Great News!!!

We got good news this week. Ben is in "maintenance"...this is such a great thing for him!! Maintenance is 3 years long as long as their are no delays and it starts on March 2nd!! Maintenance cycles are 57 days long. Ben will only have to go to the Dr. once every four weeks now! On Day one of the cycle Ben will have a spinal tap and Methotrexate(Chemo) will be injected into his spine. He will also have Vinchristine(Chemo) in his port on day one as well. He will have to take steroids on days 1 thru 5 each month. He will also have different take home Chemo drugs in pill form to take through the cycles as well. It sounds like a lot but this is actually much less than we have been doing every month so far.
When Ben had the ERRI-C treatments they did warn us that his ANC would probably hit zero. This has happened so we are being very careful about exposing him to anything. They also let us know that his hemoglobin(red blood) and his platelets (the cells that make blood clot) could get down to dangerous levels requiring blood transfusions. This did happen this week and Ben had blood transfusions on Wednesday and will most likely have to have more on this upcoming Tuesday. He did well during the transfusions and about twenty minutes into the three hour process he was feeling much better. When his red blood counts are low he feels very sluggish and grumpy. We can tell that they have lowered again because he is pale and low energy again.
This has been a very encouraging week for us and we are excited that we can now begin new plans for visiting Matt's family and allowing Ben to do more things that we had to restrict until now.

Thank you once again for all your prayers and support. It has gotten us to this point!!! PRAISE GOD!!

Jamie