially administered under anesthesia via a needle to the spine. This treatment of the CNS will go on for the next several weeks. We are hopeful that this will be administered on an outpatient basis. This starts with twice a week (Mondays and Thursdays), and assuming everything goes well, should decrease in frequency. She's also likely to have another port inserted to help with the administration of this chemo directly into the CNS. She currently has a port in her chest that sits directly below the skin that they use to administer several of the other chemo treatment, draw blood, etc. This new port will be installed in her head, which is a little daunting to hear, but it's a common procedure and will have long term benefits for administering future doses of chemo to her CNS. The advantage really is that once this is inserted, they'll have direct access to her CNS, so this chemo treatment can be provided during a brief appointment in the cancer center, rather than going through the much longer (and painful) process of administering this via her spine. After the first dosage, this seems to have provided some relief to the headaches, but the double vision still persists. We're hoping this will clear up in the next few days.
 
Longer-term: Given the recurrence, the maintenance chemo program that she was on is no longer going to be sufficient. We're going to need to look at more aggressive options. These options include:
1. More chemo: This will likely be higher dosages of more chemo
2. Chemo + Radiation: She did not previously go through Radiation, so this will be something new
3. Chemo + Radiation + Bone Marrow/Stem Cell Transfer: This is the big one and is the most aggressive of the bunch.
 
When we met with her Oncologist on Thursday he walked us through the options above. The exact path will be determined over the next couple of weeks. We are waiting on the results from a couple of other tests, feedback with a few other ALL specialists, and feedback on her progress with treating this in her CNS. All we're certain about at this point is that the treatment will need to be more aggressive.
 
After receiving the news, I was reminded of a speech that we heard this past year at the kickoff for Light the Night. This lady, who had been through something similar, spoke about how she always used the term Warrior (rather than Survivor) when talking about her experience and her battle with cancer. Her point of the speech was that this is an ongoing, every day battle. And, that warriors were strong and always ready for the fight. It was a really inspirational speech, one that I definitely can't do justice via this blog post... but it's a term (and speech) that has stuck with us through this battle.
 
It's been a tough couple of days emotionally and physically. Hearing the initial news on Wednesday was pretty tough, so we've had a couple of tough days. Additionally, with the treatment that she's received and the multiple procedures that were performed, she's pretty beat up physically. Throughout the last few days, her spirits have been pretty high and we're both confident that she'll pull through this.
 
So, the fight goes on.... warrior style....