And... Round 2

As most of you are aware by now, Nevan's Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia has relapsed.  It has been a long time since we have written in this blog and I have been thinking about posting an update so often, but never getting around to doing it.  Life started again for us, back to school, back to work, seeing friends, going where we want, when we want without the worry of blood counts or whether we were on the dreaded "week 1" treatment protocol.  Normal life got in the way of sitting and writing and we simply let it... happily let it... welcomed it with open arms...

Now, in a very twisted and cruel moment of Deja Vu, here we are again... me sitting in my 'chair-bed' at McMaster Children's Hospital and Nevan sleeping in the hospital bed beside me.  Stuck in a small room with nothing to do but be entertained by one of the many electronics we have plugged into the one outlet we are provided with in our room.  Silence interrupted by the beeping of machines, the check in's by nurses and tonight... the ice rain that is loudly blowing against our window.  There is nothing to do... time to blog.  

On Nov 28th, our entire family went on a beautiful 7 day cruise to celebrate my dad's 75th birthday, Nevan's 8th birthday and his first birthday off treatment and without his port.  We were saying good riddance to a very painful chapter in our lives and hello to the new beginnings that were slowly coming our way.  We didn't celebrate Nevan's end of treatment in 2014 with more than a simple picnic in the park. We thought... if things don't go our way, it will be harder to face the truth if we celebrate too much.  We decided to celebrate 1 year instead... August 28th 2015 was one year off treatment... affectionately knows as super hero day in our family.  We decided to dress up like superheroes and spend the day that way.  We got together with family and friends and reminisced about all we got through, and how fast it flew by.  We decided to plan a trip together to really celebrate and on Dec 6th, we returned from a memorable family trip... a trip of a lifetime.  2 days later was a routine check up at McMaster,,, soon we realized just how special that trip really was.   

That day, Nevan's blood work showed that his platelets had dropped slightly along with his white cells... very typical of the body fighting a virus.  Only thing was, Nevan had no signs or symptoms of being sick.  He was strong, healthy, pain free and had a great appetite.  We were asked to come back the following week to recheck, and also put on the sedation list in case he dropped some more and needed a bone marrow biopsy.  We waited until the Tuesday of the following week when his blood tests showed that his platelets had come up and his white cells were still only slightly lower than before.  The Drs were still fairly convinced that this was a virus and nothing at all to worry about.  We spoke to his oncologist and she said that she really was not concerned and didn't want to push the bone marrow biopsy.  We all discussed the pros and cons and decided that with the holidays coming, it may just be nice to do the test, get the results and have a happy and worry free holiday.  Later that day we got the phone call... there were cancer blasts in his marrow.  His marrow was 60% cancer to be exact... the battle we thought we won, wasn't even remotely over.

Cute story of the day:
We were at the hospital with Nevan and Craig forgot something in the car.  Nevan and I continued into the hospital and waited outside the elevator on the second floor for Craig to meet up with us.

Me:  Daddy will be here soon
Nevan:  Lets go watch the elevators, I have a feeling he will be in the next one!
Me: Ok.... here it comes...
Nevan:  Is Daddy in there!? ... Nope... just short people....